The future of Social Security is on the line. Nancy Altman, president and co-founder of Social Security Works, has “never been this worried” about the future of the program. Meanwhile, Martin O’Malley, commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) from 2023 to 2024, is warning that Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s steps to hollow out SSA will result in a “system collapse” in the next 30 to 90 days.
NANCY ALTMAN; lbenesch@socialsecurityworks.org
Altman is president of Social Security Works.
Americans across the political spectrum care about Social Security. Yet, Altman wrote for The People United, Musk and Trump are “seeking to discredit Social Security” by spreading “long-debunked lies” about fraud in the system. Social Security fraud is extremely rare, yet Musk and Trump have already eliminated Social Security’s Inspector General. They have also terminated the leases on 1,200 of Social Security’s field offices. Five of eight regional commissioners have left or been dismissed from their positions.
Altman told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “This is a war on seniors, but it is also a war on workers and people with disabilities and America. Trump ran very aggressively on not cutting Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. There is a lot of reason to be extremely skeptical of that claim.
“Social Security is so popular across the ideological spectrum. MAGA voters don’t want to see Social Security cut. Thus, the administration is working to undermine confidence and convince the public that SSA is rife with fraud––even though it’s 99.7 percent accurate. The other 0.3 percent is overpayment and underpayment, and those overpayments get clawed back. The administration is also working to destabilize the agency, by closing field offices and hollowing out the agency, making Social Security so destabilized that they can hope to get rid of it. Some of that is being done in the name of fraud that doesn’t exist.
“Social Security is supposed to provide, in addition to monetary benefits, the intangible benefit of security. If you became so disabled you can’t work, then Social Security is there; if you have the good fortune of living to 110, Social Security will be there for you. Convincing the public that it won’t be there for you or that it’s all rife with fraud––that creates anxiety for people. These benefits are important to the vast majority of Americans; for two in three retirees, Social Security benefits make up more than half their income. These lies undermine what the program is supposed to do.
“Currently, there are three ways that people interact with SSA. First, they can go into one of the 1,200 field offices around the country. In rural districts, those offices can be hard to get to; there used to be mobile stations where employees would drive to rural areas. Because of administrative cuts, those mobile stations are gone. People can also interact with SSA by phone, but because the agency is understaffed, the phones have longer wait times or calls get dropped. The third way is online. If you’re concerned about fraud, the fraud that does occur tends to occur online and is then caught in field offices. The administration wants people to move online, though some rural areas don’t even have broadband. They are also certainly opening up the possibility of fraud, with the way they have been handling the personal data of every American. Tiffany Flick, a former acting chief of staff, wrote a 13-page declaration detailing how DOGE’s actions are opening the door to bad actors and fraud. If you’re concerned about fraud, you don’t fire the Inspector General whose job it is to find fraud.
“The current acting head of the agency has been very active. DOGE is calling the shots, but they are doing reorganization, and they are doing it in a chaotic way. They consolidated, for instance, 10 regional offices down to four; the people in those offices weren’t told where to report or whether they still had a job. They also eliminated the Office of Civil Rights, which is where people file a complaint if they are discriminated against. Those workers weren’t told what to do with their pending cases or where people are supposed to go if they are discriminated against.
“These actions create so much waste, but they are also abusive to employees and to the American people. System collapse is a very real threat because of improper maintenance and the hollowing out of the agency. … Those are federal employees, but the people who will pay the price will be the American people.”