1 week Ago By Thomas Maxwell
Elon Musk’s war on fraud and abuse has impacted the Social Security Administration’s ability to distribute payments, according to a new report . In particular, frequent outages of the agency’s website in recent weeks have been linked to its expansion of fraud checks earlier in the claims process. From the Washington Post : It has been widely reported that the Social Security Administration is struggling in the wake of widespread cuts directed by President Trump and Musk’s DOGE government efficiency team.
Fewer employees are available to provide phone support, which many older individuals prefer, and Musk has repeatedly alleged widespread fraud in the claims process. In one instance, he stated during a Wisconsin rally that 40% of calls to the agency are fraudulent, a claim that has not been supported by evidence. The new software-based checks are reportedly supposed to root out this supposed fraud, but DOGE has also directed the SSA to cut its IT staff and, pushing more individuals to the website, it has been unable to handle the increased load.
Outages of government websites are nothing new, and some on social media have commented that the SSA website experienced regular outages before the new administration began making changes. But in the same way you cannot cut the legs off a table and expect it to function, these service issues were predictable. Musk surely feels emboldened by his takeover of Twitter, though, in which he laid off the majority of staff and managed to keep the service functioning (although it is riddled with problems and arguably has not changed materially since the acquisition).
Distribution of payments necessary for living into retirement is of course more important than the uptime of a social network, though. The Post cited one such instance of a retiree struggling to get access to her new benefits:.
