Opinion. Before Washington can stop paying the dead, the ineligible and the fraudulent, it has to know who is alive, who is a citizen and who is eligible. After decades of neglect, someone is finally doing the homework.
Tuesday, October 20, may go down as the day Washington finally got serious about the books. That day, the Social Security Administration revealed it had corrected nearly 15 percent of all active Social Security numbers. Federal and state agents fanned out across New York City in a Medicaid fraud probe of more than 100 adult day care providers. And in the Oval Office, the President and Vice President rolled out a $25 million program to pay Americans who help expose fraud.
The common thread is the most important ledger in American government, and how long it was allowed to rot. The Social Security number database is the master key that federal agencies and state governments use to confirm who you are, whether you are alive and whether you are entitled to a benefit. When that ledger is wrong, every program that relies on it inherits the error.
The cleanup
SSA called it the most comprehensive SSN record cleanup in the agency’s 91-year history. Commissioner Frank Bisignano called the database “our country’s books and records,” arguing that accurate records prevent fraud across federal programs. Since the start of the Trump administration, the agency says it has corrected records spanning roughly 330 million U.S. citizens and nearly 390 million total records, including:
- 17 million dates of death added to records that previously had none, using SSA’s internal systems and Department of State data.
- About 25 million records missing citizenship information, now updated with data from the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) service.
- 8.5 million more records with inaccurate citizenship status, now being corrected.
- New internal controls to stop errors introduced by manual data entry.
Social Security number records fixed or in progress
Source: Social Security Administration, Oct. 20, 2026. Death dates drew on SSA systems and State Department data; citizenship updates drew on DHS SAVE data.
Bisignano is right, and the fact that it took until 2026 for anyone to treat the database that way is an indictment of the Washington that came before.
A problem everyone knew about, and a fix nobody wanted to fund
None of this was a secret. In July 2023, SSA’s own Inspector General reported roughly 18.9 million Social Security numbers belonging to people born in 1920 or earlier with no death information on file, and warned that the gaps hampered government-wide efforts to prevent and detect fraud. The agency declined to fix most of them, citing cost. The estimated price tag for the extra work was up to about $9.7 million. For an agency that pays out more than $900 billion a year, that is a rounding error.
To be fair, a missing death date does not automatically mean a check is going out. The Inspector General found that almost none of those century-old records were drawing benefits, and defenders of the old status quo said so loudly. But that misses the point. An SSN attached to a “living” person who died decades ago is an open door for identity thieves and a liability for every agency that trusts the database.
And bad death data costs real money. In March 2025, the Inspector General found that when SSA’s system rejected death reports from the states, payments kept flowing to deceased beneficiaries, producing $327 million in improper payments. Meanwhile, once Congress let Treasury check payments against SSA’s full death file through its Do Not Pay system, Treasury reported identifying, preventing or recovering $113.5 million in improper payments in 2024 alone. Clean data pays for itself many times over.
Why it matters beyond Social Security
Federal agencies and the states use SSN records to validate identities and block improper payments. That makes the cleanup a force multiplier.
Consider voter rolls. Last year, DHS linked SAVE to Social Security records for the first time and invited states to verify their voter lists in bulk. In September, the Supreme Court allowed the system to keep operating, writing that the federal government has an obligation to respond when election officials ask to verify voters’ citizenship. When Texas ran its more than 18 million registered voters through SAVE, it flagged 2,724 as potential noncitizens. Under Texas law, flagged voters get written notice and 30 days to prove citizenship, and some have since done exactly that. That is how it should work: the database raises the question, and due process answers it. Every corrected citizenship record at SSA means fewer false alarms and a sharper check the next time.
The wider war on fraud
The SSA cleanup is one piece of a much larger campaign led by Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force. The results so far describe a government that had stopped minding the store:
- Food stamps: In the states that agreed to share their data, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins reported nearly 200,000 people using dead people’s Social Security numbers to collect SNAP benefits and nearly 500,000 collecting benefits in more than one state.
- Obamacare: CMS cut off subsidies for about 189,000 enrollees who held duplicate government coverage or were deceased, an estimated $738 million saved this year. The administration earlier halted enrollment for more than 760,000 people it believes were fraudulently signed up.
- Pandemic loans: The Small Business Administration referred 562,000 fraudulent or delinquent pandemic-era loans, totaling about $22 billion, for collection.
- Hospice: The administration suspended $1.4 billion in home health and hospice funding nationwide. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said 800 suspended California hospices that billed taxpayers $1.4 billion last year will no longer be paid.
