Ah yes, the classic move—when confronted with overwhelming evidence of government incompetence, laugh it off and pretend it’s all just a crazy conspiracy theory. Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley took that approach on CNN News Central this week, literally laughing in the face of accusations that the Social Security Administration (SSA) is riddled with fraud. Because nothing says serious public servant like chuckling at the idea that taxpayer money might be vanishing into a black hole of bureaucratic mismanagement.
O’Malley, who ran the SSA under Biden from 2023 to 2024 (and clearly did such a bang-up job that he’s now out of a job), was responding to claims by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that millions—possibly billions—of dollars are being paid out to dead people. But instead of addressing the actual numbers, he chose to scoff, mock, and dismiss the entire issue like some smug college professor who just got challenged by a freshman.
Let’s get one thing straight: Musk isn’t pulling these numbers out of thin air. He claims the Social Security database includes over 20 million people over the age of 100, with millions supposedly between 130 and 159 years old. Now, unless the SSA has been quietly funding a secret army of immortal senior citizens, that’s a pretty big problem. Are all these people still receiving benefits? Maybe not. But if even a fraction of them are, that’s taxpayer money going straight into the ether—or, more likely, straight into the pockets of fraudsters.
But instead of addressing the actual concern, O’Malley resorted to mockery. “There is not like a zombie apocalypse of people, you know, cadavers running around with Social Security checks coming out of their pockets,” he laughed. Hilarious, right? Except no one said anything about zombies. What people are saying is that our bloated, outdated, and mismanaged government programs are hemorrhaging money, and no one in Washington seems particularly interested in fixing it.
To his credit, O’Malley sort of admitted that fraud does happen, but only in tiny, insignificant cases—like desperate families keeping grandma’s death a secret to cash a few extra checks. No mention, of course, of the large-scale fraud schemes that have been uncovered before or the billions wasted on improper payments every year. No, according to O’Malley, this is all just Musk and his “19-year-old nitwits from DOGE” making things up because they don’t know what they’re looking at.
Martin O’Malley, former Commissioner of Social Security Admin, thinks it’s absolutely hilarious that your tax dollars are being lost to fraud & payments to illegals.
O’Malley says Elon’s team are “19 year-old nitwits who are violating the law” as he mocks concerns of taxpayers. pic.twitter.com/fmUBGxC9JQ
— Jeff Carlson (@themarketswork) February 18, 2025
Right. Because the real problem here isn’t the billions in potentially fraudulent payouts—it’s those pesky watchdogs daring to ask questions about where the money is going.
The truth is that government incompetence is not a conspiracy theory, and neither is Social Security fraud. The SSA itself has admitted in past reports that improper payments—including to deceased individuals—cost taxpayers billions every year. The problem isn’t that the fraud doesn’t exist; it’s that bureaucrats like O’Malley don’t want to admit how bad it is. And they certainly don’t want people like Musk—or any other outsider—digging through the numbers and exposing just how broken the system really is.
So go ahead and laugh, O’Malley. But while you’re busy making jokes on CNN, millions of Americans are watching their paychecks shrink while Washington wastes their hard-earned money. And something tells me they’re not laughing.
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