Published at Open the Books Substack

The Department of Government Efficiency has unfurled a long list of stunning claims about waste, fraud and duplication throughout the federal government. Even for those of us who have spent years collecting and analyzing spending data, some of the claims are beyond the pale if they’re accurate.

 

In his March address to a joint session of Congress, though, President Trump rattled off amounts of individuals who are in the Social Security database but aged over 100 years old. It amounted to 20.6 million individuals.

“But we’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty,” Trump said.

 

Elon Musk and DOGE later announced they’d identified — and cancelled — 3.2 million obsolete Social Security numbers for people over 120 years old. They later updated that amount to 7 million.

 

Those broadly conflicting figures leave the door wide open to confusion and worry from Americans and criticism from a media struggling to verify DOGE claims in real time. More careful, consistent communications from across the administration could mitigate at least some of this risk.

 

Open the Books auditors were already working to retrieve and analyze data about the age distribution of Social Security recipients, so we’re sharing what we’ve found so far – and more importantly, what the Social Security Administration cannot or will not provide to the public.

 

Get the full story.

 

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