Trump and Musk are crashing Social Security and its elderly customers are panicking

 

 The Social Security Administration website 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. ...

The turmoil is leaving many retirees, disabled claimants and legal immigrants who need Social Security cards with less access or shut out of the system altogether, according to those familiar with the problems. ...

Leland Dudek — the accidental leader elevated to acting commissioner after he fed data to Musk’s team behind his bosses’ backs — has issued rapid-fire policy changes that have created chaos for front-line staff. Under pressure from the secretive Musk team, Dudek has pushed out dozens of officials with years of expertise in running Social Security’s complex benefit and information technology systems. Others have left in disgust. ...

Alarmed lawmakers are straining to answer questions from angry constituents in their districts. Calls have flooded into congressional offices. The AARP announced on Monday that more than 2,000 retirees per week have called the organization since early February — double the usual number — with concerns about whether benefits they paid for during their working careers will continue. Social Security is the primary source of income for about 40 percent of older Americans. 

Trump has said repeatedly that the administration “won’t touch” Social Security, a promise that aides say applies to benefit levels that can only be adjusted by Congress. But in just six weeks, the cuts to staffing and offices have already taken a toll on access to benefits, officials and advocates say. ...

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This should be good for election turnout in November 2026.

Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek is a lying sack of shit typical of the Trump administration who should be fired immediately

Dudek's reasoning below is the same level of ridiculous we saw when Trump said he wouldn't recall the deportation flights ordered by Judge Boasberg because they were already in international airspace and were therefore not subject to the order. Trump ordered the flights in the dead of a Friday night/Saturday morning a week ago to avoid detection and court intervention.

Republicans playing chicken with the lifeline for over 73 million Americans wasn't what people voted for last November, but that's what they are getting.

 

... Dudek said the court order [from Judge Hollander] is so broad that it could apply to any Social Security employee, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

“My anti-fraud team would be DOGE affiliates. My IT staff would be DOGE affiliates,” Dudek told Bloomberg. “As it stands, I will follow it exactly and terminate access by all SSA employees to our IT systems.”

However, in a March 18 letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Dudek said there are only 11 DOGE-affiliated individuals at the Social Security Administration. ...

Dudek assumed the role of acting commissioner in February when then acting commissioner Michelle King stepped down due to DOGE privacy concerns. ...

Reported here.

This greaseball billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick thinks missing a Social Security check, something that never happens, would be no big deal

Howard is otherwise busy firing people and disbanding volunteer industry groups who help the government create important statistics and guidance about things like gross domestic product, population, trade, etc. which people rely on every month to forecast the economy.

 

Absolutely stunning: Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek threatens to shut down Social Security last night, takes it all back this afternoon

 

What a shit show. This guy needs to be fired stat.

This is America under Mad King Ludwig.

Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek threatened Thursday evening to bar Social Security Administration employees from accessing its computer systems in response to a judge’s order blocking the U.S. DOGE Service from accessing sensitive taxpayer data.

Less than 24 hours later — after the judge rejected his argument and the White House intervened — Dudek is saying he was “out of line.”...

“[The White House] called me and let me know it’s important to reaffirm to the public that we’re open for business,” he said. “The White House did remind me that I was out of line and so did the judge. And I appreciate that.”...

Dudek first made his threat to close down the agency during a Bloomberg News interview Thursday night. ...

Such a dramatic move to effectively shut down the agency would have been unprecedented in the agency’s history and would immediately begin halting benefit payments for millions of Americans.

“For almost 90 years, Social Security has never missed a paycheck — but 60 days into this administration, Social Security is now on the brink,” Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said in a statement. “Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek has proven again that he is in way over his head, compromising the privacy of millions of Americans, shutting down services that senior citizens rely on and planning debilitating layoffs, all in service to Elon Musk’s lies.”     

More.

