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social security
Sanders Proposes 'Pensions for All' as Trump Aims to Open 401(k)s to Private Equity Vultures
"We can no longer tolerate a rigged retirement system that allows the CEOs of large corporations to receive massive golden parachutes for themselves, while denying workers a pension after a lifetime of work," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Jul 17, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced legislation Thursday aimed at addressing the nation's retirement security crisis as President Donald Trump reportedly prepared an executive order that would give private equity vultures easier access to the 401(k) plans that have overtaken traditional pensions.
Sanders' (I-Vt.) Pensions for All Act would require big corporations to either provide their workers with a pension plan that is at least as generous as the one enjoyed by members of Congress or "pay into the federal retirement system at a level that ensures all of their workers receive the same amount of retirement benefits" as lawmakers.
The senator characterized the new bill as a supplement to his proposal to expand Social Security benefits.
"We can no longer tolerate a rigged retirement system that allows the CEOs of large corporations to receive massive golden parachutes for themselves, while denying workers a pension after a lifetime of work," Sanders said in a statement. "If we are serious about addressing the retirement crisis in America, corporations must be required to offer all of their workers a traditional pension plan that guarantees a monthly income in retirement."
"And if corporations refuse to offer a decent retirement plan, their workers must be allowed to receive the same type of pension that every member of Congress receives," the senator added. "If we can guarantee a defined-benefit pension plan for members of Congress, we can and we must provide that same level of retirement security to every worker in America."
"Every member of Congress has a guaranteed pension—for life. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for the people who build this country."
Sanders introduced his bill after The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump is expected to sign an executive order in the coming days "designed to help make private-market investments more available to U.S. retirement plans"—a move that one critic called "a dangerous scheme to fleece savers."
"The retirement system is supposed to serve workers, not Wall Street," wrote Oscar Valdés Viera, a policy analyst with the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform. "We need policies that strengthen retirement security and allow people to retire with dignity—not policies that invite hidden fees, reduced transparency, and elevated risk. Allowing predatory private equity and private credit funds to infiltrate 401(k)s would result in a massive transfer of wealth from small investors and workers to the richest men on Wall Street."
Supporters of Sanders' legislation similarly argued for retirement system reforms that benefit workers, not Wall Street and corporate executives.
Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers—which has pushed the so-called Big Three automakers to restore traditional pension plans—said Thursday that "the billionaire class gutted pensions in pursuit of profit, and Washington let it happen."
"CEOs walk away with golden parachutes while working people walk into retirement with nothing," said Fain. "Meanwhile, every member of Congress has a guaranteed pension—for life. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for the people who build this country. The retirement crisis is real, and it's time for Congress to act."
In a summary of the new legislation, Sanders' office observed that just 9% of private-sector workers in the U.S. currently have access to traditional defined-benefit pension plans—down from 44% in 1975.
"The results for workers have been tragic," Sanders' team continued, noting that "in our country today, nearly half of older workers between the ages of 55 and 64 have no savings at all and no idea how they will be able to retire with any shred of dignity or respect."
"If Congress can provide over $1 trillion in tax breaks for the top 1% and over $900 billion in tax breaks for large corporations," Sanders said Thursday, "please do not tell me that we cannot afford to make sure that every worker in America can retire with the dignity and the respect they deserve."
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Trump and DOGE Continue Wrecking Social Security So They Can Rob It
A collapse of the system is the goal. They cause the crisis with cuts and then hope to force a fire sale to private equity, the robber barons of the modern era.
Jul 17, 2025
The Trump administration is lying about Social Security. Elon Musk’s DOGE has infiltrated the Social Security Administration (SSA). The agency’s new commissioner, Wall Street billionaire Frank Bisignano, calls himself “a DOGE person.” His top lieutenants include long-time Musk associates Antonio Gracias and Aram Moghaddassi.
After infiltrating Social Security, the DOGE crew forced out thousands of civil servants, including top leaders with decades of institutional knowledge. No problem, they thought. We’ll replace them with 19-year-old Edward “Big Balls” Coristine and an AI chatbot.
That plan is going exactly as expected. Mistakes are being made, checks are being delayed, lines are hours long, and field offices are being run by skeleton crews. The 1-800 number has record wait times — if people can get past the AI chatbot and speak to a human at all.
In the face of an outcry from the press and the public about wait times on the phone, SSA is shifting 1,000 people from the field offices to the phone lines. These people haven’t been trained to work the phone lines, which use a different software. And of course, taking them out of field offices will only make the delays there worse.
For people who rely on Social Security benefits, delays are life and death.
Thanks to Trump and the Republicans, Social Security’s customer service is headed for a total collapse. Bisignano is responding by shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic — and telling the passengers not to believe their lying eyes. Except instead of an iceberg, Social Security is collapsing due to a torpedo launched by a Republican U-boat that has blown a hole in it.
SSA recently sent out a press release touting improved customer service. Anyone who has recently been to a Social Security field office, or tried calling the 1-800 number, can tell you that every word in that release is a lie. Bisignano knows it, too. That’s why he pulled down data from SSA’s website tracking wait times.
