The idea sounds appealing: crack down hard enough on government fraud, and you could fix Social Security and erase the federal deficit at the same time. President Donald Trump has floated exactly that notion. But according to budget analysts and the government’s own auditors, the numbers simply don’t support it.
Fraudulent payments make up only a sliver of Social Security’s massive outlays, and even the most generous estimates of government-wide fraud fall far short of covering the federal budget gap. Here’s a closer look at what the data actually shows.
What Trump Claimed
During a May 27 Cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump highlighted his administration’s anti-fraud efforts and tied them directly to two enormous fiscal goals.
“Under the leadership of Vice President JD Vance,” Trump said, “the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud is waging war on waste, fraud, theft and abuse like nobody’s ever seen before. And they’re finding billions and billions and billions of dollars.”
He went further, suggesting the savings could deliver “a balanced budget without having to do anything.” On Social Security specifically, the president argued the program could be saved “without doing anything to it, by just the numbers of fraudulent people on Social Security — people that are 115 years old, 125 years old, getting payments.”
When asked for evidence backing those claims, the White House did not provide any. Spokesman Kush Desai instead pointed to the administration’s broader anti-fraud agenda, saying the Fraud Task Force is “uncovering levels of fraud across various federal programs that were previously inconceivable.”
The State of Social Security’s Finances
Social Security faces a genuine funding crisis — but not one driven by fraud. According to the program’s 2025 trustees report, the combined trust funds that pay retirees, survivors, and disabled individuals are on track to become insolvent in 2034. At that point, incoming payroll tax revenue would cover only 81% of scheduled benefits.
The retirement trust fund alone is projected to run dry even sooner — a year earlier — leaving it able to pay just 77% of benefits without changes. The shortfall has built up over more than a decade, ever since Social Security’s spending started outpacing the payroll taxes that fund it.
In 2024, the program paid out nearly $1.5 trillion across retirement and disability benefits, while taking in roughly $1.4 trillion. Over a 75-year window through 2099, the combined trust funds face an estimated shortfall of about $25 trillion.
How Small the Fraud Numbers Really Are
The scale of fraud is dwarfed by Social Security’s overall finances. According to a February 2025 report from the Social Security Office of the Inspector General, overpayments of retirement and disability benefits between fiscal years 2020 and 2023 totaled about $13.6 billion — roughly $3.4 billion per year on average.
And most of that wasn’t fraud at all. The bulk of overpayments stemmed from beneficiaries failing to report information that affected their benefits. The IG report attributed just 3% of overpayments to people who fraudulently obtained benefits or noncitizens who didn’t report living abroad for more than six months. Another 4% came from payments issued after a beneficiary’s death.
Gopi Shah Goda, director of the Retirement Security Project at the Brookings Institution, put it bluntly: “The scale of fraud and overpayments is tiny relative to the program’s finances.”
Her calculation underscores the point: “Even if one were to wave a magic wand and eliminate SSA’s entire administrative cost budget while preventing all overpayments, the total ‘savings’ would amount to only about $10.2 billion per year — equal to just 2.5 days’ worth of benefits, or about 2.7% of the annual amount needed to close the 75-year actuarial deficit.”
Closing that gap, Goda explained, requires “major policy changes — raising taxes, adjusting benefits, or some combination of both.”
The Myth of 115- and 125-Year-Old Recipients
Trump’s claim about payments going to people aged 115 or 125 doesn’t hold up either. Since September 2015, the Social Security database has been programmed to automatically cut off benefits for anyone listed as 115 or older.
This echoes a similar assertion Trump made last year, when he suggested millions of people over 100 might be wrongly collecting benefits. In reality, the Social Security Administration paid a total of $158 million to about 89,000 people aged 99 or older in December 2024. Internal audits found that only a small fraction of those payments likely went to deceased Americans incorrectly recorded as living.
What About the Broader Federal Budget?
The same logic applies beyond Social Security. Even the highest official estimates of annual fraud across federal programs come nowhere close to matching the deficit. The most recent federal budget shortfall ran roughly 240% larger than the government’s top estimate of yearly fraud-related spending — meaning eliminating fraud entirely still wouldn’t balance the books.
As Emerson Sprick, director of retirement and labor policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, summarized: “Minimizing fraud is a vital aspect of good governance, but eliminating fraud would not fix Social Security’s underlying fiscal challenges.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Will stopping fraud save Social Security?
No. Fraud and overpayments amount to roughly $3.4 billion a year on average — a tiny fraction of the program’s nearly $1.5 trillion in annual outlays. Even eliminating all fraud and administrative costs would cover only about 2.7% of the funding gap.
When will Social Security run out of money?
According to the 2025 trustees report, the combined trust funds are projected to become insolvent in 2034. At that point, payroll taxes would cover 81% of scheduled benefits unless Congress acts.
Are 115- or 125-year-olds really receiving benefits?
No. Since 2015, the Social Security system has automatically terminated benefits for anyone listed as 115 or older.
Can eliminating fraud balance the federal budget?
No. The recent federal deficit was about 240% larger than the highest government estimate of annual fraud spending, so even total fraud elimination would leave a substantial gap.
What would actually fix Social Security?
Experts say only major policy changes — raising taxes, adjusting benefits, or a combination of both — can close the projected $25 trillion, 75-year shortfall.
The Bottom Line
Reducing fraud, waste, and abuse is a worthwhile goal for any government, and Social Security’s auditors continue to track overpayments closely. But the claim that eliminating fraud could rescue Social Security or balance the federal budget doesn’t survive scrutiny. The fraud figures are simply too small relative to the program’s costs and the nation’s deficit. Solving these long-term fiscal challenges will require difficult policy decisions — not just better fraud enforcement.