99.7% of all Social Security payments are accurate

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/setting-the-record-straight-on-social-security

Social Security has broad support across party lines, income levels, and generations. After 90 years, Social Security remains one of the nation’s most successful, effective, and popular programs.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has strict controls over who receives a Social Security number (SSN) and what documentation is required to prove identity, U.S. citizenship, and immigration status.

The agency assigns a unique Social Security number to each eligible individual, and it pays a single Social Security benefit to each qualifying individual with a Social Security number.

Only U.S. citizens and some lawfully present non-citizens may receive Social Security benefits.

Social Security’s payment accuracy rate is very high — well over 99 percent — and it has many safeguards against improper payments, including rigorous protocols to stop paying benefits to people who have died.

Misinformation and false statements from President Trump and “Department of Government Efficiency" head Elon Musk claiming otherwise are causing confusion and risk undermining a trusted program that is rigorously administered, and which 69 million people currently rely on and nearly everyone will eventually use.

Here are the facts:

Social Security Number: What Is it and Who Is Eligible?

• The Social Security Administration only provides new or replacement Social Security cards to people who meet strict authentication requirements.

• Applicants must fill out an application for a Social Security card (SS-5) and take or mail original documents to a local Social Security office for processing.

• Applicants must provide at least two documents that prove age, identity, and U.S. citizenship or lawful immigration status.

• Almost all U.S. citizens are assigned Social Security numbers at birth through SSA’s enumeration at birth program.

• Some non-citizens with lawful immigration statuses may receive Social Security numbers.

• To receive a work-authorized SSN, non-citizen applicants must prove that they have a current, lawful work-authorized immigration status (such as lawful permanent resident status, also known as having a green card).

• Social Security cards issued to non-citizens with temporary work authorization are labeled “VALID FOR WORK ONLY WITH DHS AUTHORIZATION.”

• To receive a non-work SSN, applicants must prove they are lawfully present in the U.S. (for example, on a student visa) and provide the valid, non-work reason for which they need an SSN.

• Social Security cards issued to non-citizens without work authorization are labeled “NOT VALID FOR EMPLOYMENT.”

• People who are without lawful immigration status are not eligible for an SSN.

• The Social Security number is a unique identifier, meaning that one number is assigned to one individual. It was designed this way to keep track of each worker’s earnings so that SSA could determine eligibility for Social Security and the benefit amount, which is based on a worker’s earnings.

Social Security Benefits: Who Gets Them and How Are They Calculated?

• Social Security has a payment accuracy rate of over 99 percent. Only 0.3 percent of Social Security benefits are improper payments, which are typically caused by mistakes or delays.

• SSA has many safeguards to ensure accurate payments, including strict documentation and eligibility requirements, quality reviews, and regular reviews of medical eligibility for disability beneficiaries and financial eligibility for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients. SSA works with its Office of Inspector General (OIG) to root out rare cases of outright fraud, in which applicants or beneficiaries deliberately falsify information to get or keep undeserved benefits. SSA and OIG team with state and local authorities in Cooperative Disability Investigations to investigate suspected fraud and to prosecute violations of the law.

• Only U.S. citizens and some lawfully present non-citizens may receive Social Security benefits.

• Social Security benefits are based on the earnings on which people pay Social Security payroll taxes.

• As of 2004, non-citizens must have had work authorization for their earnings to count toward Social Security eligibility and benefits.

• In addition, the Social Security Act has prohibited the payment of benefits to non-citizens who are not “lawfully present” in the U.S. since 1996.

• SSA only pays one Social Security benefit to each qualifying Social Security number holder.

• A person may receive a Social Security benefit based on their own work history or based on their relationship to a worker — for example, the surviving spouse of a deceased worker.

• Beneficiaries who are eligible in multiple ways (for example, as both a worker and a surviving spouse) only receive one benefit that is reduced under the “dual entitlement rule,” which caps the total benefit amount at the highest single benefit for which the person qualifies.

• In no case does the same individual receive multiple Social Security benefits, nor does SSA pay Social Security benefits to people without SSNs.

• SSA has rigorous protocols to stop payments to beneficiaries who have died.

• State vital statistics agencies report deaths to SSA via the Electronic Death Registration system, typically within days.

• SSA also collects death data from funeral home directors, family members, and financial institutions.

• Across all sources, the agency receives nearly 3 million death reports each year, preventing over $50 million in improper payments each month.

• To catch any deaths that may have escaped reporting, SSA regularly checks to be sure its oldest beneficiaries are using their Medicare benefits — if not, they verify that the beneficiary is still alive.

• And in the extremely rare cases where benefits are paid to people over 100 years old, SSA has a policy to stop payments by age 115.

• Only 0.1 percent of Social Security benefits are paid to people over 100 years old. DOGE head Elon Musk has been circulating a table he claims shows Social Security beneficiaries at very old ages, but he is grossly mischaracterizing its contents.

• These numbers appear to be drawn from SSA’s Numident database, a record of every Social Security number application since the program started.

• The Numident typically does not contain death dates for people born before 1920 — before Social Security was established and long before electronic records were kept.

