It only took two months for Trump and Musk to break Social Security
President Donald Trump and co-President Elon Musk's cuts to the Social Security Administration's workforce and operations have caused massive problems for the popular social safety net program that 73 million Americans depend on to afford their basic cost of living.
The Washington Post published a bombshell report on Tuesday, detailing the problems Musk has caused at the Social Security Administration through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
From the report:
The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts because the servers were overloaded. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones at the front desk as receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. But the agency no longer has a system to monitor customers’ experience with these services, because that office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk.[…]
The turmoil is leaving many retirees, disabled claimants and legal immigrants who need Social Security cards with less access or shut out of the system altogether, according to those familiar with the problems.
The problems are thanks to a myriad of choices Musk has made to how the agency runs.
The Social Security Administration plans to cut roughly 7,000 employees—or 12% of its workforce—which current and former Social Security officials say could make it impossible for the program to keep up with the needs of the tens of millions of Americans who receive and apply for benefits annually.
“Everything they have done so far is breaking the agency’s ability to serve the public,” Martin O’Malley, who served as Social Security commissioner under former President Joe Biden, told The New York Times.
Musk and his DOGE bros also changed the way recipients can verify their identities to the agency, nixing the ability to do so over the phone and requiring the elderly and disabled people who receive benefits to do it either online or in-person. That’s an incredible burden for a population that is not as computer literate as others. It could also burden recipients who live in rural areas or areas with poor internet access. Going in person would be even more of a burden since many elderly and disabled recipients cannot travel to offices—if they could even get an appointment.
A memo obtained by the newsletter Popular Information said the new identity-verification procedure would lead an additional 75,000 to 85,000 weekly visits to agency offices. In turn, that would lead to “longer wait times and processing times,” the memo said. Already, wait times for appointments can be more than a month.
Musk has had it out for Social Security since his buddy Trump put him in charge of finding waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.
Musk criticized the social safety net program as a “Ponzi scheme.” He lied that the program is rife with fraud—lies that have led eligible people to lose benefits. He also helped force out the acting Social Security administrator and replace him Leland Dudek, an unqualified hothead who has acted vindictively since taking over.
For example, Dudek canceled a contract that allowed new parents in Maine to apply for Social Security numbers for their newborn infants at the hospital—a move that would have forced those parents to travel to a Social Security office to obtain. He seemingly did it to punish Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat who stood up to Trump at a meeting with governors.
Dudek also threatened to shut the entire Social Security Administration down because he was mad that a judge blocked DOGE officials from accessing Americans’ sensitive personal information as they sought to prove Musk’s baseless lies that the agency is rife with fraud.
Musk isn’t the only Trump administration official attacking Social Security.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick disparaged the program and accused anyone who has had problems receiving benefits as being "fraudsters."
"Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who's 94, she wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't. She thinks something got messed up and she'll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling, and complaining. And all the guys who did PayPal, like Elon knows this by heart, right? Anybody who's been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen,” Lutnick—who is a billionaire and could easily ensure his mother-in-law wouldn’t face financial ruin if her Social Security check went missing—said on a podcast.
Musk’s attacks on the overwhelmingly popular social safety net program goes against Trump’s claim that he would protect Social Security if elected.
And breaking Social Security is politically moronic. It is one of the most popular programs in the country.
Eighty-seven percent of Americans ages 25 and older believe that Social Security should be a priority for the nation, regardless of governmental budget deficits, according to an October 2023 poll from Greenwald Research for the National Institute on Retirement Security, a nonpartisan research organization. And a more recent poll, conducted by Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that 67% of Americans believed the government spends too little on Social Security. Only 6% said too much is spent on the program.
What’s more, older voters who receive Social Security benefits are among the most reliable voting blocs in the country. That means a backlash from those voters could sink Republicans chances in the 2026 midterm elections. In 2024, Trump won voters ages 65 and older by just 1 percentage point, according to exit polls, so even a modest backlash from that voting group could heavily damage Republicans next November.
And the signs that the backlash is coming are already showing up. Older voters are packing into Republican lawmakers’ town halls to demand they stand up to Musk’s DOGE cuts.