DOGE Updates

[Carborendum]

Here is the roster count for the Soc Sec Admin.

[Carborendum]

Quick math: 25 million in the 110+ category.  With a number that big, it doesn't matter if it is 100 or 600 or 1000 of actual people who are over 110.  As a conservative estimate, a recipient who is that old would receive about $1000/month.

Total: $300.6B

Edited February 20 by Carborendum

[Backroads]

Muriel who bakes her own birthday cake likes her monthly check.

[LDSGator]

7 minutes ago, Backroads said:

Muriel who bakes her own birthday cake likes her monthly check.

Not gonna lie @Backroads, it’s great to see you posting here again 

[Carborendum]

DOGE took a survey: Should DOGE audit the IRS?

YES: 51.1%
F* YES: 40.8%
No: 8.1%

Who are these 8.1% people?  Members of Congress and their staff and handout recipients?

[NeuroTypical]

2 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Quick math: 25 million in the 110+ category.  With a number that big, it doesn't matter if it is 100 or 600 or 1000 of actual people who are over 110.  As a conservative estimate, a recipient who is that old would receive about $1000/month.

Total: $300.6B

There is no indication that any of these obviously erroneous accounts are receiving checks.  They just exist in the system as active SSA accounts.

That said, last July there was a report issued by the office of the inspector general:

"from FYs 2015 through 2022, SSA paid almost $8.6 trillion in benefits and made approximately $71.8 billion (0.84 percent) in improper payments, most of which were overpayments." 

One wonders how much of that $71.8b went to dead folks' accounts and involved fraud.

($71.8 billion bucks is around five hundred bucks for every US taxpayer, btw.)

Edited February 20 by NeuroTypical

[Ironhold]

The explanation I've gotten from a Biden sycophant is that this is a result of the fact that the Social Security Administration is still using COBOL to power its databases, and that whoever programmed it to use COBOL so long ago set it up so that if there was any sort of error with the birth year the system would default that person's date of birth to a pre-set year in the 1800s or thereabouts. 

They were screaming because it's a "known" problem and that the DOGE staff should have been aware of this before they made so much noise, but from my perspective a system like this is "beyond economical repair" and so DOGE would be justified in recommending that the government pay to have the system rebuilt from scratch rather than allowing such a wonky and outdated system to continue.

[SilentOne]

1 hour ago, Ironhold said:

the system would default that person's date of birth to a pre-set year

Then wouldn't all the ridiculously-old people be the same age? All born in 1824 or 1861 or whatever?

[NeuroTypical]

Something to note, the govt isn't exactly clueless about waste/fraud/abuse happening in it's spending.   From a WSJ article: 

Every year, agency reports posted online document billions in improper payments, which include fraud but also underpayments, duplicate payments, payments to ineligible recipients or for ineligible goods or services. According to the Government Accountability Office, they can also include correctly paid amounts that didn’t follow regulations, such as a contract missing a required signature.

As far back as 2002, Congress required agencies to estimate and report improper payments each year. The law was strengthened in 2010, 2013 and 2020, on the eve of the pandemic. The estimates come from statistical samples of payments that agencies check in detail, using methods approved by the independent inspector general for each agency. 

 

[Vort]

3 hours ago, Ironhold said:

The explanation I've gotten from a Biden sycophant is that this is a result of the fact that the Social Security Administration is still using COBOL to power its databases, and that whoever programmed it to use COBOL so long ago set it up so that if there was any sort of error with the birth year the system would default that person's date of birth to a pre-set year in the 1800s or thereabouts. 

The cope is strong with this one.

[mordorbund]

21 hours ago, Ironhold said:

The explanation I've gotten from a Biden sycophant is that this is a result of the fact that the Social Security Administration is still using COBOL to power its databases, and that whoever programmed it to use COBOL so long ago set it up so that if there was any sort of error with the birth year the system would default that person's date of birth to a pre-set year in the 1800s or thereabouts. 

They were screaming because it's a "known" problem and that the DOGE staff should have been aware of this before they made so much noise, but from my perspective a system like this is "beyond economical repair" and so DOGE would be justified in recommending that the government pay to have the system rebuilt from scratch rather than allowing such a wonky and outdated system to continue.

Fun fact: your friend just described the Y2K bug. A Hollywood version of it was a major plot point in the movie Entrapment. If this is still an issue, all the more reason to divert Muriel’s fund to address it since everyone else fixed it in 1999.

[Carborendum]

On 2/20/2025 at 9:49 AM, NeuroTypical said:

There is no indication that any of these obviously erroneous accounts are receiving checks.  They just exist in the system as active SSA accounts.

