Posted on 03/20/2025 6:39:51 AM PDT by Red Badger
Senate Republicans want Elon Musk to stop talking about Social Security, and the Department of Government Efficiency to leave it alone.
Musk’s statement that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” and his plans to cut up to 12 percent of the Social Security Administration’s workforce, are giving GOP lawmakers heartburn.
They warn that Social Security reform is known as the “third rail” of politics for a reason: Any party that touches it is likely to get zapped come Election Day.
And Republicans fear that reductions in staff and field offices will boomerang on them, predicting constituents will grow frustrated if it becomes more difficult and time-consuming to address problems related to benefit claims.
“It doesn’t help the president when you have somebody who clearly is not worried about whether or not Social Security benefits are going to be there for him” leading the effort to shrink the Social Security Administration, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), referring to Musk, the world’s richest person.
“It worries Americans all over the country,” she said of people who rely on Social Security benefits to live day to day. “This is why Social Security has been kind of viewed as the untouchable from a political perspective, and why the president made very clear we’re not dealing with Social Security.”
She said Musk’s claim that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” and rife with fraud “doesn’t do anything to calm the anxiety of people who are already anxious about what’s going on with some of the safety-net programs.”
Musk declared “Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” during a three-hour interview with Joe Rogan this month.
And Monday, he claimed without evidence that immigrants who are living in the country illegally are reaping fraudulent benefits from both Social Security and Medicare.
“By using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants,” Musk said on Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) podcast, accusing Democrats of buying voters.
“Basically bring in 10 [million], 20 million people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and will vote overwhelmingly Democrats, as has been demonstrated in California,” he said.
Several other Republican senators said Musk should stop talking about Social Security and steer his budget-cutting team at DOGE in a different direction.
“He should zip it on that. It’s not helpful. It plays right into Democrats’ hands; they want to talk about Social Security cuts, Medicare cuts, Medicaid cuts. We don’t. The president does not want to talk about that. He’s against all those things,” said a Republican senator who requested anonymity to voice frustration about Musk’s rhetoric on Social Security.
The senator said it would be OK to talk about cracking down on fraud in the system but warned “when you start making it sound like you’re questioning the foundation of the Social Security system, that’s not helpful.”
In an interview with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow earlier this month, Musk suggested that $500 billion to $700 billion in waste could be cut from federal entitlement programs.
“Most of the federal spending is entitlements,” he said. “That’s the big one to eliminate.”
Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, said Musk’s statements about Social Security are becoming a political liability for Republicans.
“Going after the United States Institute of Peace is one thing, going after Social Security is something entirely different. It’s really poking a stick into a hornet’s nest,” he said.
“The ironies of a person of such immense wealth targeting a program that provides a modest benefit to ordinary people as the worst possible aura about it,” he said.
Musk’s comments gave Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) something to talk about last week when Senate Democrats were deeply divided over a House-passed government funding bill.
Schumer last week repeatedly assailed Musk’s comments on Social Security and accused the Trump administration of harboring plans to cut the popular program.
“Elon Musk is saying it plainly: Republicans’ big goal is to ‘eliminate,’ his words, Social Security and Medicare benefits,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
“Are Senate Republicans fine with the terrible things Elon Musk and DOGE are doing to Social Security? Do they agree with Mr. Musk that it’s one giant scam?” he asked.
The White House issued a press release last week in response to the controversy over Musk’s comments declaring: “The Trump Administration will not cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits.”
The latest belt-tightening move was announced Tuesday, when Leland Dudek, the Social Security Administration acting commissioner, announced the agency will require millions of recipients and applicants to visit field offices personally instead of calling in to resolve issues over the phone.
In addition, dozens of Social Security Administration field offices across the country are scheduled to close as part of a broader effort by DOGE to shrink the federal government’s footprint.
A second Republican senator who requested anonymity to comment on Musk’s focus on Social Security said DOGE should stay away from the programs, warning that cutting staff and field offices will likely impact beneficiaries, including thousands of seniors, across the country.
“This Congress — Republicans and Democrats — is not going to modify Social Security, it’s not going away. I guess Elon Musk is talking for Elon Musk, because he’s not talking for people in the Congress who have something to do with the future of Social Security,” the lawmaker said. “It’s part of our country and society, here to stay.”
The GOP senator acknowledged, however, Musk “is not going to be quiet,” despite the broad hope within the Republican conference that he would drop the topic.
