- DOGE has estimated that Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and other entitlement programs generate trillions of dollars in waste every year.
- Elon Musk said that this made entitlement programs the "big one" to cut, sending media into a frenzy.
- The White House has clarified that President Donald Trump plans to retain entitlement programs while simultaneously slashing funding that DOGE believes goes to "improper" recipients, including deceased and ineligible people.
On Monday, Elon Musk, wealthy entrepreneur and leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, characterized Social Security and other entitlement programs like Medicaid and Medicare as full of fraud, per the New York Times.
Musk said as much as $700 billion of waste could be eliminated via cuts to entitlement spending.
“So, the waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is all of the — which is, most of the federal spending is entitlements. So, that’s, like, the big one to eliminate,” Musk said, per The Hill.
Many media outlets interpreted his words as a desire to cut benefits, rather than cutting waste.
But the White House issued a statement Tuesday addressing the situation.
“The Trump administration will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits. President Trump himself has said it (over and over and over again),” read the press release. “Elon Musk didn’t say that, either. The press is lying again.”
During a White House press conference Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt again blamed some in the media for taking Musk’s quotes out of context. She said he was specifically referring to cutting waste and fraud, not all of Social Security.
Trump’s stance — what is the future of Social Security?
During Tuesday press briefing, Leavitt fielded questions from reporters about Trump and Musk’s relationship and the future of the entitlement programs, which are already under significant fiscal pressure.
“President Trump has been unequivocally clear on this,” Leavitt said. “He is going to protect Social Security and Medicare benefits and Medicaid for hardworking Americans who paid into these entitlement programs and deserve those hard-earned benefits.”
Nevertheless, she said, too much money is going to noncitizens, including billions of dollars in fraud and wasteful spending to those who have never paid into entitlement programs.
“There is more than 70 billion dollars of fraud in the Social Security program alone that we know of,” she said. “That’s exactly why DOGE was created: To ensure that we are investigating the fraudulent spending, the wasteful abuse across our federal government.”
The White House press release included estimates that taxpayers lose up to $521 billion annually to fraud, mostly within entitlement programs; that over the last two decades; the federal government has made about $2.7 trillion in “improper payments” to deceased or ineligible people; that Social Security spent $72 billion in improper payments between 2015 and 2022; and Medicare and Medicaid spent over $140 billion in improper payments in 2024 alone.
“What kind of a person doesn’t support eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in government spending that ultimately costs taxpayers more?” read the press release.
Some news reports, including one by The Associated Press, claim Musk’s fraud findings are overblown, pointing to a Social Security study that said there was $71.8 billion in improper payments over a 7 year period, which is about 1% of total payments.
DOGE, which released the statistics guiding Musk and Trump’s actions concerning entitlement programs, has previously not been open to public records requests, per Trump’s orders. This may be about to change. Late on March 10, a federal judge ruled that DOGE is subject to the Freedom of Information Act, meaning that anyone who wishes to make a request may personally access DOGE’s records.
Research by the Cato Institute found that the federal government spent $2.8 trillion in entitlement and welfare programs in 2022 — over $2 trillion on Social Security and Medicare and another $784 billion on welfare.
A majority of Republicans, Democrats and independents hold favorable opinions of Medicaid. 97% of adults in a poll taken by KFF said that Medicaid was at least somewhat important. Seventy-three percent indicated they thought it was very important. Republicans were less likely to agree.
During the White House press conference, Leavitt repeated Trump’s promise to put money back into the pockets of American citizens.
“The president wants the American people to have so much money in their pockets they don’t know what to do with it,” she said.