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ponzi scheme
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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Social Security Administration Workers Can No Longer Read the News at Work
"Local news blocked," one employee said. "So if there was a local shooting or something, I wouldn't be able to see."
Mar 06, 2025
The Trump administration's sweeping attacks on journalism and federal workers continued Thursday with an announcement that Social Security Administration employees can no longer access "general news" websites on government devices.
The Washington Postnoted the email in an update to its Thursday reporting that earlier this week, acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek told top staff that members of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by billionaire Elon Musk, are leading efforts to shrink the agency—which critics slam as a push toward privatization.
"DOGE people are learning and they will make mistakes, but we have to let them see what is going on at SSA," Dudek said, according to notes from the meeting. "I am relying on longtime career people to inform my work, but I am receiving decisions that are made without my input. I have to effectuate those decisions."
The newspaper reported that "on Thursday morning—three hours after the publication of this story—an all-staff email went out to SSA employees informing them that they would be prevented 'effective today' from accessing certain websites on their government devices, including 'online shopping,' ' general news,' and 'sports.'"
The email—a screenshot of which was posted on the Musk-owned social media site X by independent journalist Justin Glawe, author of the newsletter American Doom—states that "these additional restrictions will help reduce risk and better protect the sensitive information entrusted to us in our many systems."
An SSA spokesperson said in a statement that "employees should be focused on mission-critical work and serving the American people," but they "may request an exception if they have a business need for job-specific duties."
As Glawe pointed out: "To all the people saying BUT YOU SHOULDN'T READ NEWS AT WORK—they are government employees, so reading news and staying informed is part of their job. They're not working at a car dealership."
While SSA messaging frames the policy as an effort to promote safety and efficiency, and the email did not include a list of blocked websites, Wiredrevealed that some outlets "at the forefront of the reporting" on DOGE have been banned:
Wired has confirmed with two sources inside the SSA that Wired.com is no longer accessible today, though it was accessible previously.
The sources also confirmed that the websites of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and MSNBC were inaccessible. However, the sources were able to access other news websites including Politico and Axios.
"Local news blocked," says one source at SSA, who was granted anonymity over fears of retribution. "So if there was a local shooting or something, I wouldn't be able to see."
It's unclear who has implemented the block list or what criteria were used to populate it, but it appears not to be based on ideological grounds, as Fox News and Breitbart are also blocked.
The policy change comes amid a flurry of reporting on Musk calling Social Security "the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time" during a recent podcast interview with Joe Rogan as well as efforts to shrink the agency and shut down multiple offices nationwide.
Over 150 House Democrats wrote in a Tuesday letter to Dudek that "Social Security helps approximately 70 million beneficiaries—including seniors, people with disabilities, children, and their families—put food on the table, pay the rent, heat their homes, cover medical bills, and more... Shuttering field offices and gutting SSA staffing has nothing to do with 'governmental efficiency.'"
Other federal agencies are also under assault by DOGE and its billionaire leader—who is facing new limits from the president. Citing two officials, Politicoreported that during a Thursday Cabinet meeting attended by Musk, "Trump told top members of his administration that Musk was empowered to make recommendations to the departments but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy."
While working to gut the federal government, the Trump administration has also taken aim at journalism. Amid a spat with The Associated Press over its refusal to use Trump's preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced last week that the administration will now decide which outlets get to participate in the presidential press pool.
That came a week after the Postreported that the U.S. State Department told embassies and consulates to cancel "all non-mission critical contracts/purchase orders for media subscriptions (publications, periodicals, and newspaper subscriptions) that are not academic or professional journals."
According to the newspaper, a memo "directed procurement teams at embassies and consulates to prioritize the termination of contracts with six news organizations in particular: The Economist, The New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg News, The Associated Press, and Reuters."
Similarly, as Rolling Stonedetailed Thursday: "In the first weeks of the Trump administration, DOGE canceled subscriptions to services like Politico Pro, which many agencies rely on to stay abreast of legislation moving through Congress. DOGE also incorrectly identified a contract with a wing of Thomson Reuters as going toward news subscriptions. In fact, the contract—signed by the Defense Department under the first Trump administration—was with Thomson Reuters Special Services and dealt with preventing cyber threats."
The Republican president has a long record of attacking news outlets and individual reporters—from his frequent declarations of "fake news" to
reportedly inquiring about how he could jail journalists if he returned to the White House.
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Trump's Social Security Lies Seen as 'Prelude to Vicious Cuts'
"Social Security has survived wars, pandemics, and recessions," said one advocate. "But unless there is a rapid course correction, it may not survive Donald Trump and Elon Musk."
Mar 05, 2025
After boasting about gutting climate initiatives, terminating thousands of federal workers, and withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization at the start of his address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, President Donald Trump rattled off a series of now-familiar falsehoods about Social Security that advocates say are aimed at justifying deep cuts to the program.
"Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don't know any of them," Trump said, regurgitating the lie—also peddled by Elon Musk—that Social Security benefits are being paid out on a large scale to people who have been dead for years.
"I know some people who are rather elderly but not quite that elderly," said Trump as he continued to list numbers, at one point declaring that a person in Social Security Administration (SSA) databases is "listed at 360 years of age."
SSA, which Trump and Musk are in the process of eviscerating and possibly privatizing, automatically halts payments by age 115. Even Trump's handpicked acting SSA commissioner has refuted the claim that Social Security benefits are being paid out to tens of millions of dead people.
The president's remarks were seen as part of a broader effort, spearheaded by Musk, to create the appearance of rampant waste and fraud to make the case for cutting Social Security, which lifts more people above the poverty line in the U.S. than any other program.
"Tonight's speech by President Trump should be highly alarming to the 70 million Americans on Social Security and to anyone who is earning benefits by paying into the program. His speech was full of lies," said Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
"Just because someone may be in SSA's database, doesn't mean that they are receiving benefits unless they are alive and eligible—something Elon Musk and his DOGE minions should have learned before propagating these claims," Richtman added. "Trump and Musk's claims of 'fraud' in the Social Security program would be laughable if they weren't so harmful, and have already been widely discredited."
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, also weighed in, calling Trump's Social Security lies "the prelude to vicious cuts."
"They want to cut Social Security and Medicaid. This is their core agenda. Reverse Roosevelt. They are no longer even hiding it."
SSA data shows that just 0.1% of Social Security recipients are over the age of 100. A report published last year by SSA's inspector general, whom Trump recently fired, found that of the $8.6 trillion in Social Security benefits paid out between 2015 and 2022, just 0.84% of the payments were deemed improper.
"Social Security has vanishingly low rates of fraud, far less than private-sector retirement programs," Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, said in a statement late Tuesday. "Lying about it is a convenient way to justify cutting off benefits to people deemed enemies or undeserving under the guise of 'fraud.'"
"Social Security has survived wars, pandemics, and recessions," said Lawson. "But unless there is a rapid course correction, it may not survive Donald Trump and Elon Musk."
Democratic lawmakers also sharply condemned Trump's comments on Social Security, which came days after Musk falsely characterized the program as a Ponzi scheme.
"Trump is making up stats about Social Security so he has an excuse to cut your benefits," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) noted that "all you hear is Republican laughter" as Trump spouted lies about Social Security.
"They want to cut Social Security and Medicaid," Khanna wrote on social media. "This is their core agenda. Reverse Roosevelt. They are no longer even hiding it."
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