As Democrats blast Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts as a "constitutional crisis," Fox News Digital spoke to a government spending expert who explained that many departments, including entitlements, are ripe with fat that can and should be cut.
James Agresti, president of the nonprofit research institute Just Facts, spoke to Fox News Digital about some of the opportunities to make cuts to entitlements and pointed to $2 billion worth of improper payments at the Social Security Administration (SSA) in 2022, which was enough to pay 89,947 retired workers in 2023.
"It's hard to wrap your head around a figure like that," Agresti said. "There's a lot of fat in Social Security, as there are in almost all entitlement programs."
The SSA sent roughly 7,000 federal employees disability benefits in 2008 while they were still taking wages from federal jobs, according to a 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
