Elon Musk Promises ‘More Social Security’ In Dubious Charm Offensive

WASHINGTON – White House adviser Elon Musk and his allies at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency have taken a chainsaw to the Social Security Administration, threatening field office closures, staff cuts and new rules for seniors dealing with the agency by phone.

But don’t worry, Americans. The world’s richest man insists he will ultimately end up increasing people’s benefits.

“As a result of the work of DOGE, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive more money, not less money,” Musk said in a Fox News interview on Thursday alongside members of his DOGE team.

Musk made the vow as a direct response to statements from Democrats that DOGE’s antics at the Social Security Administration would lead to missed benefit checks and could even be the prelude to benefit cuts or full-blown privatization.

The DOGE group interview seemed to be a charm offensive as Republicans worry about voter backlash over the changes at Social Security and other federal agencies that Musk has upended since President Donald Trump took office. Republicans have worried about Musk’s sinking approval ratings, and Democrats have zeroed in on him as a threat to Social Security.

After having spent the past few weeks slamming Social Security as a bastion of fraud, Musk repeated his statement about more money for “legitimate” recipients.

“Let the record show that I said this,” he said. “It will be proven out to be true.”

Preventing fraud won’t create an across-the-board benefits increase, and in dollar terms, it shouldn’t make much difference to beneficiaries victimized by scams, since the Social Security Administration already makes them whole after the fact.

“If a verified beneficiary or recipient reports an allegation of fraud, SSA ensures they receive their missed benefit amount,” an agency spokesperson told HuffPost.

The type of fraud Musk has described, meanwhile, does not occur on the scale Musk has suggested. He described the entirety of Social Security itself as a scam and lamented that the government loses hundreds of billions annually to fraud and waste.

And Musk didn’t mention the tradeoff at play with “identity proofing” changes to Social Security procedures, which could make it more difficult for people to obtain benefits in the first place.

Social Security last week announced it would soon disallow over-the-phone identity verification for people claiming retirement benefits or making bank account changes. Retired workers who are unable to log into the agency’s website will instead have to go to a field office to verify their identities in person; an internal agency memo estimated the change would require millions of additional office visits.

The phone service cutback has prompted a furious response from Democrats and AARP, which said the policy should be entirely rescinded. Social Security’s acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, told stakeholders this week that such a change would typically take two years to implement. On Wednesday, Dudek announced it would be postponed for two weeks. (Dudek also announced Thursday that apparent field office closures advertised on the DOGE website wouldn’t happen.)

Dudek said the quick timeline for new phone protocols had been ordered by the White House; in Thursday’s interview on Fox News, Musk essentially confirmed he was behind the change. As DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi explained that Social Security receives a significant percentage of calls from fraudsters trying to redirect retiree benefits to fraudulent accounts, Musk interrupted to explain how the phone fraud works.

“What happens is they call in, they say, they claim to be a retiree and they convince the person, the Social Security person on the phone, to change the where, the where the money is flowing,” Musk said. “This is happening all day, every day, and then somebody doesn’t receive their Social Security. It’s because of all the fraud loopholes in the Social Security system.”

After the Social Security Administration first allowed beneficiaries to change their bank account information online in 2013, fraudsters stole benefits from more than 12,000 beneficiaries, according to a 2019 report by Social Security’s inspector general.

The number of victims dwindled to just 712 in 2017, then spiked again during the pandemic. The Social Security Administration told the New York Times earlier this month that about 2,000 beneficiaries had their direct deposits misdirected last year — out of more than 70 million monthly beneficiaries.

Dudek said last week he estimated his antifraud phone changes would save $100 million annually, or less than 0.01% of the agency’s annual outlays. In its 2019 report, the inspector general said that when 12,000 people fell victim to direct deposit fraud in 2013, the value of the misdirected benefits was $20 million, of which $11 million was never returned.

Bill Sweeney, AARP’s senior vice president for government affairs, questioned whether the phone changes were worth the savings.

“At AARP, we would absolutely support any effort to crack down on fraud and criminals who are stealing money from Social Security,” Sweeney said in an interview. “But to punish everybody who’s on Social Security by making them jump through hoops in order to collect the benefits they’ve earned is unfair, and it’s unprecedented.”

Sweeney said the rapid rollout of the phone changes could even create opportunities for a different type of fraudster, one who calls up seniors posing as a Social Security employee and demands they fork over personal information in order to comply with new rules.

In response to a question about how many stolen dollars the administration expected to recover by stopping fraud, the White House only stressed that nobody would lose benefits.

“With a resounding mandate from the American people, President Trump is moving quickly to fulfill his promise of making the federal government more efficient,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston said in a statement. “He has promised to protect social security, and every recipient will continue to receive their benefits.”