Ninety years after Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law, Republicans are still trying to kill Social Security. Leading the assault this time are the dreadful duo of billionaires, Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, and his celebrity car salesman, President Donald Trump.
FDR built the modern social safety net that has protected millions of older Americans, the unemployed, dependent mothers and children, and the disabled.
Trump has repeatedly said he will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits, but given his stellar reputation for prevarication, you can’t take that to the bank – or possibly your monthly benefits check. Musk and congressional Republicans have already begun chipping away at the entitlement programs.
The government-spending bill Trump signed over the weekend came with a mandate for cutting $880 billion in spending overseen by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, with expectations the money will come from entitlement programs. They want the “savings” to help offset the cost of tax cuts for their wealthy supporters.
Will Social Security be killed?
Musk has denounced Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and made it a top target of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), even though he “knew many of his claims about Social Security fraud were overstated, distorted or baseless,” according to The Washington Post.
You have to read between the lines about what Trump means by no cuts. When he promises no cuts, he means for those already receiving benefits they paid for; for everyone else, all bets are off. For starters, look for raising the retirement age from 67 to 69. Meanwhile, he’s already begun eliminating thousands of Social Security employees who deal with disbursing benefits, providing customer phone service, and filing claims.
The House Republican Study Committee has released a budget plan calling for “modest adjustments” to Social Security, including raising the retirement age to 70, lowering benefits for highest-earning beneficiaries, and privatizing the program.
NO DOUBT there is some waste, fraud, and abuse in the system, and it needs to be cleansed, but not by Musk and his chainsaw gang, who consider it a program not worth saving.
Trump is not really interested in cleaning out waste and making government agencies more efficient and effective – all the proof you need is in his firing of inspectors general, the very officials charged with ferreting out fraud and ensuring efficiency and replacing them with political hacks whose only qualification is total devotion to the glorious leader.
Neither is the answer found in privatization, something president George W. Bush, riding high on his reelection victory, floated 20 years ago only to have it quickly scuttled when even the House GOP leadership, faced with outrage from constituents, abandoned ship. The best thing to come out of that was it helped Democrats take back control of the House in 2006.
Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek, the mid-level data analyst put in to replace administrators fired by Trump and Musk, has floated the idea of outsourcing “nonessential functions to industry experts.” That would be a dangerous first step toward privatization that would threaten the stability and safety of the program.
Musk’s assault on the Social Security Administration is part of the playbook he used in his takeover of Twitter: “wrecking institutions in order to dominate them,” said Paul Barrett, deputy director of the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University, according to The Washington Post. Musk “has a history of claiming fraud by his opponents, whether in the political or business realms,” the paper added.
In his recent speech to Congress, Trump knew it wasn’t true when he said DOGE had found “hundreds of billions” of dollars in wasteful Social Security spending and that some 1.5 million Americans over 150 years old receiving benefit checks.
That’s the kind of sloppiness, lies, and indiscriminate slashing that has many people calling DOGE the Department of Government Evil.
BEFORE MUSK and his crew rifle through any more sensitive government and taxpayer secrets, it’s time for some disclosure. His companies collect billions in tax dollars every year on federal contracts and he even has the president doing an infomercial on the South Lawn of the White House for one of his businesses. With Trump putting him in charge of so much, the public has a right to know all the business Musk and his various companies do with the federal government and to see his tax returns (especially since he’s looking at all of ours).
Social Security is not a welfare program. It is insurance that people pay into from the first time they go to work until they retire, when they expect to collect on their investment. It is a social contract with the government. It faces financial strain because more people are living longer, and the fund is running low.
The so-called reformers’ favorite response is to quote the Congressional Budget Office projection that the trust fund will be broke in 10 years, forcing a reduction in benefits. That’s not the answer nor is privatizing.
The solution is much simpler. Close the billionaire loophole. That’s the one that Musk, Trump, and their fellow billionaires – and millionaires – stopped paying into Social Security after making more than $176,100. In other words, their tax rate shrinks dramatically the richer they become. The answer is raising the ceiling and having everyone pay the same rate on all their income, especially those who can best afford it.
Take that one step further and broaden the categories of taxable income to include partnerships, interest and dividends, investment and rental income, and capital gains. With a measure of equality and fairness, the trust funds will be solvent into the next century and beyond.
But the billionaires running this government, and the millionaires who write the laws, and their wealthy friends and donors, don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes. Instead, they’ll once again try to kill Social Security – and other programs critical to so many Americans who are struggling to survive in a turbulent, uncertain economy – by a thousand cuts in funding and eligibility. The next election is less than 600 days away.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and a former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.