That said, last July there was a report issued by the office of the inspector general:

"from FYs 2015 through 2022, SSA paid almost $8.6 trillion in benefits and made approximately $71.8 billion (0.84 percent) in improper payments, most of which were overpayments." 

One wonders how much of that $71.8b went to dead folks' accounts and involved fraud.

($71.8 billion bucks is around five hundred bucks for every US taxpayer, btw.)

Perhaps it was a misstatement, but Leavitt just said that an IG report said that in ONE fiscal year there was $71B of fraud, waste, and abuse in the soc. Sec. admin.  It was in a street interview.  So, she didn't have the documents with her.

A reporter pointed out it was over the course of several years.  She struck back with "Are you defending $71B if fraud, waste, and abuse?"

Edited February 21 by Carborendum

[Ironhold]

1 hour ago, mordorbund said:

Fun fact: your friend just described the Y2K bug. A Hollywood version of it was a major plot point in the movie Entrapment. If this is still an issue, all the more reason to divert Muriel’s fund to address it since everyone else fixed it in 1999.

They swear that their husband is a developer and that from what he's saying redoing the entire system to move it away from COBOL is just too massive an undertaking to ever plausibly happen, and that besides a lot of other agencies and businesses still use COBOL so they don't see why it's a big deal. 

Yeah...

[Ironhold]

33 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Perhaps it was a misstatement, but Leavitt just said that an IG report said that in ONE fiscal year there was $71B of fraud, waste, and abuse in the soc. Sec. admin.  It was in a street interview.  So, she didn't have the documents with her.

A reporter pointed out it was over the course of several years.  She struck back with "Are you defending $71B if fraud, waste, and abuse?"

During the DNC vs. GOP "debates" over Obamacare, the GOP reps noted that if Obamacare included Texas-style tort reform into the law it'd save a certain sum of money.

Obama responded by declaring that the sum of money in question was "too small to consider" compared to the overall expected cost of Obamacare as a whole. 

I went looking for numbers after that, and found that the sum of money he regarded as "too small to consider" was bigger than the entire to-date US government outlay for the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber program. 

It would have saved the nation more to implement that tort reform than it cost the nation to develop one of the most expensive weapons systems in history. 

But Obama said the amount was "too small to consider". 

That should say something about how certain politicians and their supporters view the national budget.

[NeuroTypical]

36 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Perhaps it was a misstatement, but Leavitt just said that an IG report said that in ONE fiscal year there was $71B of fraud, waste, and abuse in the soc. Sec. admin.  It was in a street interview.  So, she didn't have the documents with her.

A reporter pointed out it was over the course of several years.  She struck back with "Are you defending $71B if fraud, waste, and abuse?"

Yeah, Trump was also claiming all the obviously-incorrect SSN accounts were being paid.

There's an awful lot of sensational fake news flying around on the topic right now.  A lot of pent-up frustration and backlash against the last 6 years of woke mindvirus getting vented out in the open right now.  

[JohnsonJones]

On 2/20/2025 at 6:04 AM, Carborendum said:

Here is the roster count for the Soc Sec Admin.

The the first list, not the second.

The Second is accounts payable, which I imagine is the one they don't want Musk to access.

This one has been available publically since...I think...2017??? So...old news?  AT least this sure looks similar to the numbers on that list, at least the older ages.  It lacks some of the other information (other list was more specific).  You don't need a classified level of clearance to see it.  It can also be useful (though census is more useful) for historians and such. 

What happened is that this list was established prior to computerizing it in the modern way, and much of the paperwork was not digital.  In order to hunt down some of this information would take more money than it would simply to write the people off if there was not paperwork substantiating that the individual was still alive.  This is a list of SS created and not verified dead, vs. the accounts payable list. 

[JohnsonJones]

On 2/20/2025 at 8:49 AM, NeuroTypical said:

There is no indication that any of these obviously erroneous accounts are receiving checks.  They just exist in the system as active SSA accounts.

That said, last July there was a report issued by the office of the inspector general:

"from FYs 2015 through 2022, SSA paid almost $8.6 trillion in benefits and made approximately $71.8 billion (0.84 percent) in improper payments, most of which were overpayments." 

One wonders how much of that $71.8b went to dead folks' accounts and involved fraud.

($71.8 billion bucks is around five hundred bucks for every US taxpayer, btw.)

I can answer part of that, maybe.

