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Sanders Warns Musk's Call for $700 Billion in Cuts Is a 'Prelude' to Social Security Privatization
"Why do you lie so much about Social Security? To get people to lose faith in the system, and then you can give it over to Wall Street," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Mar 11, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders warned late Monday that billionaire Elon Musk's new call for up to $700 billion in cuts to mandatory federal spending is an alarming step in the direction of Social Security privatization, a longstanding—and deeply unpopular—goal of right-wing politicians and corporate-funded think tanks.
Musk, who is spearheading a large-scale assault on federal agencies and workers, told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow on Monday that "waste and fraud" in "entitlement spending"—a category that includes Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—is "the big one to eliminate," estimating that up to $700 billion could be cut from such programs.
It's not clear where Musk, who has lied repeatedly about Social Security in recent weeks, got the $700 billion figure. As Rolling Stone's Andrew Perez noted, "There is no expert on the planet who thinks there is $700 billion worth of annual fraud in America's safety net programs."
"Musk at one point in the interview cited a Government Accountability Office report which estimated that the government may lose between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, but that report covered the whole of the federal government—not just those programs," Perez wrote.
A 2024 report from the Social Security Administration's inspector general found that of the $8.6 trillion in Social Security benefits paid out between 2015 and 2022, roughly $71.8 billion was dispensed improperly—0.84% of the total.
"I think this is a prelude not only to cutting benefits, but to privatizing Social Security itself. I think that's in the back of their mind."
Musk also baselessly claimed that mandatory federal spending on programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is a "mechanism by which the Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants, by essentially paying them to come here and then turning them into voters." (In reality, undocumented immigrants pay taxes that help finance Social Security and Medicare but cannot receive benefits from the programs.)
Sanders (I-Vt.) couldn't hide his disgust when he was asked during a CNN appearance to respond to Musk's remarks.
"Well, he has called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. They have already laid off 2,500 employees of the Social Security Administration," said Sanders. "If you ask me, I think this is a prelude not only to cutting benefits, but to privatizing Social Security itself. I think that's in the back of their mind."
"Why do you lie so much about Social Security? Why do you make it look like it's a broken, dysfunctional system?" Sanders asked. "The reason is to get people to lose faith in the system, and then you can give it over to Wall Street. That's my view."
Musk's latest attack on Social Security, a remarkably efficient program that has never missed a payment, came as his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has effectively taken over the Social Security Administration (SSA) and is pushing for massive cuts to the agency's staff and budget based on egregious lies.
"Appearing to misread a chart, for example, Musk said on social media in February that DOGE had identified payments to 'tens of millions' of deceased Americans—an incorrect assertion repeated by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt," The Washington Postreported last week.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees—a union engaged in a legal fight against the Trump administration's purge of the federal workforce—wrote Monday that Musk's latest comments show that he "doesn't just want to cut the SSA workforce."
"He wants to eliminate Social Security entirely," Kelley added.
Joel Payne, chief communications officer at MoveOn Civic Action, said in a statement Tuesday that "Elon Musk and the Trump-led Republican Party are promising exactly what they have been trying to do for years: gut Social Security."
"Republicans want to illegally fire tens of thousands of workers responsible for making sure American seniors get their Social Security and then let Musk take his chainsaw to our benefits," said Payne. "We won't let them do it. Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Republicans need to keep their hands off our Social Security."
The progressive advocacy group Social Security Works sounded a similarly defiant note.
"Elon Musk is a conman and a criminal, born with an emerald mine instead of a moral compass," the group wrote on social media. "Of course he wants to destroy Social Security, because he can't get his tiny greedy fingers on it any other way. HELL NO!"
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To Fight Trump 2.0, Everyone 'Needs to Become an Organizer'
"Just last week we had to cap a phonebank for the first time ever because of how many people RSVPed," said a spokesperson for the Working Families Party, which has seen a bump in the number of people interested in their work.
Feb 24, 2025
Grassroots protests organized nationwide. Federal workers finding community online and mobilizing through a new entity called the Federal Unionists Network. A bump in the number of people joining the Democratic Socialists of America and other groups. Rallies in front of federal agency buildings.
It might not look the same as "the resistance" of 2017, but these are just some of the examples of how communities are coming together to fight the second Trump administration's attacks.
Speaking on a podcast episode with Greg Sargent of The New Republic that aired Monday, Leah Greenberg—the co-founder of the grassroots progressive network Indivisible—said that "every month since November, we've broken the record for new Indivisible groups formed" and "we've had massive surges of people showing up locally all over the country."
While shock was the "dominant emotion in 2016," which translated into big mobilizing moments such as the 2017 Women's March, this time around "people weren't shocked anymore...[and] a lot of people understood instinctively that the way out of this was going to be the deeper forms of organizing," said Greenberg.
Ashik Siddique, a co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, echoed this sentiment. DSA is "really trying to find tangible, sustained ways to plug people in and not just be totally reactive," he told Common Dreams. Overall DSA membership has swelled 10% since November 2024, Siddique said, and the group has seen success channeling energies around targeted issues like protecting trans rights.
The Working Families Party, a progressive political party, has also seen a "significant bump" in the people interested in their work since the election, according to Ravi Mangla, WFP's national press secretary.
"Just last week we had to cap a phonebank for the first time ever because of how many people RSVPed," Mangla told Common Dreams.
But the focus on durable organizing does not mean that there hasn't been energy around galvanizing mass mobilization. On February 5, nationwide demonstrations that were a part of "Movement 50501,"—a decentralized rapid response to the "anti-democratic, destructive, and, in many cases, illegal actions" being undertaken by the Trump administration—took place in locations such as Philadelphia; Lansing, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; Austin, Texas; Jefferson, Missouri, and elsewhere.
