Social Security insiders: The payments will stop if Trump and DOGE keep going
SSA insiders and former commissioner Martin O'Malley say Trump and Musk are breaking the system to the point that payments will stop. No one seems to be trying to stop the carnage.
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The Trump administration is pushing Social Security to a breaking point, insiders and former agency head Martin O’Malley tell me. As I report this morning at Rolling Stone, the only question that remains is, will they get away with it?
Conventional wisdom holds that messing with Social Security in any form is political suicide—73 million Americans receive payments from the agency, including many millions of elderly Republican voters. They worked hard, they played by the rules, they paid into the system, and now they’re getting its benefits. So why would any politician want to mess with that? It seems crazy, but look at where we are.
Ask yourself if, 10 or 20 years ago, you could have imagined that a president would try to overthrow an election and have virtually his entire party and tens of millions of Americans support his efforts, then get re-elected. Put another way: what evidence do you have that they won’t do something as seemingly crazy as shutting off Social Security benefits?
The Social Security Administration is currently at a 50-year low in its number of employees. Meanwhile, the number of people applying for benefits has skyrocketed as baby boomers reach retirement age. The Trump administration—with the help of Elon Musk’s DOGE—has proposed reducing that already-strapped workforce by 12 percent, or some 7,000 employees.
The two SSA workers I spoke to and O’Malley agree that this will inevitably result in people not getting their benefits, in addition to making it harder for poor, disabled, elderly and newly-retired Americans from applying for benefits. (That’s in addition to the infiltration by DOGE of SSA systems that include millions of Americans’ personal information for unclear reasons, as laid out in a deposition filed Friday by an agency whistleblower.)
If you think that Trump and Republicans couldn’t possibly be so obviously hypocritical—or stupid—to continually say they won’t touch Social Security only to turn around and mess with benefits, consider the following.
On Friday night, at that preferred witching hour of 5 p.m. EST when announcements that need to be buried are made, the SSA revealed a new policy for recouping overpayments, what are called “clawbacks.”
The SSA announced that it will now withhold the entirety of a person’s payments if that person had been overpaid by the agency. Sometimes these overpayments are the result of fraud—so the government is right to withhold payments to a person until it gets its money back. But just as often, it appears, overpayments are the fault of the agency itself. So, someone who might not have known they were technically being overpaid according to the rules of the system can receive a letter informing them that they now need to repay the government. Now, they’ll have the entirety of their Social Security payments stopped until they can repay the debt.
This can be devastating for people living on a fixed income, which is why O’Malley changed the policy when he led the SSA, reducing the “clawback” rate from 100 percent to just 10. Now, the SSA is reinstituting the 100 percent rate.
I’ve yet to see any Republicans protest this change, but back when O’Malley was commissioner—and before—some GOP members of Congress came out against the 100 percent clawback rate. For the moment, at least, those Republicans are silent on an issue that could send many Americans into bankruptcy thanks to agency failures that are no fault of their own.
As DOGE and the Trump administration continue gutting the SSA, overpayments could increase. There will be fewer SSA employees handling an increasing number of beneficiaries, so it seems that mistakes like overpayments are inevitable. This development is what I’m looking into next, so if you or someone you know is experiencing any difficulties with the SSA or issues with your benefits, please reach out. You can message me on Substack or on Signal at justinglawe.20.
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In other news…
The era of intimidating and punishing political dissidents has begun
Judges are also being threatened and intimidated by our new party-state
What evidence do you have that they won’t mess with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?
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