The U.S. Social Security Administration said on March 5 that it has made progress in resolving the issue of potentially deceased individuals listed in its records.
The agency has made “significant progress in identifying and correcting beneficiary records of people 100 years old or older,” the agency said in the statement. “The data reported in the media represent people who do not have a date of death associated with their record. While these people may not be receiving benefits, it is important for the agency to maintain accurate and complete records.”
Trump said “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the social security program for our seniors” were identified.
The president said that government databases listed 3.47 million Social Security members aged 120 to 129 years old, 3.5 million people aged 140 to 149, and more than 130,000 people over 160 years old.
“We have a healthier country than I thought,” he quipped, adding that “money is being paid to many of them.”
There were 1,039 people listed between the ages of 220 and 229, while one person was recorded as being over 360 years old, which Trump noted was “more than 100 years older than our country.”
“A lot of money is paid out to people because it just keeps getting paid and paid, and nobody does [anything]. And it really hurts social security and hurts our country,” he said. “We’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty.”
Acting Commissioner of Social Security Lee Dudek thanked Trump for “highlighting these inconsistencies during his speech last night to a joint session of Congress.”
“We are steadfast in our commitment to root out fraud, waste, and abuse in our programs, and actively correcting the inconsistencies with missing dates of death.”
The agency said it follows long-established initiatives to identify individuals who could be deceased. For instance, it collects data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to identify individuals who have not used their Medicare Part A or Part B for at least three years. This serves as an indicator to determine whether they are aged 90 or above and to assess their continued eligibility.
SSA Under Trump
The issue of deceased individuals potentially receiving social security payments was previously raised by Trump as well as tech billionaire Elon Musk, a senior adviser to the president.He said these individuals “are not necessarily receiving benefits,” and expressed confidence in the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) audits.
“What it looks like is that most of the fraud is not coming from Social Security payments directly, but because they are marked as alive in a Social Security database that they can then get disability, unemployment, fake medical payments, and other things,” he said.
The push to deal with aged records is one among many actions SSA is taking under the Trump administration.
The provisions were rescinded following a new law signed in January, making impacted beneficiaries eligible to receive retroactive payments dating back to January 2024.
This week, SSA said it has already paid over 1.12 million people more than $7.5 billion in such retroactive payments.
Savings are expected to come from areas such as “payroll, information technology, contracts and grants, and space savings (i.e., real property), and other savings through new, common-sense approaches to printing, travel, and purchase card policies.”
“The [SSA] continues to make good on President Trump’s promise to protect American taxpayers from unnecessary spending,” the agency said.
