For decades, the Republican Party has tried, and failed, to ‘reform,’ privatize, or simply eliminate Social Security. In a confidential memo circa 2005, polsters warned Republicans that Bush’s proposal for personal Social Security accounts might tank them in the 2006 midterm election. The aftermath of the 2006 election resulted in Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the first woman and first Italian-American to achieve this status and the Democratic Party controlling the US Senate.
Fast forward to the re-election of The Fascist Felon and his biggest campaign donor, Elon Musk, who was neither elected nor confirmed to anything, and Social Security is up for grabs once again. This time though force, deception, and outright lies to the American people.
DOGEbags have announced plans to cut the agency by 12 percent, even at a time where staffing is at a 50-year low. It has also offered early retirement and other incentives, including TAXABLE payments up to $25,000, to the entire staff.
“Everything they have done so far is breaking the agency’s ability to serve the public,” said Martin O’Malley, the most recent former Social Security commissioner under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. He said he feared that Mr. Musk’s team had taken most of the actions necessary to create a total system collapse, whether in skyrocketing wait times for customer service, system interruptions or a timely payment of benefits.
Gaslighting the American People:
‘Reforming’ (read: breaking, eliminating, and privatizing Social Security) has proven in the past to be a hard sell to the American people. So, what has The Fascist Felon and his ‘little buddy, ‘ Elmo resorted to?What all Republicans normally do: Create conspiracy theories, gaslight, and make false claims without any proof or evidence that only the most ignorant and gullible in our country believe.
- Fraud has cost the government up to $200bn.
“This is why the Democrats are so upset about the situation,” Musk said on a podcast with the Republican senator Ted Cruz and radio host Ben Ferguson.
Musk said that his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) will “turn off fraudulent payments of entitlements” to “illegals”, as he listed off a long slate of government programs including social security, Medicare, unemployment, disability and small business loans.
- Used what appears to be the non-existent, Great Replacement Theory:
“If the Dems can bring in 200,000 illegals and get them legalized … even without cheating, if you bring in illegals that are 10 [times] the voting differential in a swing state, it will no longer be a swing state,” Musk said. “And the Dems will win all the swing states in a matter of time.”
Musk then warned of the “deep socialist state” that Democrats will achieve if they take over the federal government.
“They will further cement that by bringing in more aliens, so you can’t vote your way out of it,” he said.
Musk echoes rightwing conspiracy theories to defend social security cuts
- Elmo also labeled Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
- Claimed that 20 million “dead people in the social security database”.
- We announced yesterday that more than three million deaths are reported to the Social Security Administration each year and explained that our records are highly accurate. Of these millions of death reports received each year, less than one-third of 1 percent are erroneously reported deaths that need to be corrected.
- Social Security fraud does exist, but “improper” Social Security payments amounts to about $9 billion annually — less than 1% of total Social Security benefits paid and 0.1% of the federal budget. Most improper payments are not criminal fraud but the result of beneficiaries or the SSA failing to update records.
- The SSA said that it will start requiring in-person identity checks for recipients. In the past, recipients who couldn’t verify their identity online could do so over the phone.
Leaked Memo:
SSA offices do not currently have the resources to handle an influx of in-person appointments of this size.
Currently, the ONLY Republican with a Set of Balls:
“It doesn’t help the president when you have somebody who clearly is not worried about whether or not Social Security benefits are going to be there for him” leading the effort to shrink the Social Security Administration, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), referring to Musk, the world’s richest person.
“It worries Americans all over the country,” she said of people who rely on Social Security benefits to live day to day. “This is why Social Security has been kind of viewed as the untouchable from a political perspective, and why the president made very clear we’re not dealing with Social Security.”
She said Musk’s claim that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” or rife with fraud, “doesn’t do anything to calm the anxiety of people who are already anxious about what’s going on with some of the safety-net programs.”
The Hill:
