Guess Retired Republicans Are So Rich They Don't Need Social Security Checks!

Because there might be a problem with that soon.

Last week, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill in the Senate that would have made Social Security solvent for the next 75 years, literally with “one weird trick.” This week, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the entire system just might implode, thanks to the startling (purposeful) ineptitude of Elon Musk and his band of teenage edgelords.

Weirdly enough, people who don’t really have to consider the need for Social Security, either because they are one of the richest people in the world or because they are high school juniors, don’t have a lot of reason to be too careful with the program. And they haven’t been! Right now, it seems like the general plan is to just shred the entire program to pieces and then, when it implodes, post a bunch of cutesy memes about how totally cool they are for dismantling the whole thing.

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Seven thousand Social Security employees are set to be fired this week — with plans to ultimately eliminate half of its entire 60,000 person workforce (which is reportedly chronically understaffed).

Social Security offices are closing all over, especially in southern states like Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. This is probably at least a fair place to start, being that these states are largely Republican. After all, what kind of stupid people would vote Republican if they were relying on Social Security or other social safety net programs to survive?

The new acting head of the Social Security Administration is Leland Dudek. Dudek was a middle-management staffer prior to literally being put on leave by previous leaders due to his efforts to “assist” DOGE — which he described in a since-deleted post on LinkedIn as his having “bullied agency executives” and “moved contractor money around” in order to help Musk with his dismantling of the 90-year-old institution relied upon by 70 million Americans.

Martin O’Malley, the former Social Security commissioner under the Biden administration, told CNBC this weekend that this absolutely will lead to some unfortunate consequences, like people not getting their benefits on time for the very first time in history.

“Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits,” O’Malley said. “I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”

O’Malley also suggested that people “start saving now” in preparation for that happening, so they don’t find themselves eating cans of Grey Gardens paté.

This will have even greater impact on those who are filing claims for retirement or disability for the first time.

Via CNBC:

For example, if a woman files for a survivor benefit after her husband dies, she needs to provide a copy of her marriage license. A Social Security employee then needs to code the system to verify they have seen that document and the applicant is eligible for benefits, [Jill] Hornick, [a union official at the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1395] said.

“Not everybody can do things electronically,” particularly the older adults and disabled individuals who the Social Security Administration serves, said Maria Freese, senior legislative representative at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

“If you don’t have people to run an agency that requires hands-on customer service, then of course there’s a risk that you could end up with benefits being either denied or interrupted,” Freese said.

This particular trash fire would not exactly be a grand departure from what they’ve been doing. DOGE’s destruction of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has led to hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution to Americans scammed by financial institutions sitting in limbo instead of going out.

At this same time, the Social Security Fairness Act — which President Biden signed on January 5 — is about to go into effect. People (like teachers in some states) who had jobs in which they paid into a public pension fund (which previously disqualified them from collecting Social Security), but who also worked other jobs where they paid into Social Security, will be able to collect Social Security based on what they paid into it while working those other jobs.

This means that a whole lot of people can expect to get a pretty serious boost to their Social Security checks. Compare and contrast! Which thing do people like better? Getting more money for retirement, or not getting their checks at all?

Of course, it’s very possible that many of those people will attribute that boost to Trump, which could mitigate any blowback he might receive for letting Elon Musk destroy the program for shits and giggles — so we’re going to need to be pretty loud about where it’s coming from.

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Meanwhile, Musk is out here calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” which is just a really weird thing to claim about a system that has kept the elderly and the disabled out of poverty for the last 90 years. Compare that to capitalism, which is literally a pyramid scheme that requires a portion of the population to live in poverty, while also creating people like Elon Musk who hoard more money than they or their 47 children or grandchildren could ever spend in their lifetimes, even if they bought literally every politician in the United States, and then make it their mission to destroy every single program that helps anyone anywhere.

He is, however, about to prove that he and others like him have never known what the hell they are talking about with regard to Social Security and other federal programs. They’ve assumed this whole time that all of these workers and programs are unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer money — so much so that no one will even notice when they are gone. DOGE has taken a machete to these programs without even understanding what most of them do in order to prove this point.

This would work out fabulously if they were right. The problem is, they’re not, and people will probably notice if Granny’s kisses start smelling like cat food.

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