• A 2023 OIG report explains that “almost none” of the people born before 1920 in this dataset are being paid benefits.

• As a result, SSA explained that adding death dates to these very old records would be “costly to implement [and] would be of little benefit.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/musk-uses-immigration-claims-voter-fraud-sell-social-security-cuts-rcna196863

Musk uses immigration and claims of voter fraud to sell Social Security Administration cuts

Elon Musk has falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants are siphoning away billions of dollars' worth of entitlements as part of a Democratic scheme for votes.

NBC NEWS

Elon Musk and the Trump administration are pitching cuts in one of the most politically dangerous arenas in America — the Social Security Administration.

Musk has cast the idea as one that’s primarily about immigration, falsely claiming that undocumented immigrants are fraudulently accessing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of entitlements, including Social Security, Medicaid and disability programs, as part of a Democratic scheme for votes.

“By using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants,” Musk, the billionaire tech CEO behind the Department of Government Efficiency, said Monday on Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast, without evidence.

Musk: “And buy voters. Basically bring in 10, 20 million people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and will vote overwhelmingly Democrat, as has been demonstrated in California.”

Musk told Cruz, R-Texas, that his efforts to end the alleged fraud are why people on the left “hate my guts and want me to die.”

Musk said the fraud has cost the government $100 billion to $200 billion.

It’s an argument Musk has been making repeatedly in recent weeks, as DOGE and the Trump administration announce and push for more cuts to the SSA, including eliminating thousands of employees from the already lean agency, ending the ability to make claims by phone and shuttering dozens of field offices that help seniors access their benefits.

The Trump administration has said repeatedly it isn’t cutting benefits — just fraud. And while it’s well known that fraud exists in programs such as Social Security and disability programs, experts say Americans and overseas crime rings are typically perpetrating fraud on entitlements.

Asked for comment on Musk’s remarks and proof that immigrants living in the United States without legal status were to blame for the fraud, the White House didn’t offer any.

“If NBC wants to die on the hill of objecting to credible claims of fraud in our entitlements, especially by the millions of illegals Joe Biden let into this country, have at it,” White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said in a statement.

“Our federal government is riddled with fraud, and President Trump is putting an end to that despite opposition from complacent Democrats and the mainstream media.”

Social Security sends retired people checks every month based on their incomes as working people, and it also sends checks to disabled people.

Medicaid insures low-income people, while Medicare provides health insurance for people older than 65.

Broadly, immigrants without legal status don’t qualify for federal dollars through the programs.

Some states do fund health care for undocumented immigrants like pregnant women, and Medicaid will reimburse hospitals for emergency health care provided to low-income, undocumented immigrants, as hospitals aren’t allowed to turn away people seeking emergency care.

That amounts to less than 1% of Medicaid’s annual spending.

Social Security cuts have been a major focus of tense town halls for Republican lawmakers, with constituents expressing fear that cuts at the SSA could make it harder for them to access their benefits.

According to a May report from the Office of the Inspector General, people were already experiencing prolonged wait times working with the SSA.

The report noted that in-office appointments could be completely booked up for more than 40 days in the future and that it could take months for promised services to be delivered.

The report said 65% of Social Security beneficiaries were unaware that there were online services for the agency.

But even with constituents struggling to interface with the SSA, Musk has portrayed pushback to his changes as politically motivated.

“This is why the Democrats are so upset about the situation,” Musk said on Fox Business last week. “If we turn off this gigantic money magnet for illegal immigrants, then they will leave and they will lose voters.”

“Entitlements fraud for illegal aliens is what is serving as a gigantic magnetic force to pull people in from all around the world and keep them here,” he told Joe Rogan last month, without providing evidence. Musk has repeatedly posted a clip of that part of his interview, too.

“This is why the Democrats are so upset about the situation.

If we turn off this gigantic money magnet for illegal immigrants, then they will leave and they will lose voters.

Entitlements fraud for illegal aliens is what is serving as a gigantic magnetic force to pull people in from all around the world and keep them here.” - Elon Musk

In short, the quote's attribution to Musk was correct. The billionaire said the words during a Feb. 28, 2025, episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast.

During his appearance, Musk also spoke of "suicidal empathy." He credited the concept to Gad Saad, a Canadian marketing professor who has frequently posted (archived) about suicidal empathy (archived) on his social media accounts and has said (archived) he is writing a book (archived) on the topic.

The relevant section of Musk and host Joe Rogan's discussion of empathy can be heard from around the 1:16:00 mark in the video embedded below.

Musk: There's a guy who posts on X who's great, Gad Saad?

Rogan: Yeah, he's a friend of mine. He's been on the podcast a bunch of times.

Musk: Yeah, he's awesome, and he talks about, you know, basically suicidal empathy. Like, there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself. So, we've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it's like, I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide.

Rogan: Also don't let someone use your empathy against you so they can completely control your state and then do an insanely bad job of managing it and never get removed.

Musk: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They're exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. So, I think, you know, empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.

Rogan: Right, understand when empathy has been actually used as a tool.

Musk: Yes, like, it's weaponized empathy is the issue.