The Republican Shutdown is a Threat to Social Security

Republicans control the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Yet despite this unified control, they are steering us towards a wasteful, destructive government shutdown.

Though Democrats don’t control the government, they are committed to protecting Americans’ access to health care. Republicans are trying to bully them, but Democratic leaders are standing strong. They have told Trump and his MAGA allies in Congress that they want to protect Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act as part of any budget bill.

Democrats are also fighting to reverse the devastating cuts that Elon Musk’s DOGE made to the Social Security Administration and other critical government programs. They refuse to vote for a budget that enshrines those cuts into law. They will vote for a budget that helps working people, but not for one that only benefits the ultra-wealthy.

While Republicans are saying they don’t want a shutdown, their actions show otherwise. Trump and his allies are refusing to even meet with Democratic leaders. They are determined to rip away Americans’ health care and make their earned benefits inaccessible. Indeed, they are willing to shut down the government, rather than give an inch.

A prolonged Republican government shutdown could easily become the straw that breaks the camel’s back at the Social Security Administration.

Republicans have already cut $1 trillion from Medicaid and $500 billion from Medicare. They are about to allow huge cuts to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). They are clearly hostile to these programs, despite their efforts to pretend otherwise.

Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury had a moment of honesty when he revealed the Trump plan to privatize Social Security. Similarly, Trump’s Commissioner of Social Security had a moment of candor when he expressed openness to cutting Social Security by raising the retirement age.

Trump’s Republican cronies in Congress are partners in the destruction, refusing to hold Trump’s DOGE accountable for gutting vital programs and stealing our most personal, sensitive data. They are refusing to reverse DOGE’s decimation of the Social Security Administration, which is making it increasingly difficult for Americans to receive their earned benefits. They are asking Democrats to provide the votes to keep the government open, in return for absolutely nothing.

Republicans have spent months terrorizing the federal workforce, just as they promised to do in Project 2025. The workers that remain after Elon Musk’s DOGE rampage are exhausted and demoralized. If Republicans force a shutdown, these workers will still have to come to work, incurring commuting, childcare and other expenses, while not receiving their pay. They will be forced to figure out how to pay their mortgages, rent, and other bills with no money coming in.

This is what Trump’s OMB director and architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought, wants. In a speech prior to the November election, he made the outrageous goal explicit:

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.” (Emphasis added.)

So when federal workers — including air traffic controllers who keep us safe when we fly and Social Security Administration civil servants who ensure we receive the benefits we are owed — stop getting paid, starting October 1, you will know whose fault it is.

The Republicans are barrelling towards a shutdown at a time when the Social Security Administration is already at the brink of catastrophe. The agency has lost thousands of experienced staff, and the Trump administration is creating chaos with haphazard and misguided policy changes. As I wrote in early September, “The only reason the system hasn’t already collapsed is that the mission-driven staffers who remain are each doing the work of five people. They are holding Social Security together with shoestrings and chewing gum — but they can’t do it forever.”

Indeed, a just-published New York Times article interviewed one of those employees.

“In my 24 years, I have never seen it so bad to the point that a lot of us are medicated,” said one Social Security technical expert who works in a field office in the Midwest and takes an anti-anxiety medication daily….“We openly talk about it,” she said. “We joke about it, because what else can you do?”

Now, these staffers will be expected to continue working themselves to the bone, without even getting paid. Who could blame them if they look for other opportunities? And that’s if they even get a choice. Vought is openly threatening to use a shutdown as an excuse for mass firings of even more civil servants. He’s taking federal workers hostage, including those who keep Social Security and Medicare running.

Trump and his Republican cronies will try to blame Democrats, as they always do. But don’t let their misdirection distract you.

A prolonged Republican government shutdown could easily become the straw that breaks the camel’s back at the Social Security Administration. Social Security’s nearly 70 million beneficiaries will pay the price in the form of ever-lengthening wait times — and potential benefit disruptions.

Trump and his Republican cronies will try to blame Democrats, as they always do. But don’t let their misdirection distract you. It is essential that Democrats win back control of Congress in the midterm elections in November 2026, so that they can check Trump’s relentless efforts to become a dictator.

Until then, they must stop bowing down to Republican demands. It is the only way to fight against the Republicans stripping away the health care of 15 million Americans, forcing hospitals around the country to close, and making it harder and harder for Americans to access their earned Social Security benefits.