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Advocates Warn 'Musk Is Stealing Your Personal Social Security Data'
"There is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is. And my understanding is that it has already occurred," said the president of Social Security Works.
Feb 18, 2025
News that the acting head of the Social Security Administration left her post this past weekend after facing off with Elon Musk's lieutenants over their efforts to access government records set alarm bells blaring, with advocates warning that the unelected billionaire is moving to seize highly sensitive data.
"There is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is. And my understanding is that it has already occurred," said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy organization that warned late Monday that "Elon Musk is stealing your personal Social Security data."
The Washington Post and other outlets reported Monday that Michelle King, a veteran of the Social Security Administration (SSA), left her position over the weekend after clashing with members of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory commission known as DOGE that President Donald Trump has unleashed on federal agencies.
The New York Timesreported that King stepped down after Musk's cronies sought access to "an internal data repository that contains extensive personal information about Americans."
In King's place Trump installed Leland Dudek, described by the Post as a "manager in charge of Social Security's anti-fraud office," to lead the Social Security agency until a permanent commissioner is confirmed. SSA administers retirement benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for tens of millions of Americans.
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said in a statement that "there is no justifiable reason for Musk and DOGE to have access to Americans' deeply personal information."
"Seniors, people with disabilities, and Americans everywhere of good conscience should be on high alert," said Richtman. "When a dedicated public servant resigns after more than 30 years due to the intrusive activities of Elon Musk and DOGE, that truly is a 'canary in a coal mine' moment."
"If there is an evil intent to punish perceived enemies, someone could erase your earnings record, making it impossible to collect the Social Security and Medicare benefits you have earned."
Altman noted Monday that SSA "has data on everyone who has a Social Security number, which is virtually all Americans, everyone who has Medicare, and every low-income American who has applied for" SSI.
"SSA has comprehensive medical records of people who have applied for disability benefits. It has our bank information, our earnings records, the names and ages of our children, and much more," said Altman. "Older people are disproportionately susceptible to scams. The data at SSA leaking would make the number of scams skyrocket. And, if there is an intent to punish perceived enemies, someone could erase your earnings record, making it impossible to collect the Social Security and Medicare benefits you have earned."
Altman toldThe Associated Press that "if there is an evil intent to punish perceived enemies, someone could erase your earnings record, making it impossible to collect the Social Security and Medicare benefits you have earned."
Musk's team of dozens of staffers—many of whose identities are not publicly known—have infiltrated departments across the federal government with the stated goal of rooting out waste and fraud, which critics say is merely a pretext for gutting critical programs that Trump and the unelected billionaire oppose. On Monday, advocacy groups filed an emergency lawsuit aiming to stop DOGE from accessing taxpayer data from the Internal Revenue Service.
"Hundreds of millions of Americans across the nation file taxes and provide sensitive, personal information to the IRS and they do so knowing that Congress has put in place protections to safeguard their data. DOGE is taking a wrecking ball to these protections and harming hardworking Americans and small businesses in the process," saidSkye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward. "DOGE must not be permitted to trample on the American people's rights and that is why we are honored to represent our clients in this federal court challenge to put a stop to DOGE's lawless and harmful activities."
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office last week, Musk claimed without evidence that his team uncovered "crazy things" in a "cursory examination of Social Security."
"We've got people in there that are 150 years old," Musk said. "Now, do you know anyone who's 150? I don't, OK. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records."
Wiredreported that "computer programmers quickly claimed that the 150 figure was not evidence of fraud, but rather the result of a weird quirk of the Social Security Administration's benefits system, which was largely written in COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that undergirds SSA's databases as well as systems from many other U.S. government agencies."
"Because COBOL does not have a date type, some implementations rely instead on a system whereby all dates are coded to a reference point. The most commonly used is May 20, 1875, as this was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the 'Convention du Mètre,'" Wired explained. "These systems default to the reference point when a birth date is missing or incomplete, meaning all of those entries in 2025 would show an age of 150."
"That's just one possible explanation for what DOGE allegedly found," the outlet added. "Musk could also have simply looked up the SSA's own website, which explains that since September 2015 the agency has automatically stopped benefit payments when anyone reaches the age of 115."
Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland who served as SSA commissioner under the Biden administration, told the Post that Musk's team "will break" the Social Security system if they're given unfettered access.
"They will break it fast," O'Malley warned, "and there will be an interruption of benefits."
This story has been updated to include a statement from the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
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Kamala Harris is Fighting for Puerto Ricans. Donald Trump Is Mocking Them.
This is what’s on the ballot next Tuesday, not just policy and personnel, but decency and respect.
Oct 31, 2024
Last week, I traveled to Puerto Rico for the opening of a much-needed Social Security office in San Juan. There, I spoke at a forum marking the opening alongside Martin O’Malley, the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) appointed by the Biden-Harris administration.
