Elon Musk has revealed a new 'crazy' discovery made during the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) search for federal savings, and it was so shocking that he had to re-read it several times before it actually sank in.
While Elon Musk is set to depart from his role as head of DOGE next month, he's still actively looking for ways to cut spending from the federal budget, with $150 billion reported so far through DOGE's official website.
Although this total falls well short of the originally touted $2 trillion in savings that Musk shortly went back afterwards, Musk has seemingly found hundreds of millions of dollars worth of savings from what he calls 'fake people', as reported by the Daily Mail.
As outlined by the official DOGE account on X, a survey of Unemployment Insurance claims since 2020 allegedly revealed that $59 million was claimed from 24,500 people over the age of 115, $69 million from 9,700 people with birth dates over 15 years into the future, and $254 million from 28,000 people aged between 1 and 5 years old.
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Additionally, DOGE illustrates that "in one case, someone with a birthday in 2154 claimed $41k" in benefits.
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Quoting the post from DOGE, Musk explained: "Your tax dollars were going to pay fraudulent unemployment claims for fake people born in the future! This is so crazy that I had to read it several times before it sank in.
"The oldest living American is 114 years old, so it is safe to say that anyone 115 or older is collecting 'unemployment' due to being dead. There was no sanity check for impossibly young or impossibly old people for unemployment insurance."
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According to budget summaries from the Department of Labor, Unemployment Insurance budgets from 2020 to 2025 totalled $21,219,207,000, with significant fluctuations in the earlier years especially due to the pandemic.
Musk and DOGE's findings from 'fake people' total up to $382 million, so that represents just 1.8% of the total Unemployment Insurance budget over the period.
"The deficit is $2 trillion & you are worried about a potential $350 million in erroneous outlays?" questions one reply to Musk's post. "SIR, these don't even rise to the level of rounding errors."
Looking at it from the perspective of savings-per-person, the costs of these 'fake people' will have set back every person in America just $0.89 across the last five years, or $0.17 per year, so it's largely just a drop in the ocean when it comes to the big picture of government spending or savings.
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Some have even speculated that intentional fraud isn't the reason behind what DOGE has highlighted:
"Why do I get the feeling all of this will turn out to be just error, or not understanding the coding," argues one user, with another questioning "how much is simply typos vs fraud?"
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Musk clearly cares not the reason behind the error though, as he replied "exactly" with a facepalm emoji to someone pointing out that the 'typos' are still collecting money.