For people who rely on Social Security benefits, these delays are life and death. Republican DOGE operatives have accidentally declared living people dead, meaning that their benefits stop, and they can lose access to their health insurance and bank account. These people are then stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare, frantically trying to get overwhelmed field office workers to “revive” them.
The delays are also a disaster for people who apply for Social Security’s disability benefits. And everything is getting worse, not better.
That is because a collapse is the goal. The Republicans have wrecked the system so they can rob it. They cause the crisis with cuts and then hope to force a fire sale to private equity, the robber barons of the modern era.
The King of the robber barons is Musk himself. The Department of Defense recently signed a $200 million contract to use Musk’s AI, Grok (or as it calls itself, MechaHitler). With Bisignano constantly talking up the “benefits” of AI, we can guess that Social Security is not far behind. If Musk and Trump get their way, a racist chatbot may soon decide who is eligible to get their earned benefits.
To see what that collapse could look like, we need only look at a different part of the federal government — the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Two days after the disastrous Texas floods, Kristi Noem fired thousands of the workers who answer the agency’s disaster assistance line. As a result, nearly two-thirds of calls went unanswered, leaving people who had just lost everything without the help they desperately needed.
Republican politicians hate effective government programs, because they don’t make any money for their paymasters on Wall Street. Since Social Security is the most popular and effective government program, they hate it most of all — and are doing everything they can to destroy it.
The only way to save Social Security is to make as much noise as possible. Call your members of Congress at 202-224-3121 and demand they protect Social Security from DOGE destruction. And tell all your family and friends to do the same.
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Dems Denounce Trump Official for Hiding Social Security Service Metrics
"The agency's removal of comprehensive customer service data calls into question whether this administration seeks to hide from the public the negative customer service impacts of its staffing cuts," said reads a letter led by Rep. Judy Chu.
Jul 14, 2025
As the Trump administration pushes to cut 7,000 jobs held by federal employees at the Social Security Administration, the agency that oversees the crucial anti-poverty program for senior citizens and people with disabilities has made numerous efforts to disguise the customer service crisis that the cuts have caused—and Democrats on Monday demanded answers about what one progressive lawmaker recently denounced as a "cover up" to hide long wait times.
U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) led 18 Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee in writing to Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, urging the former Wall Street executive to explain why several customer service metrics were deleted from the SSA's website just as Americans were facing longer wait times and a reduced ability to speak with customer service representatives rather than having their claims and questions handled through automation.
Chu spearheaded the letter weeks after the SSA stopped publishing more than 30 metrics related to the performance of its 1-800 number, retirement claims processing times, and disability decision reconsideration wait times.
"Early last month SSA abruptly removed that comprehensive menu of data from its website and replaced it with a new webpage that provides much more limited and sometimes misleading information on the agency's customer service performance," wrote the Democrats. "We are concerned that this new menu is far less helpful for our constituents in knowing what to expect when interacting with SSA."
In addition to omitting crucial information about how long retirees and people with disabilities can expect to wait to receive their benefits or to talk to a representative, Chu noted that the metrics that are currently shown "seem designed to pressure beneficiaries to use online tools instead of talking to live people, an option that simply doesn't work for all beneficiaries, especially the very old and people in rural areas with poor Internet access."
"The agency's removal of comprehensive customer service data calls into question whether this administration seeks to hide from the public the negative customer service impacts of its staffing cuts," reads the letter.
"Early last month SSA abruptly removed that comprehensive menu of data from its website and replaced it with a new webpage that provides much more limited and sometimes misleading information on the agency's customer service performance."
The letter was sent days after The Washington Post reported that the SSA is pulling staff from its field offices to act as customer service representatives for its 1-800 number following a surge in complaints about dropped calls and website crashes.
That change is likely to slow down responses to complicated claims cases that are often handled by field office staff, Jessica LaPointe, president of Council 220 of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the Post.
"So it's just going to create a vicious cycle of work not getting cleared, people calling for status on work that's sitting because the claims specialists now are going to have to pick up the slack of the customer service representatives that are redeployed to the teleservice centers," LaPointe said last week.
Alex Lawson, executive director of the advocacy group Social Security Works, told the Post last month as the metrics were deleted from the SSA website that the Trump administration's attempts to conceal the effects of its mass layoffs would not succeed.
"People notice when they can't get an appointment because their local field office has lost half its staff. When checks and decisions are delayed. When they get the runaround from an AI chatbot on the phone, instead of getting to talk to a real person," said Lawson.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) criticized the agency for "playing musical chairs to try and fill in the gaps" and suggested Bisignano "stop gutting the critical workforce that helps Americans every single day."
Chu and the other Ways and Means Committee Democrats emphasized that the agency recently restored one metric to its new website: a chart showing the six-year trend of disability determination processing times.
"That the agency chose to cherry pick and restore only this metric," they wrote, "and not any of the others that had been removed, only deepens our concern about why your agency continues to keep hidden certain metrics that had previously been publicly available."
The Democrats demanded that the SSA restore "all the robust public data that the agency had previously reported prior to June 2025, including historical data, and to regularly update that data."
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