- Medicaid adult day care: New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s February 2026 audit found managed care plans paid $2.4 billion for Social Adult Day Care services from January 2019 through October 2024, including more than $285 million in questionable payments for services dated after providers had been dropped from a plan’s network.
| Program | What was found | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Food stamps (SNAP) | Nearly 200,000 people using dead people’s Social Security numbers; nearly 500,000 collecting in more than one state (cooperating states only) | USDA Sec. Brooke Rollins |
| Obamacare subsidies | About 189,000 enrollees with duplicate coverage or deceased cut off; an estimated $738 million saved this year | CMS, Oct. 2026 |
| Pandemic loans | 562,000 fraudulent or delinquent loans, about $22 billion, referred for collection | SBA via White House |
| Hospice and home health | $1.4 billion in funding suspended nationwide | White House, Daily Signal |
| NY Medicaid adult day care | $2.4 billion paid, Jan. 2019 to Oct. 2024; more than $285 million questionable | NY State Comptroller |
That last finding turned into raids on October 20. The FBI, citing the audit, joined an interagency working group targeting the sector, and agents hit providers across Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Manhattan in a probe of more than 100 providers suspected of kickbacks, improper billing and money laundering. A CBS News analysis found New York’s adult day care bill nearly quadrupled from 2018 to 2024, with 64 facilities packed within a one-mile radius in Flushing, Queens. The comptroller documented one provider that billed for 530 people on a single day, 207 over its building’s legal capacity. Gov. Kathy Hochul is now cooperating, to her credit. But the warning signs were visible for years, and it took federal pressure to act on them.
The White House raises the stakes
At the same October 20 Oval Office event, the administration announced a $25 million Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program, administered by the Justice Department, that rewards people whose tips lead to a fraud conviction or a significant federal enforcement action.
President Trump used the occasion to tout the crackdown in sweeping terms, saying the administration had “removed the names of 160,000 dead people from the list of food stamp recipients,” “kicked 275,000 illegal aliens off of Social Security” and “eliminated $125 billion in Obamacare subsidies.”*
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller went further, describing state-level fraud as “a criminal conspiracy where a state knowingly aids and abets fraud” and calling it “a self-enrichment scheme that’s being exposed.” That is a serious charge, and every case will have to be proven in court. But the pattern of states ignoring their own auditors for years, as New York did with its comptroller’s findings, is why the charge lands with so many taxpayers.
Photo: Harold Mendoza / Unsplash
What the critics get right, and what they miss
Skeptics make three fair points. First, millions of inaccurate records do not equal millions of fraudulent payments. SSA’s Inspector General put improper payments at about 0.84 percent of benefits paid from fiscal 2015 through 2022, mostly overpayments rather than criminal fraud. Second, any cleanup this large must avoid wrongly cutting off legitimate beneficiaries or voters, and civil liberties groups are litigating the SAVE overhaul. Third, SSA has not said how many of its tens of millions of corrections stopped an actual improper payment, as opposed to closing a door that thieves had not yet walked through.
All three deserve a hearing. None is an argument for doing nothing. That “small” 0.84 percent added up to roughly $71.8 billion. Last month, the Inspector General estimated SSA improperly paid about $1 billion to Supplemental Security Income recipients, and roughly $664 million of it may never be recovered. Money that goes out the door is very hard to get back. The only reliable defense is accurate data before the check is cut. And the answer to the transparency question is simple: SSA should publish the dollar savings, and it should be eager to.
The bottom line
Fiscal conservatism is not just about cutting programs. It is about running them honestly. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP rest on a promise to the Americans who pay into them. Every dollar paid to a dead person’s identity, a duplicate enrollee or a phantom day care center is a dollar taken from a retiree, a veteran or a struggling family.
Congress has already taken one important step. In February, the Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act made permanent SSA’s authority to share its full death records with Treasury’s Do Not Pay system. Lawmakers should build on it by:
- Writing the cleanup into law, with statutory deadlines for posting death and citizenship updates to the SSN database, so a future administration cannot quietly let the books slide again.
- Requiring a check before the check. Federal law already tells agencies to review SSA death records “as appropriate” before releasing funds. Congress should replace “as appropriate” with automatic pre-payment screening against the full death file for every federal benefit payment, so flagged payments are stopped before they leave the Treasury.
- Conditioning federal benefit dollars on state cooperation, so every state verifies its own benefit rolls against clean federal death and SAVE data, with clear due process for anyone flagged.
- Demanding a public scorecard, requiring SSA and the anti-fraud task force to report the dollars actually saved, so the results can be judged on the numbers.
The books are finally being balanced. Now lock the rules into law so they stay that way.
* The figures cited by President Trump at the October 20 event have not been confirmed by published agency data.
If you suspect health care fraud, the FBI asks that you report it at tips.fbi.gov or contact your health insurance provider.