United States | News & Politics

Your local Social Security office will be closing. Musk has instructed the General Services Administration to terminate all federal office leases, including every Social Security office and every post office.

What is going on should be obvious. Musk wants to cut off your benefits and then have Congress use the savings to give himself a gigantic tax cut. But Social Security is incredibly popular, so he can’t be open about his intentions. Instead, he is trying to convince Americans that our Social Security system is overrun with massive fraud. The truth is the opposite.

Less than 1 percent of Social Security payments are improper. And remember, that already-low percentage includes all the beneficiaries who receive a proper benefit but then die in the same month.

Ironically, the best way to stop improper payments — including those vanishingly few that result from fraud — is to adequately staff the Social Security Administration.