Trump And Elon Shrink Social Security Enough To Drown Mama In A Bathtub
Throw her from the train? Sorry, Amtrak's next on the chopping block.
Donald Trump and nearly everyone in his administration insist they won’t cut Social Security benefits or take away anyone’s benefits, except of course for the 20 million lazy nonexistent people over the age of 150 who don’t exist but make for good clips for Fox News. In reality, Social Security fraud is extremely rare (almost as nonexistent as in-person voter fraud, which also exists almost entirely in rightwing imagination but not in the world). But that nonexistent fraud is the lever that Trump and Elon Musk want to use to wreck the program, because they think they can get away with it.
In fact, here’s something that had been bugging us for a week or two after Elon claimed to have found “11-year-olds getting fraudulent SBA loans,” and which we finally found an answer to: Those “SBA loans” Elon was nattering on about? This gentleman says they weren’t SBA loans at all. They were Survivors Benefits annuities. You know: What our country pays to help raise children when their parents ARE FUCKING DEAD. I went to college on Social Security survivors’ benefits. Me and Paul Ryan.
And while they promise not to change Social Security benefits, they’re already taking steps to make getting those benefits much harder — leaving the system intact, but only on paper. Already, staff cuts and system fuckups have made contacting the agency far more difficult, with calls to the agency often leaving people on hold for hours and still not connecting them.
Fortunately, Trump and company have a plan to fix that: Move nearly all applications and services online by the end of the month, and if people need help, they’ll have to try to get an in-person appointment at a local Social Security office. Oh, yes, and they’re closing more and more of those, too. Good luck!
As part of the reforms, beneficiaries will need to meet strict new identity verification requirements, to cut down on the fraud that’s already mostly nonexistent. Anyone having difficulty with that will also have to go to an office in person, if one is still open and if they can get an appointment. It’s so efficient!
It’s one of the oldest dodges in the book: No need to actually cut benefits if you can sharply reduce the number of people able to jump through the ridiculous obstacles put in their way. (Jim Crow “literacy tests” and red states’ more recent “work requirements” for basic services both say hello.)
To help calm everyone down, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick went on a wingnut podcast to explain that probably the best way to cut down on all the “fraud” would be to simply stop sending checks for a month, and then the only people who would complain would be fraudsters, because ordinary honest Americans would simply wait and see if the check comes the next month. Especially if their sons-in-law have a net worth around $2 billion. Here’s Rachel Maddow being gobsmacked:
Why, it’s almost as if they’re working to normalize this shit.
Cynics on BlueSky are surmising that the DOGGE boys have already broken something in the Social Security system, and hence Lutnick et al. getting “ahead” of it. Oh those cynics. Like your Wonkette.
The administration is explaining that it understands that this is a difficult period of adjustment, but you the American people are made of stern stuff and you should probably just lie back and think of Elon. The Washington Post reports (archive link) that the SSA website has crashed four times in 10 days this month, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts because the servers were overloaded. As for getting through on the phone, good luck there too!
“We realize this is a significant change and there will be a significant impact to customers,” Doris Diaz, the deputy commissioner of operations, told the field staff on Monday during a briefing on the changes, a recording of which was obtained by The Washington Post. She said the agency was “working on a process” for homeless and homebound customers who cannot use computers or come into an office — and acknowledged that service levels will decline. […]
The recording that Kathy Martinez, 66, heard when she called the toll-free number two weeks ago from her home in the Bay Area said her hold time would be more than three hours — she was calling to ask what her retirement check would come to if she filed for benefits now or waited until she turns 70. She hung up and tried again last week at 7 a.m. Pacific time. The wait was more than 120 minutes, but she was offered a callback option, and in two hours she spoke with a “phenomenally kind person who called me,” she said.
Also, the Post notes that a reporter’s attempts to get through only offered that callback option three times out of a dozen calls, “presumably because the queue that day was so long that the call would not be returned by close of business.” Well maybe if every reporter in America didn’t keep calling the line over and over to “test” it, the wait time would drop by fifteen seconds, you monsters.
And here’s a surprise, not at all: Scammers are already preying on vulnerable old folks by pitching their robocalls to play up the fears that their benefits will be cut unless they ANSWER RIGHT NOW and give all their personal information to an “agent.” How can you tell if it’s really someone from Social Security calling you? Simple: Only the scammers still have jobs, so unless you called and left a callback number that day, it’s not Social Security.
The sudden changes at SSA are being pushed directly from the White House, according to (acting) Commissioner Leland Dudeck, who last week threatened to shut down the agency altogether because a federal judge was mean to Elon Musk and if Elon can’t access everyone’s account, maybe no one can. (Dudek later backed off the threat.) But don’t worry! Dudek is trying to overcome his anger issues, telling the New York Times (gift link) that if any of the rushed changes are “untenable,” they can be reversed.
Also, there’s this example of public service from a public servant:
In another instance, the Social Security Administration briefly ended a contract that had allowed parents of newborn babies in Maine to sign their children up for a Social Security number at the hospital, instead requiring them to do so in person at an office. Mr. Dudek said he had ordered the move after watching Janet Mills, Maine’s Democratic governor, clash with Mr. Trump at the White House. He quickly reversed that decision, as well as another to end electronic death reporting in the state.
“I was ticked at the governor of Maine for not being real cordial to the president,” Mr. Dudek said in the interview. “I screwed up. I’ll admit I screwed up.”
The heads. You're looking at the heads. Sometimes he goes too far, you know. He's the first one to admit it.
Guys, he’s sorry, and he’ll likely be replaced soon by Trump’s appointee to actually run SSA, Frank Bisignano, a Wall Street guy who describes himself as “fundamentally a DOGE person,” so what can possibly go wrong? He promises that benefit cuts are off the table, and that if you’re not a frauder, or an innocent person who can be wrongly accused of fraud, or someone who might just have bad luck when people are moving data around, you should be fine!
“The objective is not to touch benefits,” he said. “The objective is to figure out, there could be fraud, waste and abuse in there. And we build A.I. to find fraud, waste and abuse for a living. It’s going to be a tech story.”
It is not clear at press time whether people who have arms, legs, fingers, or facial features added or subtracted by AI will now be eligible for disability benefits. Probably no one will, actually. Good luck and OPEN THREAD!
[WaPo (archive link) / NYT (gift link)]
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Just updated with the appropriate Apocalypse Now line about how Dudek knows sometimes he goes too far, he's the first to admit it.
When riding in the subway, I will sit down and take a look at the people around me. For safety and people watching. Sometimes I will notice that the people in my car are those you'd find in a movie about some monster/disaster subway attack. I think you know what I mean, the tourist couple who do not speak English, the young goth couple who continually are making out, a snotty businessman, a feisty lesbian, a mom with a noisy kid and a homeless man who ends being the real hero of the story. Those people were on my ride home today. That is when I worry about zombies attacking.