Fact Check: Did Elon Musk Call Social Security 'The Big One to Eliminate'?
Multiple mainstream media outlets reported that Department of Government Efficient chief Elon Musk was eyeing Social Security as “the big one to eliminate.”
President Donald Trump said on multiple occasions during the campaign and since taking office that he will not cut Social Security or other entitlement programs, but he will seek to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse.
Nonetheless, a CNN headline Tuesday proclaimed, “Elon Musk spotlights cost of federal entitlements amid fears of cuts to the programs.” Meanwhile, Bloomberg headlined, “Musk Says Entitlements ‘Big One’ to Cut in Trump’s DOGE Push” and Vanity Fair sounded the alarm, “Elon Musk Is Coming for Your Social Security.”
Biden Admin: “Entitlement programs contain $520 billion in waste and fraud.”
Elon Musk: “We must cut the $500 billion in waste and fraud from entitlement programs.”
Fake News: “Elon Musk is cutting your grandmother’s Social Security and Medicare!”
This is why fake news is the… pic.twitter.com/lPDClCkWgR
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 11, 2025
However, Musk’s words were clearly taken out of context.
He made the remarks during an interview on Fox Business Network Monday, during which he spent several minutes discussing the problem of waste and fraud in federal government spending, particularly in the entitlement programs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The DOGE head said, “The waste and fraud in entitlement spending — which … most of the federal spending is entitlements — so that’s like the big one to eliminate. That’s the sort of half-trillion, maybe $600, $700 billion a year.”
Musk cited a report issued by the Government Accountability Office in April 2024, which concluded, “No area of the federal government is immune to fraud. We estimated that the federal government could lose between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.”
“Given the scope of this problem, a government-wide approach is required to address it,” the GAO added, which is what Musk and his team are currently engaged in doing.
“I think the GAO identified that there were 17 million dead people in the Social Security database several years ago. It’s now 22 million, but we haven’t done anything about it,” Musk said.
He told FBN host Larry Kudlow that DOGE’s assessment so far is that 10 percent of federal spending is fraudulent, and it will just take people who care and are competent enough to root it out.
The federal government spent approximately $6.7 trillion in fiscal year 2024 and that is where Musk concludes that waste, fraud, and abuse total somewhere between $500 billion and $700 billion.
By the way, annual total federal spending was up over $600 billion last year from FY 2023 and $2.3 trillion from FY 2019 (when it was $4.4 trillion), the last year before the pandemic under Trump.
On Tuesday, Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked Musk if he could guarantee that there would be no interruption of benefits for legitimate Social Security recipients.
“We’re going to be very careful with any interruption to benefits,” Musk responded. “In fact, only by tackling the waste and fraud in the entitlements like Social Security [and] Medicare can we actually preserve those programs for the future, because with unchecked fraud and waste, we won’t be able to afford them.”
The cost of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid taken altogether last year was over $2.9 trillion. Further, the cost of paying interest on the country’s over $36 trillion in debt was $949 billion, up from $534 billion in FY 2022 and $375 billion in FY 2019.
The interest on the debt in FY 2024 was more than the entire $826 billion Defense Department budget. The deficit last year was $1.8 trillion, up from $984 billion in FY 2019.
“The president is very dedicated to solving the budget deficit,” Musk said, “which, if we don’t solve the budget deficit, we are going to go bankrupt as a country. We go bankrupt as a country, there’s no Social Security, there’s no Medicare, there’s no nothing.”
Trump reinforced what Musk said regarding Social Security, contending, “We’re going to make it much stronger by taking people that don’t exist — or taking people that shouldn’t be there — out.”
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