The grateful dead

Actor Rick Scheideman as Mark Twain

MANY PEOPLE evidently support the effort to streamline the federal government, but many more are having doubts. Some are downright offended. Some are worried sick.

Some, like a man in Seattle, is happy to learn they’re not dead yet.

A news story last week reported that an elderly man was declared “dead” by someone or something at the Social Security Administration, and his benefits were immediately halted. Social Security even wanted the unwarranted payments returned.1 But, as humorist Mark Twain once said, the report of his death was exaggerated, which is to say, not true. 2

A long-since discontinued comic page feature by Jimmy Hatlo3 called “They’ll Do It Every Time” would have loved this one. Here’s the Newsweek version of the story, with a “tip of the Hatlo hat”:

Ned Johnson, 82, first learned of his "death" when his wife Pam received a letter from their bank in February, offering their condolences and notifying her that the SSA had requested the return of his Social Security payments, according to a March 15 column by Danny Westneat in The Seattle Times.

In a response to a request for comment, the SSA pointed Newsweek towards a March 16 press release, which said that errors like what happened to Johnson occur in less than one-third of 1 percent of the more than three million death reports the agency receives annually.

Because this press release is dated March 16, we can assume it’s the current administration that has responsibility to answer for this error. But president Trump (they/them) and Musk (they/them) see a mistake here or there as insignificant when they can save the country lots of money by doing something big, as the current president often says.

“If you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old,” Trump said.

I’m not sure that sentence can be explained. It warrants at least an “awk” notation, as high school English teachers often use(d). 4 But we might guess that Trump (they/them), in the pretext of saving Americans large amounts of money, is not squaring his talk with his actions. He pledged not to touch Social Security benefits for some 70 million Americans who meet some of the qualifications, such as being alive enough.

To be sure, the current administration alleges there is very huge fraud and waste, and few would disagree that the fraudsters ought to be found out. However, the number of cases of fraud and abuse might be exaggerated. Here’s Musk’s widely circulated chart of Social Security recipients, attributed by him to a Social Security database to which he has access: 5

Since the oldest person in the world was a French woman who lived to be 122, it’s not likely a person more than 120 could be receiving Social Security legitimately. The current president cited these numbers in his speech to Congress not so long ago.

These data are hammered like hot iron on the frenetic talk media until drastic action is warranted, even if a mistake or two occurs while fixing this horrendous problem. One administration official, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, reportedly a billionaire, said only the fraudsters will complain about a mistake, but a legitimate recipient would be understanding.6 Well, not Ned, for one.

Fact checkers are beginning to explain why numbers like those on the chart above can show up in Social Security databases. Some might in fact be due to fraud. And some might be due to other factors. 7 It’s a problem that needs a process such as the one in place before the current administration in which government data are cross-checked. 8 This is to suggest strongly that placing a chainsaw in the hands of computer wizards and giving them access to personal information in Social Security databases is a very bad idea.

There are some dead people who, if they could write on Substack or to the newspapers that were around when they were alive, might be very happy they are, in a round-about way, still receiving Social Security benefits. These are benefits that go to “survivors” of the death of a spouse or parent.9 Most of us know someone whose spouse worked for decades, paid into Social Security, and then died, leaving their spouse on their own.

Here’s a hypothetical: If a man of 84 had a wife of 60 when he died, his widow could be still collecting benefits at the same age at which her husband died. Maybe she lives to 94. If he were alive when she’s 94, he would be 118. Oh. Is this part of the explanation? This is a legitimate benefit; it isn’t fraud at all.

Of course, it may be the will of the people to decide that this helping hand is a waste of money, and there are legal ways of fixing such things. The first course of action is to write to local congressional representatives and then support her or him when it comes time to fix the problem with an act of Congress.

It could be true (and you didn’t read it here first) that some Congress people don’t want to be associated with any sort of cut to Social Security benefits, so they may not be willing to take up your cause.

But … wait!

What if there were some really arrogant person (they/them?) with lots and lots of resources, who would do it for you?

Now that’s Dreamland for a hypocritical lawmaker but a nightmare for Ned and people in the lifeboat with him.