Elon Is Coming for Your Social Security
Plus: Don’t call it a “State of the Union” speech.
The sweeping cuts brought on by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, through their “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), have swept all the way up to the Social Security Administration. While Trump has long pledged not to touch the popular social insurance program, the DOGE cuts have had a major effect. So far, employees have been fired and offices have been shuttered in what the SSA described in a press release as an “agency-wide organizational restructuring that will include significant workforce reductions.”
Though, as Democratic lawmakers often remind the public, they are in a powerless position in government right now, they are already sounding the alarm.
“What is their final goal here? Is it to privatize Social Security? That would be a huge disaster,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “But, yeah, I mean, when you’re firing this many people, closing that many offices, don’t have people to write the checks, you are looking for disaster.”
While Murray noted she has not yet seen any missed Social Security payments, she has heard that constituents in her state and elsewhere have started experiencing extended wait times and difficulty getting through to customer service since DOGE took up the knife.1
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, concurred, saying, “The point really is, if you take the system today . . . and then you start hollowing it out, which is essentially what they’re doing, you hollow it out, and then they go ‘Oh, my goodness, get the private sector here.’”
This may all sound like Democratic scare tactics. But the Trump team’s actions are providing real and ample fodder for alarmists across the spectrum—and not just what DOGE is doing, either.
On March 1, Lee Dudek, the acting SSA commissioner, sent an email to staff that raised more than a few eyebrows on and off the Hill. The note, titled “Our Road Ahead” and obtained by The Bulwark, suggested that civil protections for SSA workers were going to be stripped away (“the autonomy our employees once enjoyed changed”) and that major changes in the form of “tough, decisive choices” were coming.
Tucked into the letter was one line in particular that caught the attention of a few recipients (emphasis ours):
We stand at a crossroads. With a clear mandate to change from the President, we are committed to ensuring that accountability never interferes with our customer contact service mission. We administer Old Age, Survivors, Disability Insurance and SSI. It is not our job to do the mission work of the FTC, ICE, BLS, IRS or the States. The life affirming moments we provide in the lives of citizens, is a result of serendipity - from doing our work well – it is not an end in itself, nor our mission. We need to double down on our greatest strength – the field. We need to revitalize SSA operations by streamlining activities, outsource non-essential functions to industry experts, and reinstating human judgment and common sense into every decision at every level.
What did Dudek mean by “outsource non-essential functions”? He doesn’t elaborate in the rest of the email. But Martin O’Malley, who ran the SSA under Joe Biden, suggested Dudek’s plans could include automation and the use of AI to replace live human beings in call centers. This would, he says, be a total disaster.
“Do you have anybody you love who is over 85 or 90?,” O’Malley asked The Bulwark. “I think the people saying these things have never actually sat with a call taker or listened to people on the other end of the phone or sat in on the trainings to see the complexity of what they’re taught. If you’re somebody over 70, you just want to talk to a person to work out your problem.”
O’Malley said he remains in touch with folks at SSA and that the work environment there has become “toxic.”
“They are driving people out there with a viciousness that I believe will collapse the agency,” he said. He predicted that in the next thirty to ninety days, the cuts would bring on a system collapse resulting in an “interruption of benefits.” If that were to happen, it would mark an unwelcome first in the agency’s history.
“We have a 50-year low in staffing while the baby boomer generation is swelling their ranks,” he explained. “That’s the underlying reality here, and these guys appear hell-bent on breaking it. It seems they really want to break Social Security.”
Democrats, in theory, could try and stave this off by including more funding for the SSA in the upcoming government funding bill. But the reality is that Trump and DOGE may very well ignore whatever language they pass into law. Dudek, in his letter, danced around that possibility, writing: “under President Trump, we follow established precedent: we serve at the pleasure and direction of the President. Only the Courts or Congress can intervene.”
Why do we do this?
Trump’s first big speech of his new term is tonight to a joint session of Congress. For purely technical reasons, this will not be a “state of the union” address, but it’s a functional equivalent. The whole thing is a giant public relations exercise. The president isn’t laying out his agenda; he’s instead restating what he campaigned on and advertising what his administration is already doing. The objections by the opposition are already well known (even though in this case their messaging strategy is disorganized). These addresses to joint sessions—states of the union or otherwise—are truly administration-agnostic in their unchanging core function: Each one is an opportunity to stroke the boss’s ego and reiterate the point that saying words good is a president’s primary responsibility.
Members of each party bring guests—some to bolster the political favor they enjoy from the base, others who embody in some way the administration’s priorities (either for good or bad reasons), and there’s also always a wildcard or two, often an unusual guest brought by a House Republican. Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) famously brought a Holocaust denier who said he latched onto Gaetz because of a personal affinity for “weird guys with a fuck-you attitude.” Last year, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) brought Michael Knowles, a podcaster who believes “prejudice, broadly, is a very good thing.”
Some of this year’s guests include a recently laid-off federal worker invited by Rep. April McLain Delaney (D-Md.), a formerly undocumented immigrant-turned police chief from Democratic Rep. Lou Correa’s California district, and Nancy Bolan, a DOGE-fired USAID employee brought by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).
Beyond the guests, there are many moments for brief outrage, whether it’s Rep Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouting, “You lie,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and co. shouting “liar,” or then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripping up a copy of Trump’s speech in front of all the cameras.
Some Democrats are boycotting the speech, while others might stage a walkout when Trump utters certain phrases.
If you don’t feel like watching but still want to know what happened, tune in to The Bulwark’s live stream right after the speech wraps. I’ll tap in from Statuary Hall to give everyone the skinny on what the C-SPAN cameras didn’t catch.
Affairs of the foreign kind
Despite Attorney General Pam Bondi’s decision to defang FARA’s enforcement, I’ve noticed a surprising number of Foreign Agents Registration Act filings over the past few days. A couple worth noting: The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs inked two deals with two politically divergent Washington firms.
Targeted Communications Global, an arm of the conservative firm Targeted Victory, signed with the Israeli MFA. In addition, a new filing revealed that late last week, so did SKDKnickerbocker, a Democrat-aligned firm, for “media relations.” The SKDK filing enlisted eight staffers to work on the account, including frequent Democratic donor Jill Zuckman.
It’s an interesting strategy. On the American political right, the consistent message to Israel for years has been “Ask, and it shall be given to you.” On the left, there are more obvious gaps to fill. The SKDK filing shows a late-February media rush that included outreach to dozens of mainstream, liberal, and even right-wing outlets, including X (formerly Twitter).
They Still Care About Congress?
by Lauren Egan and Sam Stein
Pete Marocco, deputy administrator-designate at the DOGE-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is set to brief lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday, according to two Hill officials familiar with the matter.
It will be a closed-door session, so anything we find out will come from leaks. But the visit comes as lawmakers (mostly, but not all, Democratic) are seeking answers as to why USAID was shuttered despite Congress appropriating funds for it, why foreign aid of the life-saving kind remains frozen, and what benefits are supposed to be derived from neutering U.S. soft power across the globe.
If you recall an edition of Press Pass from last week, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said the DOGE cuts could create this exact kind of problem, leading to political ramifications for Republicans.
I can't watch it. He makes me physically ill. I'll wait for your thoughts when it's over. Of course, he's bragged that it's going to be really special. let the clown show begin. gag.
Of course they want to extinguish Social Security … they don’t suffer, they don’t want, they only desire to those who DO need & want to suffer. How dare they! Billionaires are the only true patriots. To the country of ME MYSELF: Let ‘’em eat … nothing!