Trump and Elon Musk’s D.O.G.E find $333M in federal loans to 110+ year olds

The Small Business Administration (SBA) approved 3,095 loans, totaling $333 million, for borrowers listed as 115 years or older in the Social Security database between 2020 and 2021, according to a post on Elon Musk’s D.O.G.E’s official X account account today. 

One of them, officially 157 years old, received $36,000. The Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E) called the records part of a massive federal scam.

In the same period, the SBA granted 5,593 loans, worth $312 million, to businesses owned by children aged 11 or younger. While some legal business arrangements could make this possible, all 5,593 cases had one thing in common—each loan application used a Social Security number (SSN) that did not match the name on file.

Seniors face full benefit cuts as Social Security reverses Biden’s policy

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is reinstating full benefit cuts for seniors who were previously overpaid, reversing a Biden-era policy that reduced clawbacks to 10% of their monthly checks. The agency aims to recover $7 billion over the next decade.

“We have the significant responsibility to be good stewards of the trust funds for the American people,” said Leland Dudek, SSA’s acting commissioner. “It is our duty to revise the overpayment repayment policy back to full withholding.”

Under Biden’s administration, the SSA limited overpayment recovery to 10% of a person’s Social Security check to prevent seniors from losing their entire income at once. The new policy, set to start March 27, means recipients who received excess payments—often due to SSA errors—could see their monthly benefits reduced to zero.

Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley warned that cutting SSA staff increases the risk of these errors and makes it harder to fix them. “This return to the 100% interruption and clawback of a beneficiary’s monthly payments will inflict dire financial hardship on greater numbers of innocent seniors who depend entirely on their monthly Social Security benefit to survive,” he said.

The SSA recovered $4.9 billion in overpayments last year, with another $10.3 billion scheduled for repayment. While the commissioner can waive repayment if the beneficiary wasn’t at fault and collecting would be “against equity and good conscience,” the total waivers issued in 2023 amounted to just $302 million. The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which supports disabled individuals, will keep the 10% recovery rate, while all other beneficiaries will face the return of full clawbacks.

Trump accuses Biden’s government of massive fraud, labor unions fight back

Trump claims D.O.G.E has uncovered fake government contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars. “The whole thing’s a scam,” he said. Elon’s agency is now investigating what he calls shocking levels of fraud and incompetence in federal financial programs.

Meanwhile, labor unions are suing the SSA to block D.O.G.E from accessing Social Security data. The lawsuit, filed in a Maryland federal court by Democracy Forward, seeks an emergency order to prevent Elon’s team from viewing the personal data of millions of Americans.

“A disregard for our careful privacy systems and processes now threatens the security of the data SSA houses about millions of Americans,” wrote Tiffany Flick, a former senior SSA official, in her affidavit.

Lawyer Karianne Jones, representing unions and a retiree group, said, “Essentially what you have is D.O.G.E just swooping in and bullying their way into access to millions of Americans’ private data. They cannot explain why they want this data. They can’t really tell you what data they want. They just want everything. They want the source code, and they want to do it without any restrictions.”

The SSA did not respond to requests for comment. The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal battles against D.O.G.E, which has been hit with nearly two dozen lawsuits over its cost-cutting efforts. Judges have raised concerns about the lack of transparency surrounding its operations, but not all courts have ruled against the agency.

On Friday, a federal judge in Washington refused to block DOGE employees from accessing Treasury systems containing sensitive personal data for millions of people. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly did acknowledge privacy concerns about that work. DOGE is still limited by a different court order in New York.

A February agreement between the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the IRS allows a D.O.G.E employee, Gavin Kliger, to access IRS systems but bars him from retrieving taxpayers’ personal information.

The Trump administration is moving forward with widespread job cuts across government agencies, including SSA, as was shared by Elon himself on X. More than 10% of the Social Security workforce faces layoffs, and dozens of SSA offices could be shut down nationwide, said D.O.G.E’s X.

The administration claims these cuts are necessary to reduce waste and fraud, while critics argue that eliminating staff makes it harder to detect errors—the same kind that led to $333 million in fraudulent loans.

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