Elon Musk Made No Promises
So with Trump’s blessing, he is going after Social Security
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Members of Congress, those brave enough to hold town hall meetings while home over spring recess, may have become reacquainted with an old lesson: Hell hath no fury like an angry constituent. And that goes double for anyone who threatens Social Security.
Across the country, we have seen reports of meetings where hundreds of constituents have shown up to raise the roof with their representative.
At a meeting in Baltimore, a woman said, “We need people to get mad.” Another responded, “We earned our Social Security!”
In Michigan, a disabled man told his Republican representative, “We worked our entire life, but we can’t get any help because we can’t get through to anybody.”
At an Iowa town hall: “Go to a local office. Try to get an appointment! Right now you’re waiting a month. And we’re going to cut more staff?”
Politicians from both parties got an earful.
It feels like a bait-and-switch, a common Trump tactic. Sure, he made a plethora of promises not to cut Social Security. Elon Musk didn’t.
Trump and Musk must be betting that Americans care more about possible waste, fraud, and abuse at the Social Security Administration (SSA) than they do about getting their monthly benefit checks.
That’s a bad bet.
Nearly 73 million elderly and disabled Americans receive $1.6 trillion annually in Social Security benefits. It is one of the most popular and most important government services. And it is funded directly by working Americans in the form of a payroll tax.
Musk has made his feelings about the program crystal clear, calling it a “Ponzi scheme” and claiming $500 to $700 billion in annual waste and fraud. To date he has offered no supporting evidence.
Regardless of these claims of waste and fraud, Musk is doubling down and using this vital program as the political football du jour. Musk and his DOGE assistants have been trying to access the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans in what they call their hunt for waste and fraud. Two labor unions and an advocacy group have sued to stop them.
Yesterday a federal judge agreed that giving DOGE “affiliates,” or employees under Musk, “unbridled access” likely violates privacy laws. The judge issued a temporary restraining order, stating DOGE affiliates were barred from accessing Social Security information systems.
“The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is in the haystack,” wrote U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander in her ruling.
In response, acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Lee Dudek threatened to shut down the entire agency. Rather than honor the judge’s order and keep working for the millions of Americans who rely on their monthly Social Security checks, he said that any employee could be a DOGE worker, so, “I will follow [the ruling] exactly and terminate access by all SSA employees to our IT systems.”
With the Social Security Administration squarely in Musk’s crosshairs, he is also taking aim at the program itself, without cutting actual payouts — yet. Though the net effect will be a delay or reduction in benefits for many Americans.
With no authority other than Trump saying he can, Musk, who has manipulated and bought his way into the system, is cutting 7,000 jobs at SSA, or 12% of the workforce, and closing more than 40 field offices. Closing those offices is a terrible idea for an agency where getting an in-person appointment is already notoriously difficult.
But wait, there’s more. Recipients can no longer file for benefits by phone. Instead they have to verify their identity online or in person.
Forcing older and disabled Americans to find an internet-ready computer and then navigate a new online system is almost as bad as making them try to get an in-person appointment while closing dozens of offices.
An internal SSA memo by a senior official accessed by The Washington Post admitted that these changes “increased challenges for vulnerable populations.” The senior official was not on the same page as her boss.
“These changes are not intended to hurt our customers,” Lee Dudek said in a Tuesday news conference. Intentional or not, it is hard to imagine that the changes won’t hurt seniors.
“If it is to the detriment of the citizens we serve, then we’ll take necessary actions. If that means backing out the policy, then we’ll back it out. But we need to see what the results are,” Dudek continued. In other words, Social Security recipients, some of whom rely solely on this benefit to eat, are human guinea pigs in Musk’s efficiency experiment.
Though Trump has claimed that 20 million people on the Social Security rolls are so old they must be dead, widespread fraud has not been found. The Social Security inspector general found less than 1% of payouts from 2015-2022 were considered improper.
A former SSA official told Axios that the money it would cost to implement Musk’s changes would be significantly more than any cost savings.
Might this be this issue that gets the Democrats united and focused?
Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said on X, “Make no mistake, this is a full-blown attack on Social Security. Elon Musk is trying to take away benefits you earned.”
Most older voters receive Social Security checks. And they vote … in larger numbers than any other age group. In fact, 72% voted in the 2020 presidential election. And guess what those voters’ No. 1 issue is? Social Security. We soon shall see where this latest full-frontal attack on Social Security leads.
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Dan
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