Fact-checking Musk/Trump lies about entitlements

On at least two occasions, Elon Musk has admitted to making mistakes when it comes to his use of a chainsaw to go after federal spending. He followed that up by saying that, when confronted with mistakes, he would immediately fix them.  That was a lie.

To demonstrate, let's take a look at what he said about entitlements last week during an interview with Larry Ludlow. 

At about the 1:45 minute mark, Musk says that there is a tremendous amount of waste and fraud in federal spending. He referred to a 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) which, he said, estimated half a trillion dollars in government fraud. Here's the headline from that report: "2018-2022 Data Show Federal Government Loses an Estimated $233 Billion to $521 Billion Annually to Fraud." Right off the bat, you can see that Musk only mentioned the top number in the estimate. 

But a deeper look at that report provides us with some needed context. First of all, it states that the total represents 3-7 percent of federal obligations - which, while cause for concern, doesn't sound like a "tremendous amount." Secondly, they made their estimates by looking at fraud that was adjudicated, investigated, and/or suspected. In other words, it was based on fraud that the various departments knew about and were dealing with. For example, that would include the work of the Health Care Fraud Unit, which "has charged more than 5,400 defendants with fraudulently billing Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurers more than $27 billion."

I would note that, while DOGE is reporting $115 billion in savings from their efforts (not a reliable number), not one case of fraud has been referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution. Meanwhile, many of the staff who previously identified, investigated, and prosecuted fraud have been fired.  Whatever it is that is motivating the DOGE chainsaw, it has nothing to do with investigating fraud.

From there, Musk goes on to suggest that there is something nefarious going on with Social Security by pointing to the 20 million people who are dead, but marked as alive in the system. That one has been explained over and over again - even by the Trump administration's acting SSA commissioner. The fact that Musk continues to bring it up demonstrates that he is deliberately lying.

Musk's remarks at about the 14:35 mark are the ones that got the most attention. He said, "The waste and fraud in entitlement spending — which is most of the federal spending is entitlements — so, that’s, like, the big one to eliminate. That’s the, sort of half-trillion, maybe $6-700 billion a year.”

Giving Musk the benefit of the doubt, he wasn't suggesting that entitlements be completely eliminated. He was suggesting that there is a "half-trillion, maybe $6-700 billion a year" in entitlement fraud that he wants to eliminate. He seems to be relying on the top number from that 2024 GAO report, which was based on the entire federal government, not simply entitlements. Then he threw in an additional $1-200 billion for good measure.

In an attempt to defend those remarks from Musk, the White House issued a statement purporting to provide "facts" about entitlement fraud. They referred to the same 2024 GAO report on estimated fraud. But the rest of the so-called "facts" are all reports on "improper payments," which we have discussed before. Here's a reminder about what that term means: 

The vast majority of improper payments occurred in situations where a reviewer could not determine if a payment was proper because of insufficient documentation...Improper payment estimates are not fraud rate estimates.

Even so, the most recent figures on improper payments puts them at 6% for Medicare, 5% for Medicaid, and 0.8% for Social Security. That, my friends, is pretty damn efficient! 

Now that we've dealt with the policies, numbers, and definitions to debunk Musk's lies about entitlements, the shadow president got to the tin foil hat part of his claims. He ends the interview with Kudlow by making an argument adjacent to the white supremacist's Great Replacement Theory, claiming that it is access to entitlements that draws undocumented immigrants to this country. That is a bald-faced lie.

By law, one must “either be a U.S. citizen or lawfully present noncitizen in order to receive monthly Social Security benefits.” Similarly, Medicare benefits are only available to “U.S. citizens and qualified lawfully present immigrants age 65 and older.” In other words, undocumented immigrants—who are not lawfully present—cannot receive these benefits, even though their work strengthens these trust funds.

What we can take from all of this is that Trump/Musk are coming after Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid - programs that primarily benefit seniors and the disabled. In order to pave the way for that, they'll tell a voluminous amount of lies. We must arm ourselves with facts in order to stave off those attacks.