No, they didn't

 

They maybe removed names, but they didn't remove anyone who was actually alive and receiving benefits, so the amount of money they saved is $0.

[A]ll of the people listed in the national system do not receive monthly benefits.

[...]

The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner clarified claims promoted by Elon Musk and President Trump about centenarians receiving monthly payouts.

“I also want to acknowledge recent reporting about the number of people older than age 100 who may be receiving benefits from Social Security,” Lee Dudek said in a statement Wednesday.

“The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.”

[...]

“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 stated in support of a probe by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk doubled down on the argument after gaining read access to the administration’s portal.

[...]

“Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as ‘ALIVE’ when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem. Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country,” Musk wrote on X with a screenshot of an alleged internal database showcasing citizens who are at least 100 years old.

  The Hill

So where does he think "tens of millions" of people are receiving their mail?

And, if we now "have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old," maybe we can leave Social Security alone?

Part of the confusion comes from Social Security’s software system based on the COBOL programming language, which has a lack of date type. This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago. The news organization WIRED first reported on the use of COBOL programming language at the Social Security Administration.

Additionally, a series of reports from the Social Security Administration’s inspector general in March 2023 and July 2024 state that the agency has not established a new system to properly annotate death information in its database, which included roughly 18.9 million Social Security numbers of people born in 1920 or earlier but were not marked as deceased. This does not mean, however, that these individuals were receiving benefits.

The agency decided not to update the database because of the cost to do so, which would run upward of $9 million.

[...]

Musk posted a slew of posts on his social media platform X, including: “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.”

[...]

Trump said at a press briefing in Florida that “we have millions and millions of people over 100 years old” receiving Social Security benefits. “They’re obviously fraudulent or incompetent,” Trump said.

  AP

Incompetent? How would they be incompetent? Who's incompetent here is DOGE; also Musk and Trump.

It is true that improper payments have been made, including some to dead people. But the numbers thrown out by Musk and the White House are overstated and misrepresent Social Security data.

[...]

“I am confident that with DOGE’s help and the commitment of our executive team and workforce, that Social Security will continue to deliver for the American people,” [Social Security’s new acting commissioner, Lee] Dudek said.

I'm not.

[T]he agency automatically stops payments to people who are older than 115 years old.

[...]

A July 2024 report from Social Security’s inspector general states that from fiscal years 2015 through 2022, the agency paid out almost $8.6 trillion in benefits, including $71.8 billion — or less than 1% — in improper payments. Most of the erroneous payments were overpayments to living people.

In addition, in early January, the U.S. Treasury clawed back more than $31 million in a variety of federal payments— not just Social Security payments— that improperly went to dead people, a recovery that former Treasury official David Lebryk said was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

The money was reclaimed as part of a five-month pilot program after Congress gave the Department of Treasury temporary access to the Social Security Administration’s “Full Death Master File” for three years as part of the omnibus appropriations bill in 2021. The SSA maintains the most complete federal database of individuals who have died, and the file contains more than 142 million records, which go back to 1899, according to the Treasury.

Treasury estimated in January that it would recover more than $215 million during its three-year access period, which runs from December 2023 through 2026.

So the issue was already being taken care of without DOGE.