Government belt-tightening theatre at CNBC: Social Security new proofing procedures requiring in person visits are a joke, a costly upheaval designed to stop a puny problem

 

Social Security Administration to emphasize in-person office visits to curb identity fraud

As the Social Security Administration seeks to curb identity fraud, more people will now be required to visit an office to prove their identity for new benefit claims and direct deposit changes. ... The changes are aimed at helping to avoid the fraudulent redirection of benefit checks, which the agency has been warning about for years. ... SSA estimates the agency is now losing more than $100 million per year due to direct deposit fraud. ... The change may require foot traffic to Social Security offices nationwide to increase by about 75,000 to 85,000 more in-person visitors per week, according to reports on an internal Social Security Administration memo. ... The AARP, an interest group that represents Americans ages 50 and over, urged the Social Security Administration to reverse the decision.

In fiscal 2024 Social Security paid out $1.35 trillion in benefits. $100 million is 0.0074% of that!

I predict that the costs of this silliness will exceed the savings. 

Imbeciles Trump and Musk claim millions over the age of 100 get Social Security when it is 89,106 people in December 2024 lol

Trump loves Whoppers.

Smell the farts of nothing has changed.

In 2015 Trump used Rush Limbaugh Math and came up with 42% unemployed lol. "Not in labor force" is not a measure of unemployment.

These Social Security claims are loonier than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris saying 200 million and more had already died of COVID in the United States during their campaign for president-vice president in 2020. Joe corrected himself eventually. Trump and Musk WILL NOT.

... The [Social Security] issue has been repeatedly identified by inspectors general at the agency, but the Social Security Administration has argued that updating old records was costly and unnecessary.

Per the agency’s online records, just 89,106 people — not tens of millions — over the age of 99 received retirement benefits in December 2024, out of the more than 70 million people who receive benefits each year.

It’s a “humiliating mistake for anyone else to make, but they’re doubling and tripling down on it,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank that addresses government spending. ...

More.

Meanwhile the US population 65 years old and older was only about 59 million in 2023. Hello.

 

Meanwhile Trump's Social Security today also boasts of spending $7.5 billion authorized by Congress and Joe Biden for people who didn't pay taxes, just one day after DOGE saves $800 million lol

 

 Social Security Pays Billions of Dollars in Retroactive Payments

The Social Security Administration (SSA) today shared its significant progress to quickly implement the Social Security Fairness Act. Through March 4, 2025, SSA has already paid 1,127,723 people more than $7.5 billion in retroactive payments. The retroactive payments are the result of the repeal of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO). The average retroactive payment so far is $6,710.

“President Trump made it very clear he wanted the Social Security Fairness Act to be implemented as quickly as possible,” said Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of Social Security. “We met that challenge head on and are proudly delivering for the American people.”

The WEP and GPO provisions reduced or eliminated the Social Security benefits for over 3.2 million people who receive a pension based on work that was not covered by Social Security (a "non-covered pension") because they did not pay Social Security taxes.

The agency continues to pay remaining retroactive payments and is ready to begin paying higher monthly benefit payments beginning in April for people’s March benefit.

The federal government farts through $20 billion a day, Social Security under Trump boasts of finding $800 million in savings for fiscal year 2025

 Not even $1 billion a year. Whoopdeedoo. Don't spend it all in one place, boys.

Social Security Administration says it’s identified $800M+ in savings 

The Social Security Administration (SSA) said in a release that it has identified more than $800 million in savings or “cost avoidance” for fiscal 2025 among information technology, grants, property and payroll. ...

Trump's new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has given Elon Musk control of the payment systems which control everyone's Social Security and Medicare benefits

 

 Billionaire Elon Musk’s deputies have gained access to a sensitive Treasury Department system responsible for trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments after the administration ousted a top career official at the department, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations.  

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent approved access to the Treasury’s payments system for a team led by Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive working in concert with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” the people said. 

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades and had been the acting secretary before Bessent’s confirmation, had refused to turn over access to Musk’s surrogates, people familiar with the situation told The Washington Post. Trump officials placed Lebryk on administrative leave, and then he announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues. 

