DOGE Confirms That Social Security Is a Fine Mess. – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

Social Security is as big as government programs get. Naturally, even a glance at it with DOGE’s magnifying glass found plenty that seemed — charitably — not quite right.

“According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE,” Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk stated via X on February 16. “Maybe Twilight is real, and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.”

“Yes, there are far more ‘eligible’ Social Security numbers than there are citizens in the USA. This might be the biggest fraud in history.” Indeed, the Social Security numbers that Musk found, as reflected in the nearby chart, total 398,416,213. But the Census Bureau reported America’s population on Tuesday: 341,427,401. So, there are 56,988,812 more Social Security numbers than there are Americans and permanent residents in the U.S. This 16.7 percent overage generously assumes that even infants and toddlers have Social Security numbers.

Trump critics insist that there is nothing to see here and that Musk and President Donald J. Trump are lying when they say that dead people are collecting Social Security — or that crooks are harvesting those checks on behalf of the deceased.

“The story that 150-year-olds are getting Social Security is false,” an Ohio-based attorney named Tamara Bell reassured Americans via Quora. “What happens is that the year 1875 is used as a marker by programmers when there is missing information in a record,” she continued. “When seen, it notifies the person in charge of the record to correct the information. No payment is made.”

Bell could be correct about the data marker that she cites if these Social Security numbers corresponded only to 1875. If the people behind these Social Security numbers were all age 150, then her 1875 Equals Coding-Error Theory would be right. Unfortunately for Bell, the Social Security database includes birth years that land after 1875 and plenty before that: 1855, 1825, 1805, and many more. So much for that argument.

As for Bell’s axiomatic claim that “No payment is made,” how would she know? Social Security might not be bleeding tens of billions of dollars in cash to dead people, as Trump and Musk believe. But, au contraire, “no payment” of that sort is made today? Really?

Naomi Whitehead is the oldest-living American. The 114-year-old Georgia native now lives in Greenville, Penn. She had three sons and outlived them all.

Whitehead’s age notwithstanding, there are 12.4 million U.S. citizens and permanent residents over age 120 who have Social Security numbers. The adjacent graph and chart confirm that Social Security lists 3.9 million of these people as being between ages 130 and 139 — just the right age to have served in World War I. Another 1.3 million are between 150 and 159. They would have been born in the wake of the Civil War and during Reconstruction. An incredibly enduring 1,039 are between 220 and 229 years old — roughly as old as the Louisiana Purchase. And one person was born no later than 1665, back when America was a British territory ruled by King Charles II.

“I love that our nation is so healthy!” my Nashville-based friend Yuri Mamchur cheered at this news. “Longevity is a good thing; 360-year-olds can teach us great wisdom.”

Indeed! If we can find this 360-year-old former colonist, he (the correct pronoun, I hope!) can teach Americans how to churn butter, preserve cod in barrels of salt, and transform beef fat into candles.

Even if Trump and Musk are wrong, and Social Security is graft-free, what does it say about this federal database — and Uncle Sam’s technological prowess in general — if it “merely” is clogged with fake data about people who have been dead for centuries (if they ever even existed)?

“The fact that we are even discussing whether 1.3 million Americans over the age of 150 are receiving Social Security shows how antiquated the federal government’s IT systems are and how they need a dire update,” U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R – Tennessee) told me. The member of the Senate Finance Committee added: “That is exactly why President Trump has launched DOGE and brought in Elon Musk, who often jovially refers to himself as tech support. We need to make the Social Security Administration more efficient and improve its technology so we have transparency into who is receiving government benefits.”

Blackburn’s comment is, so far, the understatement of the year.

DOGE has performed a massive public service by demonstrating that Social Security is, at worst, a deeply corrupt conveyor belt of taxpayer cash to fraudsters who exploit its structural deficiencies to swipe billions of taxpayer dollars.

At best, Social Security is a tragicomic mess that has elevated sloppiness to a fine art.

Neither distinction is worthy of Earth’s sole surviving superpower.

Meanwhile, DOGE’s electron microscope is just getting warmed up.

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Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.