The source said while “there are positions within every department and agency that ought to be looked at,” Musk’s shoot-from-the-hip approach toward cuts is causing concern on Capitol Hill and back at home.
“What needs to take place is analysis of the task, the mission, the goals, the outcome of what the department or agency is supposed to do, and then right-size the workforce. In some instances, it may mean more employees, if you did it right, and in lots of places it may mean some fewer,” the senator said.
Murkowski said the Social Security Administration is hard-pressed to meet Alaskans’ needs because it only has one field office in her state.
“Our challenge in Alaska is we are remote. We have fought to maintain a Social Security office, one office in the whole state,” she said. “We had to fight to get it back.
“Now, because of all the pressures on it in terms of demand, what you have is, people are no longer able to walk into the Social Security office. They have to call to get an appointment. The wait time then to get an appointment is really discouraging,” she said.
“It’s been really hard. When you suggest that we need to reduce the number of folks that are answering call lines, that are responding to congressional offices like ours, I can tell you it’s not going to go over well,” she warned.
Don’t know much about him other than he paints his fingernails and wears a mask while working outside. He’s about 50 years younger than me. I called him Mike once...he snapped back, “My name is Michael”. I cannot reason or converse with this individual.
SS should go back to being a retirement mechanism and nothing else.
That shows he’s mentally ill right there.
My name is the same and I would never ever snap at anyone for that. In fact I use it myself to refer to myself..............
People worry it will lead to deeper cuts.
Chuck Schumer is roundly hated by everyone. The idiots at the Hill are throwing out a lead life preserver to hopefully keep Schumer afloat. Clowns are everywhere.
You’ve been here all these years as a contributing FReeper and you think Trump is going to “cut social security?”
No I don’t. Try brushing up on your reading comprehension skills.
Social Security payments are in two categories:
- old age (retirement) approx. 86% of total payments
- not old age (welfare, injuries, disabilities, unemployables) approx. 14% of total payments
Old Age (retirement) payments are calculated by the gov’t and due, respecting basic info: age, retirement status, what you put into the system (social security taxes).
Not-OA payments are calculated by the gov’t based upon a variety of info that can be a complex mess accumulated from a variety of inputs.
The latter, Not-OA situation, is where there usually exists room for errors.
Okay I read your post again. You agree with RINO Murkowski so you’re just stupid I guess.
Okay, genius.
Senate Republicans want Elon Musk to stop talking about Social Security.
Musk found their gold mine
Like all Ponzi schemes it has an end.
I’m sure it will but perhaps not before the 2026 midterms.
Their real Gold Mine is Welfare (EBT, SNAP, WIC, ETC) Fraud.................
If you have had the misfortune to visit a Social Security Office you will have experienced the inefficiency that is the hallmark of the agency. Many of the staff are obvious DEI hires, the computer systems are archaic and the whole atmosphere of the place reeks with almost despair. Time for a change.
Check dots connected everything is on the table is for the taking.
PS Could you please stop screaming your screen name at all of us?
The Senate is a snake pit.
It is the stronghold of the uniparty although the judicial branch is giving it a run for its money.
Murkowski and Collins take TOO much heat.
Do NOT be fooled, they speak out because they have “safe” seats.
They are speaking for a MAJORITY of the Republican wing of the uniparty senate caucus.
Again, the Senate is a snake pit.
NEVER forget Schumer and Goober Grahamnesty met with Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch at the Palm Restaurant to convince Rush Limbaugh to stop using the term amnesty to describe the so-called “comprehensive” bill on illegal immigration reform.
Limbaugh of course declined to meet their “demands” and I assume that his relationship with Ailes who invited him to this ambush was never the same.
“ Like all Ponzi schemes it has an end.
I’m sure it will but perhaps not before the 2026 midterms.”
If anyone knows how to ease us off of a Pnzi scheme, if that’s what exactly to call this, it is the ultimate money manager himself, Trump
Pay no attention to Musk on this.
Social Security was always a Ponzi scheme, and it is actuarially bankrupt. As it stands now, Social Security is rapidly exhausting its fictional “trust fund,” which was never anything more than a special category of off-budget debt to sidestep OMB and CBO accounting rules. Debt is free when you “owe it to yourself,” when you can attribute non-existent interest “to yourself” in a fictitious shadow account, and it never actually has to be paid out. But when the tipping point is reached and the SSA starts to draw on it, there is nothing there. All that happens is that off-budget debt gets rolled into on-budget debt.
