Mike Rogers (MI) wants to be Michigan's next U.S. senator. In newly released audio from a 2025 campaign meet-and-greet, he pitched a way to deal with Social Security: use artificial intelligence to check who deserves it.
What he said
MeidasTouch published the previously unreleased audio this week. Rogers was asked what he'd do about Social Security, since the date when the trust fund runs short keeps getting pushed to "2033 or 34." He answered:
"There's still a lot of fraud in this, the disability portion of it. I think there's more work that we can do, and I'm a technology guy, so I think technology is our friend on this. What's wrong with verifying who you are, what your thing is, and if you earned it, I want you to have it, but if you didn't earn it, I do not want you to have it. … A.I., by the way, is one way to do that."
Asked about Social Security's money problem, the first thing Rogers reached for was checking whether people receiving benefits deserve them.
The fraud that isn't there
Social Security Disability Insurance is one of the hardest benefits in America to get. You need a work history, a severe impairment that's expected to last and keeps you from working, medical proof, and a five-month wait. When the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities looked at it in 2015, only about 40% of people who applied were approved.
When the program does make mistakes, they're small and mostly not fraud. CBPP found disability overpayments averaged less than 1% of spending over 2011 to 2013 — and those "improper payments" often stem from delays and paperwork errors, like a beneficiary reporting earnings late, not from people lying. Reviews of disability decisions consistently find 97% or greater accuracy. As the Bipartisan Policy Center put it, quoted by CBPP: "fraud is not the reason for [the program's] current funding shortfall."
Fraud exists, and the Social Security inspector general investigates it. But it isn't what's driving the program's money problem — and Rogers's answer to that problem started with it anyway.
Tariffs to the rescue
In the same exchange, Rogers offered a second idea: pay for Social Security with Trump's tariffs.
"One of the things I was talking about is using some of that tariff money to shore up Social Security. Yeah, I mean, it's there, it's available, why not try to get this thing solvent, more solvent, and at least you push that date up."
The record behind it
This fits what Rogers has already said and done on Social Security. He told a 2023 town hall that "every option is going to have to be on the table", and over his career in the House he backed a plan to partially privatize the program by having Americans invest their benefit money in the stock market.
He also cheered the DOGE cuts across the federal government. At an April 2026 Saginaw County Republican event, he said of them: "I kept saying, you're going to cut it, and that's great, and I love it." His complaint was that Congress hadn't written the cuts into law so they couldn't be reversed.
He isn't the only Republican on this site who looked at Social Security and saw something to cut. Ron Estes, the congressman in charge of protecting it, said he was looking forward to what DOGE would find, and Brandon Herrera called it "a joke".
What the record shows
Asked about Social Security at a 2025 campaign event, Mike Rogers (MI) said there's "still a lot of fraud" in disability benefits and suggested A.I. could verify who has "earned" their benefits. Disability overpayments ran under 1% of spending from 2011 to 2013, according to CBPP, and they often came from delays and errors rather than fraud. Rogers has also said "every option" is on the table for Social Security and backed partially privatizing it.
