A former commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) who served under both presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, has slammed Elon Musk’s claims that the agency is a hub for financial fraud.
Michael Astrue, who was commissioner for six years, stressed in an interview with NPR published Monday that while the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) can “go in and put in efficiencies to bring down the size of the agency” there’s a “smart way to do it and there’s a stupid way” emphasizing that DOGE is landing on the latter rather than the former.
“We need a perspective other than the DOGE perspective. I’m all for cutting waste, I’m all for efficiencies. And if you look back at the productivity increases in my six years, they were substantial,” Astrue explained. “If you want to go in and put in efficiencies to bring down the size of the agency, you can do that. But there’s a smart way to do it and there’s a stupid way to do it. And we’re doing it the way that 22-year-old frat boys that have never seen the system think is a good idea, and that’s a mistake.”
Musk has rallied a small team—of largely twenty-somethings—to streamline his efforts for government downsizing. A healthy chunk of the work DOGE has been doing has apparently been scouring through federal agencies’ records and coding systems to identify potential waste or fraud.
So far, however, the only things they’ve been able to turn up are lots of line-items that, politically, they disagree with.
In the case of the SSA, the agency relies on a 60-year-old code system—the Common Businesses Oriented Language (COBOL)—which Astrue notes Musk’s team likely have never seen before. Misunderstandings likely paved the way for a misunderstanding of the agency’s finances, he said.
“You can’t fault them for that because they haven’t ever seen COBOL code before,” Astrue said. “But you can fault Elon Musk because, instead of admitting error, he doubled down and had the president of the United States make that claim. And that’s a real disservice to President Trump.”
When probed by NPR if the SSA was in fact rife with fraud to the extent that Musk has claimed, Astrue said: “No, it’s not. And the big claims are just flat out wrong.”
“It’s just a product of the fact that they sent in a group of 20-year-olds with laptops who are used to seeing certain types of code. They went in without the proper authorities and didn’t understand it,” the former commissioner argued.
Musk has repeatedly claimed that the SSA is plagued by “immense waste” and “extreme levels of fraud.” These allegations have been swiftly parroted by President Donald Trump, who in a joint address to Congress earlier this month claimed that Musk and DOGE have identified “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud” at the agency.
Some ideas that have been floated to tighten up the agency include mass layoffs and administering stricter protocols, like verifying the identity of Social Security recipients in-person to bestow checks.
“It’s at least going to cause delays,” Astrue said of the Trump administration’s proposed changes. “In some cases they may just not get it at all. And to put in this requirement at the same time that you’re cutting back staff and office space dramatically is going to compound what is already a big problem.”
A spokesperson for the SSA told NPR that the agency remains focused “on identifying efficiencies and reducing costs.” The administration currently distributes benefits to more than 70 million Americans.
