Social Security Number is a nine-digit number issued to US citizens, permanent and temporary residents issued by the Social Security Administration to track Social Security benefits. Now that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has some access to the treasury’s payment system that handles over $6 trillion in annual federal payments, DOGE can access Social Security details.
According to a letter sent by the Treasury Department to Congress, DOGE now has “read-only” access, meaning Musk’s team shouldn’t be able to directly modify or stop payments. However, the concern remains on what his level of access could mean in the long run.
“Social Security beneficiaries and their families have every reason to be alarmed by Elon Musk’s takeover of the U.S. Department of Treasury’s payment system…Seniors, their families, and people with disabilities most certainly cannot trust Trump and Musk with their crucial federal benefits — or their personal data,” Max Richtman, the president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said.
Will your Social Security be affected?
White it’s not know what access DOGE has and to what extent, Donald Trump asserted that DOGE will not touch Social Security. “Social Security will not be touched, it will only be strengthened,” Trump recently said adding that he would “weed out” undocumented people from the benefits. “We have illegal immigrants on Social Security and we’re going to find out who they are and take them off… we’re not going to stand for that.”
$100 billion to individuals with no SSN
Elon Musk’s team claimed to have already found out that the payments department paid $100 billion per year to individuals with no Social Security Number or temporary ID number. “Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious,” he said
“When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so USD 50B/year or USD1B/week!!”
What will the world’s richest man do with your SSN?
Several pro-Musk posts on X attempted to allay fears and asked users what they think the world’s richest man would do with their SSN. Elon Musk shared those posts amid massive concern over SSN.
“Elon Musk couldn’t care about your social security number. He is following fraud and waste payments. He worked at PayPal with 100M users private information and he works at SpaceX that has highly classified information. He has never done anything wrong with this type of info,” Musk shared this post.
“The goal of auditing the Social Security Administration is to stop the extreme levels of fraud taking place, so that it remains solvent and protects the social security checks of honest Americans! That’s it. That’s the goal. End of story,” Elon Musk added.
“And for damn sure, I’m 1000% more trustworthy than until numbers of deep state bureaucrats and fraudsters who may be misusing your SSN right now,” Elon Musk wrote in another post.