Social Security goes out monthly.  If someone dies and the check goes out for them, that money in many instances needs to be paid back.  For example, say you receive your SS check on the Second Wednesday of the Month in May.  You are good.  Then you die on May 19th.  Your family is very busy.  They make funeral arrangements, they go over your will, they get things situated.  Everyone is busy and no one remembers that they need to contact Social Security, or for some reason it gets overlooked.  The money for you goes out on the Second Wednesday of the Month in June.  Then it goes out on the Second Wednesday of the Month of July.  Then, someone in the government catches on that you are dead by the checks and balances that are built into the digital landscape these days.  They request a death certificate from the Funeral Home or from your family directly or from the County or City.  All that money that they paid out is an improper payment and needs to be paid back.

Occasionally these things still get missed in the databases, and/or someone directly is trying to deceive the Social Security Administration by not reporting the death and not having a body (the story of someone keeping a spouse or relative in the freezer for a decade comes to mind).  Those are also improper payments.  These are far more rare, but do happen, but normally after long enough the SS will send someone out to investigate  (though, with how positions are being cut in the government, I'd imagine the SS investigators will be some of the first cut).  That's an interesting career for those interested.  For deaths, it's normally something sparked curiosity that something wasn't right, or someone is so old (for example, once one turns a certain age, without validation that they are still alive an investigator may be sent out...if President Nelson wasn't such a big character in the public eye he may actually be one of those on the yearly investigative list) that they need to a validation check.

[NeuroTypical]

1 hour ago, JohnsonJones said:

Those are also improper payments.  These are far more rare, but do happen, but normally after long enough the SS will send someone out to investigate 

What's your source for that claim?  What is your understanding of what an "SS investigator" looks like, and what going out to investigate looks like?

Here's what the report says about recovering: 

Quote

According to Federal regulations, SSA must give an overpaid individual due process rights before it initiates recovery of an overpayment.14 SSA policy is to send the overpaid individual a written notification.15 The notice must include such information as the amount of the overpayment, how and when the overpayment was made, a request for full refund, proposed adjustment if SSA does not receive the refund, and the overpaid individual’s right to request reconsideration or waiver. Options for SSA to recover the overpayment include direct billing, a negotiated repayment plan, withholding other Federal payments, garnishing wages, or referring the overpaid individual to credit bureaus in an effort to encourage repayment.

But again, recovery is only part of it.  The report talks about the need to make changes and improvements so more improper payments can be detected in the first place.  It talks about how systems are put in place to "help detect" improper payments, and it talks about how those systems need to be improved.  Sometimes the process to detect doesn't even exist - it talks about that on page 34.     Random audits of a tiny sample of payments always discover unflagged, undetected improper payments where nobody was sent out to investigate.  

It also mentions that for every improper payment they actually do discover, SSA thinks it costs them $.08 for every dollar collected to get the dollar back.   So for that $71.8 billion of improper payments they actually discovered, they had to spend almost six billion dollars to correct the error. 

I'm not satisfied with an explanation about why waste happens, I want the waste reduced.  Eliminated if possible.  I'm hopeful that DOGE isn't just accepting explanations about how problems only happen occasionally or rarely.   As the report notes: "SSA issues over $1 trillion in benefit payments annually. Even the slightest error in the overall payment process can result in billions of dollars in improper payments."

Edited February 22 by NeuroTypical

[Carborendum]

19 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

This one has been available publically since...I think...2017??? So...old news? 

I'm not sure what your point is...  Are you saying that because they've had people on the roster since 2017, then it's ok?

19 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

What happened is that this list was established prior to computerizing it in the modern way, and much of the paperwork was not digital.  In order to hunt down some of this information would take more money than it would simply to write the people off if there was not paperwork substantiating that the individual was still alive.  This is a list of SS created and not verified dead, vs. the accounts payable list. 

Wouldn't you want someone to take a look at the funds to be sure no "dead people" (wink-wink) aren't getting checks from the tax payers?

[Ironhold]

As I've been having to explain to people - 

I spent the better part of two years as a branch finance clerk. 

I got audited every six months, and those audits were quite intense. 

The more I hear about what's going on in Washington, the more it becomes clear that there are entire agencies that couldn't pass the kind of muster I had to go through. 

[Carborendum]

It looks like Trump's momentum is dying.  The causes???

• Liberal Judicial activism
• Constituency is sitting back and not being involved anymore because "He's got it."
• Liberal Republicans in Congress are preventing certain bills from passing.
• Fewer Boogymen for DOGE to fight.  They got several big ones.  Now the deep state is fighting back on the smaller fish.  

If liberal Republicans are fighting Trump, we'll see very few Dems who are willing to side with Trump on anything.

