Tesla CEO Elon Musk has fired back at US Senator John Fetterman over claims that the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E) is “rummaging through American’s personal data.” The heated exchange unfolded on X, where Fetterman shared a report alleging that D.O.G.E could gain access to private taxpayer data.
In a Monday evening X post, Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, shared a screenshot of a Politico article titled “Possible DOGE Access to Private Taxpayer Data Sparks Outcry,” with the caption: “I want to save billions of your money and make our government more efficient. Rummaging through your personal shit is not that. A party of chaos loses—always.”
A little over an hour later, Musk responded to the Senator’s comments by sharing a chart of what he described as a “HUGE problem” within the US Social Security Administration (SSA).
Bruh, if I wanted to rummage through random personal shit, I could have done that at PAYPAL. Hello???
Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as “ALIVE” when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem.
Obviously.
Some of these people would have been alive… https://t.co/L17rSBR1Tb pic.twitter.com/6hBqAJ5TbF
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025
The “First Buddy” shared data from D.O.G.E that revealed discrepancies within the SSA’s records, where approximately 21 million people listed as “alive” in the SSA database are over 100 years old.
“Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country. Think about that for a second,” Musk surmised.
Does America really have a high “aged” population?
According to a recent X thread from the Kobeissi Letter, the US Census data from 2020 indicates that only 80,000 Americans were aged 85 or older at the time. Looking at the SSA database, there are over 1,041 individuals aged over 220 years, and one entry listing a person as over 360 years old.
You can’t make this up:
Social Security may go insolvent by 2034 and Elon Musk just called it “the biggest fraud in history.”
According to new DOGE data, ~21 million people aged 100+ in the SSA database are listed as ALIVE in the US.
What is happening here?
(a thread) pic.twitter.com/cwIGTRMFBb
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) February 17, 2025
There’s absolutely no evidence there’s a person in the US, let alone the world, who is 300 years old. Even Google would tell you the oldest known living person in the world, as of February 2025, is 116-year-old Inah Canabarro Lucas, a woman living in Brazil.
The Kobeissi Letter mentioned a 2023 SSA audit, which concluded that the agency had likely failed to record death information for nearly 18.9 million individuals. It very well may be that American taxes are paying billions of money in improper payments, to people who aren’t even breathing.
Still, some netizens are claiming that even though SSA did not record the persons over 115 years of age as “dead,” it did not necessarily say they were alive.
“Elon does not say that these people are *receiving* SS benefits, simply that they are in the dataset. and why would you purge the data? SSA cuts off payments if a beneficiary is > 115 years old automatically, this policy is very easy to find,” explained one X user.
Another D.O.G.E critic propounded that the database uses a default 5/20/1875 date-of-birth in cases where it is unknown or the one filing it fails to key in the data. “ If Elon or his team were competent, they’d know that,” they denoted.
Trillions in government spending in question
Beyond the frenzy of the SSA age group data, the SSA’s Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) programs made $8.3 billion in improper payments in 2022, a figure three times higher than in the previous year. This does not include the $4.6 billion in improper Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments during the same period.
Adding to fiscal concerns, and without D.O.G.E’s intervention, Social Security spending in 2025 is projected to reach 21% of all taxable payroll, while revenue is expected to cover only 14%. This 7% shortfall, according to economists, makes the government expenditure “unsustainable.”
The US Treasury has now implemented a new policy mandating the use of Treasury Access Symbols (TAS) for all federal payments. Previously, the TAS field was optional for an estimated $4.7 trillion in federal payments, and that leaves many transactions practically untraceable.
The investigations to recover funds will go deeper into the Internal Revenue Services, as reports from The New York Times and The Washington Post indicate the agency is reviewing a request to grant D.O.G.E officials access to taxpayer data.
If approved, the move would provide Musk’s team, led by 26-year-old software engineer Gavin Kliger, broad access to IRS systems, including tax returns and bank information. Kliger has reportedly been working out of IRS headquarters and is expected to serve as a senior adviser to Acting IRS Commissioner Doug O’Donnell.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields defended the IRS probe, stating: “Waste, fraud, and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long. It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.”
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