Sabotage In Plain Sight— How Republicans Hope To Get Away With Dismantling Social Security

They’re Breaking It On Purpose So They Can Sell It Off To Their Wall Street Cronies

The headline Social Security Is Breaking Down is passive and exactly what Musk and Trump (and Bezos) want headlines about Social Security to be. The Washington Post should know better. A more dynamic and accurate headline would be: “Republicans Succeeding In Breaking Down Social Security.” Because that is exactly what’s happening. The Post's own subtitle makes that pretty clear: “A flood of cuts led by Elon Musk has sent the agency into chaos as a new commissioner prepares to take charge.” 

Lisa Rein and Hannah Natanson reported that “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. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones at the front desk as receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. But the agency no longer has a system to monitor customers’ experience with these services, because that office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk. And the phones keep ringing. And ringing. The federal agency that delivers $1.5 trillion a year in earned benefits to 73 million retired workers, their survivors and poor and disabled Americans is engulfed in crisis— further undermining its ability to provide reliable and quick service to vulnerable customers, according to internal documents and more than two dozen current and former agency employees and officials, customers and others who interact with Social Security… ‘What’s going on is the destruction of the agency from the inside out, and it’s accelerating,’ Sen. Angus King (I-ME) said in an interview. ‘I have people approaching me all the time in their 70s and 80s, and they’re beside themselves. They don’t know what’s coming.’ King’s home state has the country’s oldest population. ‘What they’re doing now is unconscionable,’ he said.”

Yes, unconscionable— and well-planned out. About a week ago, Judd Legum reported on the details of a the Trump regime’s memo outlining how they would undermine and sabotage Social Security. “An internal Social Security Administration (SSA) memo,’ wrote Legum, “details proposed changes to the claims process that would debilitate the agency, cause significant processing delays, and prevent many Americans from applying for or receiving benefits.

The memo, authored by Acting Deputy SSA Commissioner Doris Diaz, purports to be motivated by a desire to mitigate ‘fraud risks.’ Elon Musk has pushed several false claims about the nature and scope of Social Security fraud. In a recent interview on Fox Business, Musk suggested that 10% of federal expenditures were related to Social Security fraud. This is false. Social Security fraud does exist, but "improper" Social Security payments amounts to about $9 billion annually— less than 1% of total Social Security benefits paid and 0.1% of the federal budget. Most improper payments are not criminal fraud but the result of beneficiaries or the SSA failing to update records. The biggest change contemplated by Diaz's memo is to require ‘internet identity proofing’ for ‘benefit claims… made over the phone.’ When an SSA customer is ‘unable to utilize the internet ID proofing, customers will be required to visit a field office to provide in-person identity documentation.’ … Because the SSA serves a large population that is either older or physically disabled, many cannot access the internet. Under the new system, this would force these populations to visit an office to have their claim processed. The Diaz memo estimates it would require 75,000 to 85,000 in-person visitors per week to SSA's offices to implement the policy… [T]he wait time for an appointment, even before these changes, averaged over a month.” 

The memo anticipates creating a huge surge in demand for in-person appointments as the SSA slashes staff and closes offices. Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek has announced that he will terminate 7,000 workers, about 12% of the workforce. Meanwhile, dozens of SSA offices are being shuttered. Some people need to travel more than 100 miles to get to the nearest location. As the SSA limits services that could be provided over the phone, it is ending in-person services at some offices, converting them to phone-only.

An SSA source told Popular Information that there are "no significant concerns about fraud at intake" because no benefits are being distributed. And there are already multiple layers of identity verification in place before a claim is approved. The source said they believe the new ID verification steps are an effort to "create additional hurdles to filing claims and overwhelm the system."

The memo acknowledges that the policy changes would create increased "challenges for vulnerable populations." This seems to concede that many elderly and disabled people are physically unable to travel to an in-person office. It is unclear how these populations will be able to receive benefits at all.

The combination of fewer workers, fewer offices and a massive increase in the demand for in-person services could sabotage the Social Security system— effectively denying many Americans the benefits they are due.

All of this is directly acknowledged in the Diaz memo. The memo predicts "service disruption," "operational strain," and "budget shortfalls." It also says preventing people who cannot use the internet or travel to an in-person office from receiving benefits could result in "legal challenges and congressional scrutiny."

On March 12, the day before the Diaz memo was sent, the Washington Post reported that the SSA was considering a proposal to “end telephone service for claims processing.”  That move, the paper reported, "would disrupt Social Security’s internal operations and threaten its ability to serve the public, current and former officials warned."

…The SSA source believes the Diaz memo "is DOGE’s workaround." The agency can technically claim that Americans can still make claims over the phone. But the fine print of the new policy means these claims will never be approved without using the internet or making an in-person visit.

If today isn’t your first visit to DWT, you already know the Republican war on Social Security is nothing new. From the moment it was first proposed by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, conservatives have sought to undermine it, obstruct its passage and, in more recent years, dismantle it. When the Social Security Act was signed into law in 1935, Republican congressmen railed against it as “socialism” and predicted it would bankrupt the country. When Reagan took office, he pushed to gut it through privatization schemes, and George W. Bush followed suit, using the specter of insolvency as a pretext to hand the program over to Wall Street. Today, Republicans claim to be its protectors while simultaneously working to hollow it out, starve it of funding, and make it so dysfunctional that the public turns against it.

What’s happening now is the culmination of nearly a century of right-wing efforts to destroy Social Security— not by repealing it outright, which would be politically disastrous for them, but by making it so difficult to access that millions of Americans simply give up. It’s a strategy of manufactured chaos, deliberate neglect, and bureaucratic sabotage. By cutting staff, closing offices, and imposing impossible new hurdles, they are turning Social Security into a system that no longer serves the people it was created to protect. And their ultimate goal? To declare it a failure and finally justify privatizing it or phasing it out entirely.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. If they succeed, the consequences will be catastrophic— not just for retirees and the disabled, but for the entire fabric of American society. Social Security is one of the last great pillars of the New Deal, a program that has lifted generations out of poverty and ensured that people can retire with dignity. The Republican assault on it isn’t just an attack on a government program— it’s an attack on the very idea that the government should serve the public good. That’s why exposing this sabotage and fighting back is more urgent than ever. And it’s why, between today and the April 1 special election in FL-06, every voter 65 and older who uses Facebook or Instagram will see this Blue America ad at least 3 times.