Other protests have take place in the streets of Los Angeles to protest the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, at Tesla stores, and in front of federal agency buildings that have been targeted by the Trump administration and Elon Musk's advisory body the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
On February 10, hundreds of protestors gathered outside the office of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency dedicated to protecting consumers from unfair financial practices, following a directive from the Trump administration that all agency staff stay home. Indivisible, WFP, and a third progressive group, MoveOn, also organized a rally that drew over 1,000 people in front of the Treasury Department building in early February in response to DOGE efforts to infiltrate the agency.
Lawmakers in Republican districts have also been feeling some heat. At a recent town hall in Roswell, Georgia, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) was booed and catcalled while he answered sharp questions about the Trump administration's actions. In one of the tensest exchanges, a speaker pressed McCormick on personnel cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Trump administration's attacks on the federal workforce have made federal employee unions an important source of resistance to the White House and moves made by DOGE. A number of the administration's measures have been challenged in court by federal employee unions, and unions more generally.
Federal workers, many of whom have relied on the Reddit page for federal employees r/fednews to find solidarity and share information, also sounded the alarm at over 30 "Save Our Services" rallies around the country last week, including in New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Denver, Boston, Boise, Chattanooga, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., according to the publication Labor Notes. The protests were organized by the Federal Unionists Network(FUN), an informal association of unionists who are working to strengthen existing federal unions and build solidarity across the federal sector of the labor movement.
"Everybody right now and for the weeks or months or whatever it takes needs to become an organizer," Chris Dols, the president of IFTPE Local 98 at the Army Corps of Engineers and a leader in the Federal Unionists Network, toldLabor Notes.
"If you're a federal employee and you don't know what your union is, get involved with FUN, we'll help you figure it out," Dols said. "If you don't have a union, we'll help you learn how to organize one."
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Dems Reportedly Angry That Progressives Are Pushing Them to Act Like an Opposition Party
"Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are architects of the crisis that allowed Trump's fascism to arise and succeed," argued one progressive organizer. "They have zero credibility to be leading the fights we face today."
Feb 12, 2025
House Democratic lawmakers reportedly used a closed-door meeting earlier this week to vent their frustrations with progressive advocacy groups that have been driving constituent calls and pressuring the party to act like a genuine opposition force in the face of the Trump administration's authoritarian assault on federal agencies and key programs.
Citing unnamed sources, including a senior House Democrat, Axiosreported Tuesday that the private meeting "included a gripe-fest" directed at "groups like MoveOn and Indivisible," which have "facilitated thousands of phone calls to members' offices" and pressured the party to use its considerable power to disrupt business as usual in Congress, including by opposing all unanimous consent requests from the Republican majority.
The unnamed senior House Democrat told Axios that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is "very frustrated" with the progressive organizations, which have urged people across the country to contact their Democratic representatives and pressure them to fight harder against the Trump administration and their Republican allies.
Britt Jacovich, a spokesperson for MoveOn, told Axios that "our member energy is high and this won't be the last any office hears from everyday Americans who want us to fight harder to push back."
Let's be clear: We are not going anywhere. We are committed to this fight, come hell or high water.
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— MoveOn (@moveon.org) February 11, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Reports of internal Democratic frustrations with grassroots progressives come days after Jeffries questioned the leverage his caucus has to stop the Trump administration and unelected billionaire Elon Musk from imposing their will on the federal government.
"They control the House, the Senate, and the presidency," Jeffries told reporters late last week. "It's their government."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), meanwhile, has said Democrats are "not going to go after every single issue" in the fight against President Donald Trump.
"We are picking the most important fights and lying down on the train tracks on those fights," Schumer toldThe New York Times earlier this month.
That's not the kind of all-out confrontational approach that rank-and-file Democrats clearly want from their elected representatives. According to a CBS News/YouGov survey released earlier this week, 65% of Democratic voters want the party to "'oppose Trump as much as possible," up from 46% in January.
The poll also found that just 16% of Democratic voters have "a lot" of confidence that congressional Democrats "can oppose Trump effectively."
"Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are architects of the crisis that allowed Trump's fascism to arise and succeed," progressive organizer Aaron Regunberg wrote Tuesday. "They have zero credibility to be leading the fights we face today—not in their record, their competency, or their recent performance. Quite simply, they have to go."
"Forcing recorded votes is possible. Frequent quorum calls are possible. A wide variety of dilatory motions are possible. In short, harassing the majority is possible. If they think it's a bad idea, say so. If they say it's not possible, they're lying."
Andy Craig, director of election policy at the Rainey Center, urged Americans to keep up the calls to Democratic lawmakers, noting that progressive demands "are 100% doable."
"Objecting to unanimous consents is possible," Craig wrote early Wednesday. "Forcing recorded votes is possible. Frequent quorum calls are possible. A wide variety of dilatory motions are possible. In short, harassing the majority is possible. If they think it's a bad idea, say so. If they say it's not possible, they're lying."
Times editorial board member Mara Gay noted in a column earlier this week that both Schumer and Jeffries "have struggled to shed the familiar rhythms of business as usual" even amid Trump's lawless onslaught, which experts say has sparked a full-blown constitutional crisis.
On Tuesday, Senate Democrats did not object to a GOP unanimous consent request to advance the confirmation process for Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's pick to serve as Director of National Intelligence.
"Holy shit. Schumer and the Senate Democrats couldn't object to a basic UC (unanimous consent) time agreement to slow down a nominee like Gabbard?" progressive strategist Murshed Zaheed asked late Tuesday. "Disgraceful and humiliating surrender from these Democrats as they continue to hit your inboxes and messages begging (spamming) for money."
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