Spokespeople for Treasury and DOGE declined to comment. 

The sensitive systems, run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually. Tens of millions of people across the country rely on the systems. They are responsible for paying Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

More.

These guys are up against the debt ceiling and are obviously looking for other ways than the customary "extraordinary measures" to cut spending under the circumstances of a new administration trying to pass new tax and spending legislation. That's why Trump has offered buyouts to government workers so they quit, among other novel spending gambits like freezing program spending for 90-days.

The Treasury stopped paying into certain accounts from January 17th, before Trump and Musk took over, as part of the extraordinary measures undertaken by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to keep from hitting it.

She's been keeping the national debt at $36 trillion to $36.2 trillion ever since Thanksgiving.

It's all very troubling, as elected officials like to say.

Typically, only a small group of career employees control the payment systems, and former officials have said it is extremely unusual for anyone connected to political appointees to access them. 

Millionaire Tim Walz makes his 90-year old mother feed herself from her Social Security check

 Speech.

 

 

Trump ups the ante with Democrats, proposes eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits paid by senior citizens, which about 40% of them now do, contrary to the original intention of the reforms in 1983

 

 About 40% of people who get Social Security must pay federal income taxes on their benefits.

More.

As originally intended in the 1983 reforms, taxes were designed to affect just 10% of recipients:

By the time the law was first amended in 1993, about 18% of Social Security beneficiaries had some tax liability (compared to about 10% when the law was originally enacted).

Spiking interest payments on the national debt through 2Q2022 threaten to crowd out other current spending on Social Security, Medicare, and National Defense

 Wait until the second half is done. 

This is going to be ugly.

LOL Bill Clinton, you mean like DCCC ads flooding YouTube claiming Republicans will take away your Social Security and Medicare?

 

Clinton: Republicans "Always Find Some New Way To Scare The Living Daylights Out Of Swing Voters About Something"

Seeing this headline html first thing Saturday morning is disorienting

 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-stock-futures-slip-as-investors-await-fed-chairman-powells-jackson-hole-address-11661508928

Investors await Powell's address?

That was published 24 hours ago, before the Powell speech, and the contents were updated last evening just before 5:00 PM.

But the pain surely ain't in the Fed.

The only pain described in the story is in households, businesses, families, not in the Fed.

Those Fed guys are rich, and get paid very handsomely.

The top 100 employees each made $274k or more in 2020. They are all named, here.

That puts them in the top 2% of all wage earners in the US.

They're the elites.

They experience no pain.

The Federal Reserve System had 23,517 employees in 2021, with a total system operating expense of $5.7353 billion, or about $244k per employee.

They live in a bubble. 

Everybody's just phonin' it in and getting the hell out of Dodge for the weekend. 

Especially Drudge.

 

I'm so old I can remember when Joe Biden first said Republicans were going to take away your Social Security, way back in 1861

 

NAACP President: Forgiving $10k in student loan debt ain't good enough, is a slap in the face to the average black who owes $53k

From the story:

Canceling $10,000 per borrower would cost around $321 billion and completely forgive the loans of about one-third of student loan borrowers.

This is all BS, of course. Millions of those borrowers can afford to pay off their loans themselves.

Student loans are another form of welfare for far too many borrowers of color, who dig themselves into a deep hole with government and education establishment encouragement and never get a degree, both of which also profit off the scheme. Meanwhile colleges continue to increase the cost of tuition knowing there is a ready source of government loan funding to pay for it.

Forgiving student loan debt without paying attention to income will inevitably be a handout to millions upon millions of high earners like Representative AOC who drives a Tesla Model 3 while reducing the average black loan balance by less than 20%.

Americans with income over $74,000 hold roughly 60% of the total public student loan debt. ... Black Americans are the only race who have student debt higher than their median annual income.

