SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
social security
For Social Security’s 90th Birthday, Don’t Celebrate–Organize!
Instead of having a piece of birthday cake, make a call to your member of Congress, post on social media about how we need to protect Social Security, and talk to your friends about the need to speak up against threats to your benefits.
Aug 14, 2025
This August 14 marks the 90th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act into law. This was a huge step forward for America, and our country has been profoundly changed for the better. We quite understandably focus on Social Security’s retirement benefits, but Social Security is much more than this. It is a social insurance policy that helps children whose parents have died and those who are disabled and provides spousal income.
It is very easy to be tempted into celebrating Social Security’s longevity and enjoying a piece of birthday cake. Given the threats to Social Security, as well as other programs like Medicaid, such celebrations are misleading. The best way to mark Social Security’s 90th birthday is to adapt a phrase made famous by the legendary labor organizer Joe Hill: “Don’t celebrate—organize!”
Given the threats to Social Security by the Trump administration in just seven months in office, celebrations are not helpful. Let’s briefly review some of the recent Trump actions that impact your benefits:
- Weakening confidence in Social Security by alleging widespread fraud. Back in April, Elon Musk, then the self-styled first buddy and head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), was leveling charges of massive fraud in Social Security. As The New York Times reported, “Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has continued his campaign to aggressively undercut Social Security, leveling baseless and often misleading attacks on the insurance program.”
- President Donald Trump has said consistently since 2016 that he would not touch Social Security. I have no doubt that some will dismiss all that we are saying by pointing to Trump’s repeated promises to protect. Rather than focusing on how much a promise from Trump is worth, I would point to the fact that Scott Bessent, Trump’s Treasury secretary who was discussing the Trump Accounts created by the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) described them as, “a backdoor for privatizing Social Security. Social Security is a defined benefit plan paid out. To the extent that if, all of a sudden, these accounts grow and you have in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement, then that’s a game changer, too.”
- In March, Axios reported that “Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested this week that only ‘fraudsters’ would complain about missing a monthly Social Security check, and that most people wouldn’t mind if the government simply skipped a payment.”
- All sides agree that Social Security faces some very significant long-term funding challenges. Rather than helping to solve Social Security’s challenges or even have no impact on them, the OBBB weakens Social Security’s finances. As The Hill recently reported: “President Trump’s tax and spending megabill could speed up insolvency for Social Security’s trust funds, according to an analysis from the Trump administration’s chief actuary for the program. The Office of the Chief Actuary (OACT) at the Social Security Administration (SSA) released an analysis this week of the law’s potential effects on the program’s finances in response to a request from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.”
- Last, but certainly not least, the Trump administration has made large cuts to Social Security staffing that impact its ability to help Americans access their earned benefits. As the Center for Budget and Policy pointed out in June: “Over the past five months, the Trump administration has forced the Social Security Administration (SSA) through a radical transformation that threatens to disrupt services for the largely older and severely disabled people who most rely on the agency. The Trump Administration and its so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have created huge gaps in customer service and support by indiscriminately pushing out 7,000 workers to hit an arbitrary staffing reduction target. This is the largest staffing cut in SSA’s history.”
Given all of this, if you really care about Social Security, it is impossible to blithely celebrate its birthday.
So instead of having a piece of birthday cake, make a call to your member of Congress, post on social media about how we need to protect Social Security, and talk to your friends about the need to speak up against threats to your benefits. In other words, don’t celebrate–organize!
Given the threats to Social Security by the Trump administration in just seven months in office, celebrations are not helpful. Let’s briefly review some of the recent Trump actions that impact your benefits:
- Weakening confidence in Social Security by alleging widespread fraud. Back in April, Elon Musk, then the self-styled first buddy and head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), was leveling charges of massive fraud in Social Security. As The New York Times reported, “Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has continued his campaign to aggressively undercut Social Security, leveling baseless and often misleading attacks on the insurance program.”
