It seems Elon Musk isn’t fairly as highly effective as he appears to imagine.
On Wednesday, The Washington Put up reported that Musk’s so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity was contemplating not permitting thousands and thousands of disabled and retired Individuals to file Social Safety claims over the cellphone, and as an alternative requiring them to take action on-line or in individual.
Not solely was this concept excessively merciless—since individuals ages 65 years and older are the least conversant in the web—but it surely additionally appeared to be an try and win favor with Republicans, together with President Donald Trump, who’ve lengthy sought to chop social insurance coverage applications.
“Gramma and Grampa are already waiting too long for answers about their Social Security. Now, Elon Musk and DOGE want to close field offices and take away their option to use the phone. This is outrageous,” Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts wrote on X.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul additionally chimed in in regards to the cruelty of DOGE’s plan.
“Going after 90-year-old grandmas who can’t drive and don’t have a computer? That’s just low,” she wrote on X.
Fortunately, after The Put up revealed DOGE’s plan, Musk’s foot troopers backed off. As an alternative, the Trump administration will proceed with a a lot narrower plan: forbidding prospects from altering direct deposit routing numbers or different delicate financial institution info by cellphone.
“This is identical to the fraud protections at almost all major banks, where deposit changes are made either online or in person. All other SSA phone services remain unchanged,” a message from the official DOGE X account stated.
This follows an obvious grilling of company officers by DOGE employees on Tuesday concerning “phone fraud.”
However when DOGE employees pressed Social Safety officers about decreasing “fraud, waste, and abuse,” they had been unresponsive to any instructed options.
In keeping with The Put up, Musk needed to slash sure phone-related Social Safety providers to shrink the federal government, even when a lot of his concepts have been poorly executed and stubbornly defended.
Certainly one of The Put up’s sources indicated that DOGE employees “weren’t interested in anything else but defending the decision they had already made.”
Whereas DOGE and Social Safety officers concurred that cellphone fraud is a actual drawback, profession staff and specialists knowledgeable The Put up that id fraud constitutes a small fraction of this system’s prices, suggesting that it isn’t a big sufficient difficulty to justify Musk’s sweeping adjustments.
And there are different explanation why this plan was misguided.
Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Safety Works, advised The Put up {that a} vital variety of Individuals lack entry to computer systems, which is notably true for individuals over the age of 65.
In 2022, the Pew Analysis Middle discovered that simply 44% of adults older than 65 owned a pill or laptop, in comparison with 61% of these between the ages of 30 and 49.
“They have a smartphone or they have low levels of education or English proficiency. You’re talking about people with disabilities. The whole idea of serving the people is to give people a choice,” Altman stated. “The burden is on DOGE to accurately show, where is all the fraud? They haven’t done that.”
Even when DOGE and Musk are backing away from this plan, it doubtless gained’t be the final we hear of cuts or adjustments to Social Safety. With out offering a shred of proof, Musk as soon as falsely claimed that “millions of dead people” had been receiving Social Safety advantages.
And now Musk has the president repeating these claims, despite the fact that they haven’t any foundation in actuality.
What’s really taking place is that sure individuals within the system’s database don’t have a date of loss of life related to their report, however there are numerous programs in place to make sure that they don’t obtain federal funds.
Nonetheless, Republicans have lengthy tried to dismantle this system—which Musk has known as “entitlement spending”—despite the fact that it’s extraordinarily widespread.
In keeping with a January Navigator Analysis survey, 79% of Individuals stated they’ve favorable views of Social Safety, Medicare, and Medicaid, together with 70% of Republicans and 78% of unbiased voters.
Regardless, the Trump administration is prone to deal with Social Safety just like the Division of Schooling—slowly eroding it till it’s gone. In spite of everything, the Social Safety company introduced in February plans to cut back its “bloated” workforce.