If you make over $74k you are in the top 20% of all wage earners in the United States in 2020. You can afford to pay your obligations. AOC is in the top 4% of all wage earners.

Handing $10k in loan forgiveness to American elites isn't a vote-buying scheme. It's a Democrat patronage payment.

AOC, who makes $175K a year, says taxpayers should have to pay off her $17K in student loan debt

 

 

Compared to the same period last year, the last seven months have seen a huge increase in C19 cases despite the mass vaccination effort, with deaths down only 14%

Year over year Apr-Oct 2021 US COVID-19 cases are up 71% from 9.02m to 15.45m; deaths are down 14% from 226,208 to 193,877.

Are cases up so much because vaccinated people keep spreading it asymptomatically?

 

Why is the white tail deer population in the US so badly infected now when the Chicoms couldn't find any infected animals to blame in the wet market in Wuhan in early 2020?

 

Are the deaths down because of vaccines? Better clinical practices in hospital? Monoclonal antibodies? A less deadly variant? Fewer vulnerable older people?

In California to date, just 10% of the cases have been 65+ years of age, but those account for 71% of the deaths, down from 74% at the beginning of May.

 

The number of people who received retirement benefits from the Social Security Administration rose 900,000 to 46.4 million in March, the smallest year-over-year gain since April 2009. ... the year-over-year change appears to reflect excess deaths. About 447,000 people who died from the virus were 65 or older, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or about 80% of total deaths.

More.

 

 

Mark Levin is so pathetic: He can characterize what went on in America's streets last year as an insurrection when millions rioted . . .

. . . and yet he still insists on the principle of non-violence from the people to put it down. We should just sit there and take it, watch our cities, businesses and homes burn down while the government does NOTHING.

I don't expect normie conservatism EVER to advocate watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants and their mobs.

This is because normie conservatism is really just Republicanism. Its roots do not go back further than Lincoln and his "project" for racial equality, which was in truth nothing but a demagogue's ploy to keep from losing a war. And because of this it has disarmed itself for every other political conflict except for the cause of racial equality. For THAT they will gladly destroy the country and see it destroyed, but otherwise won't lift a finger when BLM and Antifa come knocking.

This is why Republicanism failed to stop the income tax and women's suffrage, Social Security and the welfare state, abortion and gay marriage, and a whole host of other things large and small they said they were against over the years but on which they eventually caved, and then eventually championed. It's the reason "conservatism" has failed, because Republicans aren't conservatives. They are, according to their own lights, simply better versions of Democrats.

For this reason Republicanism can never be about the American Founding, protest to the contrary as it may, boast otherwise as it may. Lincoln destroyed the Founding and redefined the country, by force of arms!, and Republicans are stuck with it, and we with them, unless someone can recover the original spirit of liberty. And Democrats exist to never let them forget it, to make them live by their new principles which only tie their hands and guarantee their ongoing defeat.

Meanwhile, don't look for the Founding spirit from Noon to 3 let alone from 6 to 9. Instead look for more of the same game played by Rush Limbaugh, the "they're the real racists" game.

Race, race, race. Black unemployment was never lower than under Trump.  Hunter Biden said the n-word and the fag-word and gets away with it. Blah, blah, blah, as your kid can't find a decent job to start his own life.

 

Rush Limbaugh today, wrong again: "If you make $55,000 a year you are in the top 10%"

What a shock, right?

He's not even close, per SSA.gov for 2018. You have to make $100k to reach the top 10%. $55k is simply top 30%. $60k puts you in the top 25%. 2019 data comes out in October.

$55k stopped being top 10% in the year 2000. 

If it's a number, Rush will have it wrong.

Slate's Jordan Weissmann is scared of Joe Biden's propensity to flirt with cutting entitlements like Social Security and Medicare

[O]ur ex-VP has talked extensively about his desire to return to an era of bipartisan cooperation. And whether we’re talking about Social Security or another major program, the budget is one area in which those instincts are truly scary.

Read the whole thing here.