- President Donald Trump has said consistently since 2016 that he would not touch Social Security. I have no doubt that some will dismiss all that we are saying by pointing to Trump’s repeated promises to protect. Rather than focusing on how much a promise from Trump is worth, I would point to the fact that Scott Bessent, Trump’s Treasury secretary who was discussing the Trump Accounts created by the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) described them as, “a backdoor for privatizing Social Security. Social Security is a defined benefit plan paid out. To the extent that if, all of a sudden, these accounts grow and you have in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement, then that’s a game changer, too.”
- In March, Axios reported that “Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested this week that only ‘fraudsters’ would complain about missing a monthly Social Security check, and that most people wouldn’t mind if the government simply skipped a payment.”
- All sides agree that Social Security faces some very significant long-term funding challenges. Rather than helping to solve Social Security’s challenges or even have no impact on them, the OBBB weakens Social Security’s finances. As The Hill recently reported: “President Trump’s tax and spending megabill could speed up insolvency for Social Security’s trust funds, according to an analysis from the Trump administration’s chief actuary for the program. The Office of the Chief Actuary (OACT) at the Social Security Administration (SSA) released an analysis this week of the law’s potential effects on the program’s finances in response to a request from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.”
- Last, but certainly not least, the Trump administration has made large cuts to Social Security staffing that impact its ability to help Americans access their earned benefits. As the Center for Budget and Policy pointed out in June: “Over the past five months, the Trump administration has forced the Social Security Administration (SSA) through a radical transformation that threatens to disrupt services for the largely older and severely disabled people who most rely on the agency. The Trump Administration and its so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have created huge gaps in customer service and support by indiscriminately pushing out 7,000 workers to hit an arbitrary staffing reduction target. This is the largest staffing cut in SSA’s history.”
Given all of this, if you really care about Social Security, it is impossible to blithely celebrate its birthday.
So instead of having a piece of birthday cake, make a call to your member of Congress, post on social media about how we need to protect Social Security, and talk to your friends about the need to speak up against threats to your benefits. In other words, don’t celebrate–organize!
Keep ReadingShow Less
Sanders Bill Would Fight Trump Effort to 'Dismantle Social Security'
"On the 90th anniversary of Social Security, our job must be to reverse these disastrous cuts, expand Social Security, and make it easier, not harder, for Americans to receive the benefits they have earned and deserve."
Aug 13, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday introduced the Keep Billionaires Out of Social Security Act, legislation intended to thwart President Donald Trump's attacks on the agency that administers benefits for millions of seniors and other Americans.
In a statement introducing his bill, Sanders (I-Vt.) called out not only Trump but also Elon Musk, who is the richest person on Earth and led the president's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) until he left the administration in May.
"Since Trump has been in office, he has been working overtime with the wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, to dismantle Social Security and undermine the faith that the American people have in this vitally important program," Sanders said. "Thousands of Social Security staff have lost their jobs, seniors and people with disabilities are having a much harder time receiving the benefits they have earned, field offices have been shut down, and the 1-800 number is a mess."
"That is beyond unacceptable," the senator declared, just days before a key milestone for the law that led to the Social Security Administration (SSA). "On the 90th anniversary of Social Security, our job must be to reverse these disastrous cuts, expand Social Security, and make it easier, not harder, for Americans to receive the benefits they have earned and deserve. That's precisely what this legislation will do."
As Sanders' office summarized, the bill aims to defend Americans and their benefits by:
- Protecting and improving Americans' access to Social Security offices—prohibiting closures, relocations, and service reductions, reversing Trump's layoffs, and ensuring Americans can speak to real people to get their benefits;
- Increasing funding by $5 billion to improve customer service, modernize technology, and reduce backlogs;
- Restoring assistance for vulnerable and disabled people to access their benefits;
- Safeguarding Americans' data and stopping Trump's politicization of Social Security; and
- Removing DOGE's authority and calling for an independent investigation into DOGE's actions at SSA.
The bill is backed by 20 other members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and several organizations, including Social Security Works, Alliance for Retired Americans, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.
