President Donald Trump said at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday that Social Security payments could be rescued by a crackdown led by Vice President JD Vance on federal entitlement fraud.
“I think we have a chance to save Social Security without doing anything to it,” Trump said. “We’re going to make our Social Security so strong.”
The task force has already found “billions and billions and billions” in government fraud, Trump said, adding the administration is trying to protect the Social Security trust fund.
“The numbers that we’re finding out—we have great people in Social Security. We’re going to make our Social Security so strong, so good, that you’d never seen anything like it,” the president said. “We’re going to protect, I said right from the beginning, we’re going to protect our people in Social Security.”
Trump said that he received reports from Vance and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that “hundreds of billions of dollars were stolen” in fraudulent schemes.
Vance also spoke about the anti-fraud effort during the Cabinet meeting, which was held at Camp David in Maryland, remarking that “sometimes these agencies don’t know how to work together at the lower level, and that’s one of the things we’ve had to turn on and force with the fraud task force.
Should the Social Security fund be depleted, the Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program that manages Medicare and Social Security would only be able to pay 81 percent of scheduled benefits to recipients, according to last year’s report. There are around 70 million Social Security beneficiaries in the United States.
“The Trustees recommend that lawmakers address the projected trust fund shortfalls in a timely way in order to phase in necessary changes gradually and give workers and beneficiaries time to adjust,” the report said at the time. “Implementing changes sooner rather than later would allow more generations to share in the needed revenue increases or reductions in scheduled benefits.”
Some states, including California, have denied the accusations of fraud made by the Trump administration. Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom released a statement on X that said claims that the Golden State is home to a $180 billion “empire of fraud” are false.
Last week, the Department of Justice announced charges against 15 people in Minnesota, including the owners of child care facilities, for allegedly partaking in health care fraud schemes worth $90 million.