Anyhow, under current law, Social Security will be capable of paying only about 70 percent of promised benefits when the fictitious trust fund reaches zero. Anywhere but the fedgov, this would be called “bankruptcy.” Since Social Security operates in the land of disinformation, it is not bankrupt; it is a “sacred intergenerational compact,” which means our children and grandchildren will be stuck with the bill.
Our children and grandchildren should just say no. Cut benefits across the board by 30 percent. This has been locked into the math for generations. There is no extenuation for people who have willingly closed their eyes and listened to the liars. I am sympathetic to those who have been raising Cain about this for many years, but there is no way to sift the wheat from the chaff. Cut benefits by 30 percent and be done with it. But this is assuming that we have enough children and grandchildren for them to be politically relevant. The democrat plan is to replace our descendants with successor populations from all over the world, and why anyone should expect armies of brown, black, and asian newcomers to tax themselves up to the eyeballs to support our retirements is beyond me.
Of course, there have always been offramps. There still are, but they get more difficult with each passing year. And the costs go up, the costs being the political necessity of amortizing the unfunded liabilities of the Ponzi scheme.
Democrats will want to protect benefits by raising taxes. But Social Security has always been a dead loss for many people, and a major loss for huge numbers of people who die before recovering even as much as they paid into the system. Since SS has no real underlying assets, it creates no inheritable wealth. Sucks to be you, chump. Raising taxes simply increases the planned loss in a system that is already the money-losing portion of people’s retirement strategies is stupid. Given the choice, no one brighter than a cabbage and under the age of 50 would stay in Social Security. Of course, there are a lot of people who aren’t as bright as a cabbage, who get their news from MSNBC and TikTok, and who continue to vote for the party of Chuck Schumer. They deserve what they are voting for, but in a compulsory system, they can take the rest of us down with them.
Republicans have taken runs at this issue from time to time but have never gotten enough traction to get serious reforms through Congress. In recent decades, Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America pubbies were pushing the idea and had apparently opened some talks with BillyJeff. But then Clinton turned hard left because he needed democrat cover for his accumulating scandals, and any serious SS reform was scuttled. George W. Bush grabbed the third rail on SS and the Medicare/Medicaid mess, but he ran into a democrat stone wall on the Hill. GWB at least demonstrated that it was not suicidal to approach the issue; he ran with privatization of SS and market oriented reform of health insurance in his platform, and he won.
Trump was leading a populist crusade and has walked away from any semblance of fiscal sanity on entitlement reform. If Musk can lead Trump to do a reality check, that would be a great thing, but I don’t see any indication that this is likely. With regard to current spending, Trump reminds me of Ross Perot, who was going to get the experts together and check under the hood. How’s that for a plan? Trump’s extra special MAGA Sauce is that he promises to grow the beautiful economy so stupendously, amazingly fast that deficits and unfunded liabilities won’t matter. That may appeal to people who are drunk on hopium, but it is nonsense.
DOGE? Well, there are a lot of useful cuts that can be made, and projected over the ten year costing horizon, DOGE may generate projected savings of hundreds of billions, perhaps a trillion or two, over the 10 year OMB planning horizon. That sounds impressive to the hopium addicts and it can be used to make smoke, but the reality is that we have been borrowing two trillion a year, every year, and nothing that DOGE is proposing will do more than marginally reduce the speed at which the debt is compounding.
DOGE is targeting discretionary domestic spending. Fine. The fedgov is overlayered and has many programs that can and should be terminated. It also has things we want to save, like air traffic controllers, federal meat inspectors in the packing plants, the U.S. Park Service, etc., so we have to sort that out. But domestic discretionary spending is now about 20 percent of the federal budget, and it is the part of the federal government which is not growing, at least in real terms. It has actually been shrinking in budget share for decades. We could zero it out entirely and still not solve the problem.
The rest of the budget? Glad you asked. The rest of the federal budget is Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, defense, and debt service, and defense has been shrinking sharply in budget share since the height of the Cold War. Prior to LBJ and the Great Society, defense was half of federal spending. Today? Hahahahahaha. If you want to balance the federal budget, entitlements are where we have to look.
You can get drunk on hopium, or you can look at the numbers.
Amen
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