Edited February 25 by Carborendum

[The Folk Prophet]

26 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

It looks like Trump's momentum is dying.

I don't think this is a valid perspective on the situation.

[Carborendum]

8 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:

I don't think this is a valid perspective on the situation.

We'll see.

[The Folk Prophet]

2 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

We'll see.

Well, here's my perspective, fwiw:

Yes, the flurry of obvious stuff is going to tame most likely. Yes, there's going to be blockers. A ton.

But that doesn't mean the momentum is dying.

40 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Liberal Judicial activism

The Supreme Court is conservative and (more importantly) constitutionally based. Trump and his team openly state they expected law suits and expect things will work out in court, many things going to the Supreme court. And almost everything being done is constitutional, and will likely, ultimately, be held up as so. Running these issues through the courts is part of the play, and a big part of the intended and expected momentum.

41 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Constituency is sitting back and not being involved anymore because "He's got it."

Not sure what this means. Who's not involved? And how does that slow the momentum? How is it that those who voted for Trump being less involved than they were a week, a month, a few months ago destroying momentum? And what evidence is there that Trump supporters and voters are not involved any more or less than they have ever been?

42 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Liberal Republicans in Congress are preventing certain bills from passing.

This isn't a change. Any congressional changes were always going to be a fight. No loss of momentum. It simply is what it is.

But... there's also the real potential that because of these blockers, the congressional powers may well swing even further right in the next elections when people see and are pleased with what Trump has successfully done, and so forth. On that point, we'll see, for sure. Maybe the opposite will happen, particularly if the left is successful in convincing people how evil Trump's moves are (something they've generally failed at so far, but...the power of the media shouldn't be underestimated).

42 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Fewer Boogymen for DOGE to fight.  They got several big ones.  Now the deep state is fighting back on the smaller fish.  

Every single one of Trump's appointees for his cabinet has gone through (with the exception of the early drop out of Matt Gaetz). The momentum for change is still there and is SIGNIFICANT. DOGE is a tool to discovery, and that will continue but..... The changes that will be (and have been) implemented by Trump and his cabinet is the real momentum. Just because the impactful change moments all happen in a flurry doesn't mean the momentum created from those changes is dying. That's like saying because the D&C isn't getting new revelations added the way it was in Joseph Smiths time that the momentum of the church has died. The revelations given to Joseph in the establishment of the church created the momentum...and the stone continues to roll downhill, growing in power and strength.

*Note: for those thinking I'm comparing Trump and his cabinet to the church in a "worshipful" way, that's not the point of the comparison at all, in any way. it's just a point of how momentum is established. Any example of something being established in a flurry and then setting the tone for the future momentum could easily be used. Say, for example....Amazon Prime's free 2 day shipping implementation. Or Google's free search engine approach. Or Apple's simple interface design. Etc. Changes set momentum. And then juggernauts are created.

So I guess you could say, perhaps, that the "changes" being successfully made to the executive branch are slowing (though time will tell on that), but the momentum is set, and for the immediate future...I think the momentum is set pretty well.

The view that a week ago or so the momentum was CRAZY and just a few days later it's dying though.... ? Seems odd. Of course there's a bunch of resistance. That's going to be the case. But there was a week ago too. And it's always been expected. Evil didn't die. (Note: I'm not saying all Trump resistance is evil, just to be clear. But a lot of the resistance to a lot of things does seem to be rooted in evil.)

But the wins Trump has already.... I don't see momentum dying. Win after win after win...and I expect that will continue. And, yes...there will be some Trump losses. But when there are, to respond (like the left keeps doing) with, "It's the end for Trump! Finally, we've got him!" (which is a more extreme way of saying the momentum is dying, but kind of the same sort of response), just doesn't ring that true to me. The battle is not the war. Battles will be lost. But most battles seem to be either won or still being fought, with indications they'll be won by Trump and team. When, legitimately, more battles are being lost than won, well...okay then...then we can say the war is turning. But right now...nope. Don't see it. (To be fair, I think, ultimately, the left is going to take the reigns again. I just hope that the reprieve from that is moderately lengthy. (My fear is that it'll be a very short reprieve)).

Anyhow, that's my take on it. You're right though. We'll see.

Not trying to debate the points, btw. Just sharing my perspective, as it currently stands.

[zil2]

I'm waiting for Trump's address to congress next Tuesday.  If it's meaningless jabber, then I might worry.  If it's naming names and shouting sins from the rooftops, then we'll know things are continuing to move forward.  I can imagine good reasons for things to ebb and flow.