After the previous office closed due to a private landlord evicting SSA, Puerto Ricans living in San Juan were forced to travel hours just to claim their earned Social Security benefits. Back in March, I first visited Puerto Rico, at the invitation of Puerto Rico Senator at Large William E. Villafañe, for a roundtable discussion and community meeting calling on the Biden-Harris administration to open a new office.
The administration listened to the people of Puerto Rico. Commissioner O’Malley and his team expedited the timeline for opening the new office, originally several years, to only five months. And O’Malley personally traveled to Puerto Rico to mark the opening of the new office.
At the forum, O’Malley called for an end to unequal treatment of Puerto Ricans, including a grievous injustice — their ineligibility for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), an anti-poverty program administered by the Social Security Administration.
A few days after the forum, Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden. His opening speaker, so-called comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, took the opportunity to call Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.” Hinchcliffe said the quiet part out loud: Trump and the people around him have no respect for Puerto Ricans, and don’t consider them real Americans.
In contrast, the opening of San Juan’s new Social Security office shows that the Biden-Harris administration is listening to Puerto Ricans. When O’Malley decided to prioritize reopening the office, he didn’t know that Puerto Rico was about to be all over the news. He just knew it was the right thing to do.
O’Malley’s term as Commissioner of Social Security ends in January. It’s highly likely that if elected President, Kamala Harris would reappoint him. Donald Trump would not. Instead, he’s likely to reinstate Andrew Saul (the commissioner during Trump’s first term, who used his position to attack Social Security’s workforce and make it harder for people with disabilities to get their earned benefits) or another handpicked crony.
This is what’s on the ballot next Tuesday, not just policy and personnel, but decency and respect. Donald Trump has spent days whining “it was only a joke.” What Trump forgets is that for it to be a joke, it has to be funny.
And there is nothing funny at all about calling Puerto Rico, the Isla del Encanto, a “floating island of garbage.”
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With Shutdown Averted, Is Social Security Safe? Nope!
More tax giveaways to the rich simply mean less revenue, higher deficits, and more justification for taking a meat cleaver to programs that serve and protect ordinary Americans.
Oct 23, 2023
Let’s talk Social Security. The government shutdown was averted (temporarily), so that’s a good thing, right? Trump is promising not to touch it. Benefits are not threatened, right?
Wrong. Social Security has a bullseye on its back. As descendants of the New Deal leaders who created it, we recognize the warning signs, and need to shout the alarm.
The right-wing hard-liners who fired House Speaker Kevin McCarthy—with no replacement anywhere in sight—are determined to balance the budget by reducing spending. The word “revenues” is an obscenity to them. And defense spending is sacred and untouchable.
For a sustainable Social Security—the most popular government program in America—taking revenues off the table is two things: 1) insanity, and 2) unshakeable Republican orthodoxy.
But even if they completely eliminated every single non-defense discretionary program—from food stamps to the FBI to border protection—it wouldn’t be enough. It would add up to about $900 billion, or about 15% of total federal spending, which would fall far short of balancing the budget. So their deficit-cutting zeal must inevitably turn to what is called mandatory spending, most prominently the largest government program of all, Social Security.
Republican presidential candidates are increasingly emboldened to touch this deadly “third rail” of American politics. Nikki Haley mocked other candidates for promising not to touch Social Security. Ron DeSantis wants to “revamp” it. Mike Pence wants to privatize it, turning it over to Wall Street and adding trillions to the national debt—to replace the New Deal with a “better deal.”
And although former President Donald Trump now swears he would never harm a hair on Social Security’s head, his history renders such assurances hollow. He has previously suggested that a second Trump term would mean cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Let’s not forget that his hugest unachieved social policy goal at the end of his presidency was the complete termination of Social Security’s principal funding source, the payroll tax.
Former Speaker McCarthy proposes a national commission to examine ways to cut Social Security. The 175 members of the House Republican Study Committee have released their proposed budget for fiscal 2024, which would cut benefits by one-third, essentially transforming Social Security from an earned insurance benefit into a subsistence-level welfare benefit.
Previous threats have included plans to sunset all mandatory spending every five years (brainchild of Senate GOP campaign chair Rick Scott), or even every single year (proposed by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson).
It’s true that Social Security will start having solvency problems by 2034 (according to the Social Security Administration), with retirees taking out more than current workers are putting in. To this, there are obviously only two solutions—cutting payout or increasing revenues. The Republicans in their budget acknowledge this, but they absolutely reject any whiff of the latter (here at 87-88).
For a sustainable Social Security—the most popular government program in America—taking revenues off the table is two things: 1) insanity, and 2) unshakeable Republican orthodoxy.
As Oliver Wendell Holmes counselled, revenues—i.e., taxes—“are the price we pay for civilized society.” And to fund our civilization, it’s obvious that those with the most money should pay their fair share. Americans are shocked that billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk can get away with paying zero in federal income taxes.
