Anonymous wrote:Yes. Republicans and the Heritage Foundation have waited to kill social security and Medicare since it was instituted in the 30s.

Anonymous wrote:And now Lutnick isn’t mincing words about those getting SS.

https://www.tmz.com/2025/03/22/commerce-secretary-howard-lutnick-shut-up-if-no-social-security-check/

When all you do is perform for an audience of one you have unlimited time for television instead of working.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work for SSA. Here’s reality. Forget solvency and Trump’s stooge threatening to shut the agency down. It will break its own and miss payments due to staffing shortages and computer issues— probably in the next few months.

Our staffing was below 1970s levels even before Trump took office. With huge backlogs. My division was backlogged a year. And was detailed to an 18 month backlog. Now, Elmo and the GS 15 ACOSS stooge are making the working environment so incredibly toxic that substantive work has ground to an halt annd anll we seem to do is sit in all hands calls trying to comply with the latest instance and insulting email.

And then they offered VSIP and VERA— stacked. Everyone who can get out is— 12 people out of the 40 or so one my team had their last day today. These are the people who have been there long enough to understand the program. Employee retention and hiring was a huge issue before Trump. Now, we no longer have the staffing or institutional knowledge to keep the program running. I have 18 years in, can’t VERA and it never dawned on me during Trump 1 to leave. And I’m actively interviewing to leave the agency and move out of the DMV. And praying for a RIF so I get my years severance. I can’t do this for 4 years.

And now they are adding 85,000 people each week who would have done teleservice benefits registrations to the field office workload. While cutting staff and closing field offices and regional offices. It can’t be done.

SSA is an incredibly complex program running on 1970s computer systems. It takes years to really understand the program and systems. And mentoring and training new hires takes people off of casework. Which makes it a Humpty Dumpty Agency. Once you break it, there is no real way to put it back together. And it will break— even if Musk were not trying to kill it off. It’s just a matter of when.

You making the case for DOGE with your post. What is so incredibly complicated about SSA other than it is running on incredibly antiquated software and hardware? This is something Musk can actually help fix. What is harder to fix is that the program is going to become insolvent if it continues without changes. It is not going to get cancelled but the ss tax need to increase or benefits need to decrease.