Sanders introduced the bill on the same day that he joined former Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley, U.S. Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and John Larson (D-Conn.), and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)—a co-sponsor of the new legislation—for a Protect Our Checks town hall, hosted by Unrig Our Economy, Social Security Works, and the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Late last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent "openly bragged about plans to use a back door to privatize Social Security and hand the benefits of working families over to those folks on Wall Street," Wyden pointed out. "Trump's so-called promise to protect Social Security, in my view, is about as real as his promise to protect Medicaid—no substance, big consequences for American seniors and families walking on an economic tightrope."
The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Republicans passed and the president signed in July is expected to strip Medicaid and other key assistance, including food stamps, from millions of Americans in the next decade.
Wednesday's town hall also featured testimony from Social Security recipients, including Judith Brown, who explained that "at 37, I became disabled. It was devastating, because I was a young mother to two sons [that] are on the autism spectrum."
"When my sons needed additional medical support, I was able to get care for them because of their Social Security benefits. Without those benefits, we would have been homeless on the street," Brown continued. "Social Security has always been there for us over all these years. Right now, this administration is bent on stripping us of our benefits that we paid into during our working years... We cannot allow this to happen. Social Security must be protected and expanded. Our entire existence is on the line, and we must fight to protect Social Security."
Unrig Our Economy spokesperson Saryn Francis said that "Republican tariffs are driving up prices at the grocery store, their bills are raising the cost of healthcare and electricity, and they've even found time to hand out more tax breaks to billionaires, and now they want to mess with Social Security, and we are not going to let them take that away from us."
Francis noted that "this weekend, with over 50 events across the country, Americans are rallying in a massive effort to support Social Security and calling on congressional Republicans to stop threatening what hardworking people have earned and need to survive."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Don’t Put a Social Security Hater in Charge of Our Economic Data
With the nomination of EJ Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is reason to be fearful of the Trump administration massaging or outright falsifying key economic statistics that help determine crucial benefits.
Aug 13, 2025
On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump nominated EJ Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS. The nomination came 10 days after Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, baselessly accusing her of having “rigged” the July jobs report, which showed a slowing labor market and contained large downward revisions to payroll employment for the previous two months. Antoni, in line with Trump’s false assertions of fraud, has proposed halting the monthly jobs report entirely.
Antoni is not the sort of figure you want at the helm of a statistical agency. He has a long history of egregiously misrepresenting BLS data or, perhaps worse, misunderstanding it in extremely basic ways. He has called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” and said that we “need to sunset the program.” His nomination has been panned by figures across the political spectrum. Stan Veuger of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, for instance, minced no words in his statement to The Washington Post: “He’s utterly unqualified and as partisan as it gets.”
The partisan transformation of BLS holds untold dangers, given that BLS data is baked into our economic policy. Policymakers look at the rates of unemployment and inflation when setting policy, of course, but by law, several BLS data series also provide for the automatic adjustment of social insurance programs and welfare benefits. Juking the stats could harm the massive number of people that make use of these programs.
How Inflation Data Affects Your Income
The most obvious way that BLS data affects our safety net is through the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) afforded to retirees on Social Security—an annual benefit boost meant to keep up with inflation. The COLA is calculated using BLS’ Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), and in addition to retirees, people on Social Security Disability Insurance, Supplemental Security Income, and Veterans Disability Compensation receive COLAs. For many of the people on these programs, the benefits make up a significant chunk of their income. Roughly 40% of Social Security recipients receive more than 50% of their income from the program, for instance.
CPI data affects a number of other benefit programs as well. The Department of Agriculture uses CPI data to determine the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, which is in turn used to calculate benefit allotments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. The Department of Housing and Urban Development uses CPI data in the calculation of Fair Market Rents, a metric which determines the benefit amount for housing vouchers, among other applications. Eligibility for SNAP, Medicaid, and (in most states) Temporary Assistance for Needy Families is tied to the federal poverty level, which the Department of Health and Human Services updates annually using CPI data.
If Antoni is able to make inflation look artificially low to benefit Trump politically, anyone who receives any kind of inflation-adjusted income should feel cheated.
