'Bane of my existence': How Trump is creating hardships for Social Security recipients

23 April

President Donald Trump on April 15, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok/Flickr)

Tesla/SpaceX/X.com head Elon Musk, leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for the Trump Administration, claims that Social Security payments are going out to countless people who died — and that the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) is failing to combat rampant Social Security fraud. But Musk's critics are debunking those claims, accusing him of pushing a bogus conspiracy theory.

The Washington Post, however, reports that some Social Security recipients are facing an actual problem: being declared dead when they're very much alive. And DOGE, according to Post reporters Meryl Kornfield, Lisa Rein and Hannah Natanson, is making the problem worse.

In an article published on April 23, the journalists point to 76-year-old Social Security recipient Richard VanMetter as a perfect example. VanMetter, they report, "called his bank and learned the government had told every financial institution he had ever interacted with that he had died."

"The government clawed back his last Social Security check and shut off his retirement checks and Medicare," Kornfield, Rein and Natanson explain. "Months later, he's still working on getting his pension payments back."

VanMetter told the Post, "It has been the bane of my existence."

"VanMetter had been mistakenly added to Social Security’s Death Master File — a database the government maintains to keep track of deceased people who should no longer receive benefits that is also provided to financial institutions, employers, election offices and other organizations," according to the Post reporters. "The agency has acknowledged that about 600 people a month are placed in the database mistakenly, for reasons ranging from clerical errors to bad information. Now, false claims by Elon Musk and his U.S. DOGE Service about dead people getting benefits have led to a new effort to move millions of names to the Death Master File — increasing the odds that more people who are alive will inadvertently be declared dead, according to current and former officials at the agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation."

In a DOGE-related lawsuit, former SSA employee Tiffany Flick said, "For people erroneously recorded as dead, the consequences are severe."

Seattle resident Ned Johnson had the same problem as VanMetter: being wrongly declared dead by SSA. And when he tried to straighten the problem out, he saw how understaffed SSA is thanks to mass layoffs being carried out by the Trump Administration with DOGE's help.

Johnson told the Post, "I found that in my three visits to the Social Security office in the last 45 days that they're well-meaning, professional and generally experienced and really trying to do their job. But they’re understaffed."

Read the full Washington Post article at this link (subscription required).

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