Let’s not forget that during FDR’s New Deal, which rescued the nation from the Great Depression and grew the great American middle class as never before, the tax rate on the richest Americans was 90%, up from 25% under previous Republican administrations, which produced nothing but a do-nothing government, the Gilded Age, and the Depression.
Taxing the 1% to indefinitely assure modest financial security for the 99% is blindingly logical and fair, and overwhelmingly popular.
So let’s make the rich pay more of their fair share for Social Security. Let’s start with eliminating the cap on earnings that are subject to the payroll tax. Currently, earnings over $160,200 are totally exempt from payroll taxes. That means that the CEO making $10 million stops paying the 6.2% payroll tax after the first week of the year, while his janitor pays 6.2% for the entire year. That’s an outrageous affront to ordinary working people throughout America.
Democrats in Congress are brimming with proposals to guarantee Social Security’s solvency for generations, without cutting benefits one iota. Nearly 200 House Democrats recently introduced a bill called Social Security 2100: A Sacred Trust, which would extend solvency for more than 40 years, expand benefits for most recipients, and even cut taxes for 23 million beneficiaries. It would fund this by imposing the 6.2% payroll tax on earned income above $400,000 (honoring Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on anyone with income under that level), and similarly taxing investment income above that level.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) recently held a hearing on a similar bill sponsored by him and Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), called Protecting Social Security for All: Making the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share, ensuring Social Security’s solvency for 75 years.
Most expansively, there’s a bill by Sens. Warren and Sanders and dozens of other Senate and House members, the Social Security Expansion Act. It would not only extend solvency for more than a century, by setting the threshold for payroll and investment tax at $250,000 of annual income (the wealthiest 7% in America), but would increase benefits for Social Security recipients by an average of $2,400 a year and help reduce the federal deficit by sending some of its investment-tax revenue to the general treasury.
Yet all these simple and sustainable fixes are supported only by Democrats. It makes one wonder: what fundamentally drives Republicans’ single-minded obsession with cutting Social Security? Is it hatred of the program itself—the largest component of federal expenditures, created by the greatest Democratic President ever, amid Republican cries of “socialism”?
Or is it hatred of the notion of raising taxes on anybody, even the most obscenely rich? After all, Republican Presidents from Reagan to Trump have delighted in cutting taxes for the rich, on the thoroughly debunked theory that the money would somehow “trickle down” to ordinary Americans. Trump and congressional Republicans have promised more of the same if they regain power. In fact, they blatantly label all taxes as pure theft (here, at p.20). They literally laugh at the notion of taxing the wealthiest Americans, even though voters of all political stripes overwhelmingly support it.
Suffice to say that the two obsessions are conjoined. More tax giveaways to the rich simply mean less revenue, higher deficits, and more justification for taking a meat cleaver to programs that serve and protect ordinary Americans.
Former Speaker McCarthy’s “commission” idea is just another prescription for slashing Social Security benefits, according to Sen. Ron Wyden, Chair of the Senate Committee responsible for Social Security. McCarthy himself acknowledged that all the “cutting,” including Social Security, would “make some people uncomfortable.” Indeed, polls show overwhelming opposition to his commission, and only 2% of Republicans support cutting Social Security.
As Republican President Dwight Eisenhower warned, there may be “a tiny splinter group” of politicians who want to mess with Social Security, but “their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
Taxing the 1% to indefinitely assure modest financial security for the 99% is blindingly logical and fair, and overwhelmingly popular. Yet not a single congressional Republican—even ones in districts that Biden won—is willing to support it.
FDR was called a “traitor to his class” when he forced the “economic royalists” and the “over-privileged” to pay their fair share for programs to help ordinary people struggling to get by. He responded that he “welcomed their hatred,” because he knew he was on the right side. Indeed, Social Security passed in 1935 with overwhelming bipartisan support, 372-33 in the House. We could use a bit of that courage and bipartisanship today.
Fortunately, America’s most beloved and beleaguered government program is finally going to get a true champion—an actual Senate-confirmed leader. In the two years since President Biden fired the misbegotten Trump-holdover leadership, the agency has suffered a drastic decline in staffing, funding, and morale. Facing daunting challenges both from within and without, Biden’s newly announced nominee, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, will need every ounce of his legendary administrative acumen, as well as a backbone of steel.
O’Malley should come out with guns blazing—demanding a solid long-term legislative fix, and driving a stake through Republicans’ insistence that President Biden is responsible for the looming solvency crisis.
The $33 trillion national debt is a product of spending by both parties over many decades. The far right’s sudden burn-it-all-down obsession with deficit spending, after four years of happily running up record deficits under a Republican President, is a reckless and hypocritical abdication of the duty to govern and serve the ordinary people of this country. It signals tough times ahead for Americans’ favorite government program. Our ancestors who created Social Security 88 years ago would work their butts off to protect and strengthen it.
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