SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
nancy altman
Official Installed by Trump Moves to 'Demolish' Social Security Administration
"This is nothing more than a backdoor benefit cut and an insult to Americans who have paid into the system and earned their Social Security—all to pay for trillions in new tax cuts for the wealthy," said Democratic Rep. John Larson.
Feb 27, 2025
The acting leader of the Social Security Administration reportedly instructed managers earlier this week to draw up plans for a 50% cut to the agency's workforce, a push that advocates and lawmakers said would result in the gutting or total closure of local field offices—and likely benefit disruptions.
The American Prospect first reported the request from Leland Dudek, whom Trump installed as SSA commissioner earlier this month after the agency's former head resigned following a clash with Elon Musk's deputies over their attempts to access highly sensitive personal data. At the time he was elevated to the helm of SSA, Dudek was under investigation for allegedly sharing information with Musk's team improperly.
According to the Prospect, the deadline for SSA managers to comply with Dudek's request for mass-firing plans was Wednesday afternoon.
"The decision could target one of the government's most prominent public-facing initiatives: SSA field offices, where seniors, people with disabilities, and survivors whose parents have died can sign up for benefits and get information," the outlet noted. "In an email to the Prospect, SSA would not confirm any reductions in its workforce beyond the abolition of two small internal offices announced this week... Sources have speculated to the Prospect that the terminations are being done piecemeal to avoid headlines of tens of thousands of jobs lost."
"Laying off half of the workforce at the Social Security Administration and shuttering field offices will mean the delay, disruption, and denial of benefits."
Nancy Altman, president of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, said in a statement Wednesday that Dudek's push for large-scale staff cuts shows the Trump administration and Elon Musk want to "demolish" SSA.
"Contrary to what Elon Musk and his acolytes may believe, AI chatbots are no substitute for in-person service from a human being," said Altman. "Americans apply for Social Security benefits at the most vulnerable times of their lives. Moreover, many people who seek information may have trouble articulating or even knowing what questions they need to ask."
"If Musk's plan goes through, it will deny many Americans access to their hard-earned Social Security benefits. Field offices around the country will close. Wait times for the 1-800 number will soar," Altman warned. "DOGE claims to be concerned about fraud, but the best way to detect fraud is through face-to-face contacts with humans who can detect suspicious responses and can read body language. It's not too late to stop this disaster. We urge everyone to call their members of Congress and tell them that local Social Security offices must stay open and fully staffed."
In the wake of the Prospect's story, Government Executivereported that five of the eight regional SSA commissioners "whose offices oversee and support the agency's frontline offices across the country" have decided to leave their posts at the end of this week amid the Trump administration's onslaught against the federal workforce.
"Their departures come amid rumors of impending staff cuts at SSA, where the workforce is already at a 50-year low and has toiled amid a customer service crisis born of lack of funding," Government Executive noted. "Decades of congressional neglect have seen the agency's administrative budget, which for decades sat at 1.2% of benefit outlays, shrink to under 1%."
The outlet added that "regional commissioners aren't the only ones leaving SSA. An unknown number of other employees are also leaving the agency, which shuttered its civil rights and transformation offices this week."
Martin O'Malley, the former Maryland governor who served as SSA commissioner under the Biden administration, wrote late Wednesday that "Social Security is being driven to a total system collapse."
"I give the DOGE kids and co-President Musk 30-90 days before they crater it to the point of interruption of benefits," O'Malley added.
Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), a champion of Social Security and vocal supporter of expanding benefits, said in a statement that "Donald Trump pledged no cuts to Social Security on the campaign trail, but now he and Elon Musk have plans to do exactly that."
"Let me be clear—laying off half of the workforce at the Social Security Administration and shuttering field offices will mean the delay, disruption, and denial of benefits," said Larson. "This is nothing more than a backdoor benefit cut and an insult to Americans who have paid into the system and earned their Social Security—all to pay for trillions in new tax cuts for the wealthy. This has nothing to do with 'governmental efficiency.'"
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Outrageous Lies': Claiming Fraud, Trump Floats Kicking Millions Off Social Security
"They are laying the groundwork for denying benefits to anyone they want to punish or deem unworthy—or indeed, any one of us," said the president of Social Security Works.
Feb 19, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump launched his latest threat against Social Security on Tuesday under the guise of combating fraud, floating the possibility of stripping benefits from "millions of people" as Elon Musk's lieutenants infiltrate the agency that administers the nation's most effective anti-poverty program.
"The good thing about Social Security and what I read is if you take all of those numbers off because they're obviously fraudulent or incompetent... all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people 80 and 70 and 90 but not 200 [years old]."
"We have millions and millions of people over 100 years old" who are receiving Social Security payments, Trump continued.
The Republican president did not provide any evidence for his claim of substantial fraud in the Social Security program, which provides benefits to roughly 70 million Americans. Musk has similarly claimed, without evidence, that "tens of millions of people [are] marked in Social Security as 'ALIVE' when they are definitely dead."
Watch Trump's comments:
Trump: We have millions and millions of people over 100 years old. Everybody knows that's not so. We have a very corrupt country, a very corrupt country. The good thing about Social Security and what I read is if you take all of those numbers off because they're obviously… pic.twitter.com/OwwxJ6difQ
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 18, 2025
A 2024 report from SSA's inspector general found that just 0.84% of the $8.6 trillion in Social Security benefits paid out between 2015 and 2022 were dispensed improperly. Trump recently fired the SSA inspector general, along with more than a dozen other agency watchdogs.
Nancy Altman, president of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, told Common Dreams on Wednesday that Trump's remarks about purported Social Security fraud were "outrageous lies."
"Social Security has vanishingly small amounts of fraud, which are generally quickly uncovered when the agency is adequately funded," said Altman. "Trump and Musk are intentionally undermining confidence in our Social Security system. They are laying the groundwork for denying benefits to anyone they want to punish or deem unworthy—or indeed, any one of us."
On Tuesday, Fox News aired a joint interview with Trump and Musk in which the president pledged that "Social Security won't be touched... other than if there's fraud or something."
"We're going to find it," Trump added.
"Musk’s baseless claims of massive fraud are a poorly disguised pretext to cut benefits for seniors to pay for his giant tax cut."
The Associated Pressreported that "over the past few days, President Donald Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk have said on social media and in press briefings that people who are 100, 200, and even 300 years old are improperly getting benefits—a 'HUGE problem,' Musk wrote."
But AP noted that "as of September 2015, the agency automatically stops payments to people who are older than 115 years old."
The outlet added that "part of the confusion comes from Social Security's software system based on the COBOL programming language, which has a lack of date type. This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago."
Trump's latest attack on the Social Security system came after the SSA's acting commissioner resigned this past weekend over a clash with Musk lieutenants who sought access to highly sensitive Social Security data.
Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement Tuesday that "despite President Trump's promise not to touch Social Security, Elon Musk has gained access to the system that cuts your grandmother's Social Security check and is wreaking havoc."
"Musk's baseless claims of massive fraud," Jacquez added, "are a poorly disguised pretext to cut benefits for seniors to pay for his giant tax cut."
Keep ReadingShow Less
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.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular