Treasury Recoups $31 Million in Social Security Payments to Dead People, Calls It ‘Tip of the Iceberg’

A Social Security card sits alongside checks from the U.S. Treasury in Washington on Oct. 14, 2021. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

More than $31 million in erroneous Social Security payments to deceased individuals has been clawed back by the Treasury Department, with an official saying it’s only scratching the surface of improper payments to dead people.

The recoveries were made during a five-month pilot program using the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Full Death Master File, as part of Treasury’s efforts to prevent fraud and improve payment integrity, according to a Jan. 15 press release.

Congress granted Treasury a temporary, three-year access to the file, which contains over 142 million records dating back to 1899.

“These results are just the tip of the iceberg,” the Treasury Department’s Fiscal Assistant Secretary David Lebryk said in a statement. “Congress granting permanent access to the Full Death Master File will significantly reduce fraud, improve program integrity, and better safeguard taxpayer dollars.”

Treasury said in the press release that the pilot results prove that enhanced access to death data can bolster program integrity. The inclusion of SSA’s high-quality death records improved death match rates by 139 percent while ensuring better data reliability and faster processing, Treasury said.

Officials are optimistic that the program will continue to uncover improper payments and reduce fraud on a larger scale. Over the three-year death data access period, Treasury anticipates recovering $215 million.

Eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse in government programs—including Social Security—is a major objective of the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has blamed ballooning deficits and mounting public debt on wasteful and fraudulent federal spending.

Trump has nominated Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the nongovernmental advisory entity Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to cut $2 trillion from the budget.

The federal government spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024—which was $1.83 trillion more than it collected in revenue—pushing the national debt up to $36.22 trillion, according to the Treasury Department.

So far in fiscal year 2025, which runs until the end of September, the federal government has already spent $1.79 trillion.

While Trump and members of his administration plan to put wasteful government spending in the crosshairs, they have vowed repeatedly that any cuts to Social Security benefits or tweaks to the retirement age are off the table.

Trump has called for an increase in the debt ceiling—the legal limit on government borrowing. He said the move would avert any possibility of market-disrupting debt default.

In the context of recent debt cap talks, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that addressing the debt ceiling would be a GOP priority, along with an overarching objective to cut government spending.

“Raising the debt limit is a necessary step so that we don’t give the appearance that we’re going to default on the nation’s debt,” Johnson said at a recent press conference on Capitol Hill. “That’s important to the bond markets and the stability and the dollar and all the rest.

“But that does not mean that we have any intention whatsoever—or we'll tolerate spending up to the new debt limit—the idea is to do exactly the opposite.”

As part of an informal December agreement, Republicans proposed raising the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion in exchange for $2.5 trillion in net spending cuts through a reconciliation package.

Asked by reporters whether these cuts would target Social Security benefits, Johnson denied any such intentions. Republicans would instead target fraudulent or wasteful government spending, he said.

“There are many, many areas of fraud, waste and abuse,“ Johnson said. ”The government is too large. The agencies are too many. They have too many divisions and employees and all the rest. And there will be a very deliberate auditing of all of that in various aspects as we go through the process.”