In all, according to the Bureau, “The CPI affects the income of more than 108 million people because of statutory action.” In other words, one-third of Americans have a source of income whose relationship to BLS data is written in the law. Virtually all of us will at some point in our lives receive benefits for which this is the case—assuming that Antoni is unsuccessful in sunsetting Social Security. The relationship between the CPI and your income also extends beyond public benefits: It is widely used in employment contracts, for example, for workers’ annual cost-of-living raises (especially in unionized workplaces).
Manipulating the stats is easier said than done, but if Antoni is able to make inflation look artificially low to benefit Trump politically, anyone who receives any kind of inflation-adjusted income should feel cheated.
How Jobs Data Affects Your Ability to Access Unemployment Insurance
In several states, the duration of state-level unemployment insurance benefits varies according to the state’s unemployment rate (recall that Trump fired Commissioner McEntarfer over the jobs numbers). In Florida and Georgia, residents are currently capped at 12 weeks of unemployment insurance based on their low unemployment rates (the standard in other states is 26 weeks). In April, Massachusetts extended the maximum duration of unemployment insurance from 26 weeks to 30 weeks based on its statutory trigger: that one of its metro areas had an unemployment rate greater than 5.1%. To make that determination, it used BLS’ Local Area Unemployment Statistics program.
At the federal level, we also have an extended benefits program, which provides 13 additional weeks of unemployment insurance to workers in states dealing with high unemployment. States are required to use an “insured unemployment rate” trigger, which turns “on” when a large portion of workers within the state are receiving unemployment insurance—calculated by states using the BLS’ Quarterly Census of Earnings and Wages. States can also adopt various optional triggers, all of which use BLS data in some way.
(BLS data serves as an input into much more than I am able to specify here. If you want to learn more, I recommend checking out the BLS’ Handbook of Methods. Pick a subject area, then a survey, then navigate to the “presentation” tab, where BLS often cites examples of how the data you have selected tends to be used—by researchers, agencies, the private sector, and more.)
EJ Antoni Doesn’t Care About Your Income; He Cares About Keeping Trump Happy
With the nomination of EJ Antoni to lead BLS, there is reason to be fearful of the Trump administration massaging or outright falsifying key economic statistics. Antoni cannot be trusted to run the BLS as an independent, nonpartisan body, and we should watch the data accordingly. If Antoni can rig things to make the economy look better for Trump, bad data will feed into a system that takes these estimates at face value. Inflation is low, says Trump, so your COLA is low. Unemployment is low, says Trump, so you can’t remain on unemployment insurance.
Antoni certainly doesn’t seem to care if you lose out on some of the benefits you are duly owed. In a 2018 article co-written with Stephen Moore, Antoni said that “the cost of welfare” is “disgusting” and advocated for the government to “moderately and slowly cut benefits so that, over time, some programs can be eliminated.” (They declined to say which programs.)
Much of the law governing our safety net depends on assumptions that Trump has brought into question: that our economic data is sound, and that the civil servants producing it are impartial, rigorous, and dedicated to the data itself.
The BLS is also already struggling in ways that Antoni is likely to make worse. Trump’s hiring freeze has impeded the agency’s data collection efforts, as BLS and the Census Bureau, which collects the data for many of BLS’ surveys, have both lost many staffers. As a result, BLS has reduced data collection for the CPI substantially in recent months, and it has discontinued some 350 indexes in the Producer Price Index. This decline in data quality poses its own threat to our economic data, apart from Trump’s desire to see good numbers.
Antoni, for his part, has praised the Department of Government Efficiency’s mass firings of civil servants and in November advocated for DOGE to “take a chainsaw to the BLS.” Those comments suggest he’ll be disinclined to address—or even acknowledge—the understaffing problem.
Much of the law governing our safety net depends on assumptions that Trump has brought into question: that our economic data is sound, and that the civil servants producing it are impartial, rigorous, and dedicated to the data itself. If EJ Antoni is confirmed as BLS Commissioner, we will all have one more reason to fear for our economic security.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular