Trump just lit a fuse under the sleeping giant with Social Security move

Near the end of AlterNet's exclusive interview with former Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley, the decades-long public servant asked if he could add a closing thought. He then proceeded to explain why President Donald Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and the rest of the Republican Party are targeting Social Security.

"They believe a person with a disability who can't work is a waste!" O'Malley said, his voice simultaneously outraged and erudite. "That an elderly person is a waste! That an orphan child is a waste!"

He continued, "That's why so many of the hardest-right ideologues — like Elon Musk, who says empathy is the greatest weakness in the Western mind — are going after Social Security. Not only is it the one agency with money in the bank they can rob, but it's also an agency that defends a principle most of us still cling to: that in America, there's no such thing as a spare American — no such thing as a human being who is a waste. That's what these ideologues, eugenicists, and monopolists are going after."

This observation is especially poignant because O'Malley isn't just any former Social Security Commissioner. Thanks to Trump's neglect of the program, he is currently the last full-time Social Security Commissioner.

In 2025, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that without Social Security, roughly 22 million American adults and children would find themselves below the poverty line. Nearly half of elderly Americans say they expect to rely on Social Security as their primary source of income when they retire. Yet despite the vital importance of this program, Trump and his administration are moving quietly to privatize it, putting the economic security of millions of Americans at the whims of financial vehicles that (not coincidentally) primarily benefit Trump and his cronies. Additionally, through their spending cuts and neglect of the program, one out of five Americans is expected to lose as much as 24 percent of their benefits by 2032 — amounting to roughly $500 per person.

If there is any good news in this bleak prognosis, it is that the American people are not taking this lying down. Quite to the contrary, O'Malley has observed the stirrings of a massive backlash to protect the program. Despite the cruel and avaricious attitude of the Trumpers toward the program, most Americans agree with President Franklin Roosevelt's 1938 statement explaining why it is so essential.

"The Social Security Act offers to all our citizens a workable and working method of meeting urgent present needs and of forestalling future need," Roosevelt said at the time. "It utilizes the familiar machinery of our Federal-State government to promote the common welfare and the economic stability of the Nation."

When AlterNet reached out to the White House about O'Malley's claims in this article, spokeswoman Liz Huston replied that "President Trump will always protect and strengthen Social Security. President Trump proudly delivered No Tax on Social Security for nearly every senior in America despite every single Democrat in Congress voting against it.” The No Tax provision did not in fact eliminate Social Security taxes, but instead added temporary special tax deductions to various income brackets. It was part of the so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" — a broad piece of legislation that focused on providing tax breaks to the wealthy — and because revenue from the taxes were redirected to the Social Security Trust Fund, critics argued the deductions will exacerbate conditions that could cause Social Security to become insolvent.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Trump's "Big Ugly Bill"

ROZSA: Based on a recent AL.com report that states: "Barring action from Congress, millions of Americans who depend on Social Security could see their benefits cut by as much as 24 percent in 2032. The deep cuts would average about $500 a month and would impact one in five Americans," or 63 million in total. To what extent is this the result of President Trump's policies?

O'MALLEY: Well, his policies — as contained in the "big, ugly bill" — accelerated the depletion date of the baby boomer surplus by a year. And he's said many times in the past that he wants to eliminate the payroll tax.

Let me put it this way. His policies have certainly accelerated the depletion date by a year. At the end of President [Joe] Biden's administration, that date had actually been pushed further into the future by a year. So there you go — a net swing of two years. That's what his policies have done to make the situation more imminent and worse.

Having said that, the damage he's done to the trust fund and the damage he's done to customer service at the agency and its operations are both solvable problems — but he doesn't appear to be in a mode to solve them. He appears to be in a mode of wanting to privatize Social Security.

ROZSA: I'm glad you brought up that he seems to want to privatize it. Max Richtman, CEO and President of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told MarketWatch recently that President Trump should be working to strengthen Social Security instead of "toying around with federally seeded private accounts."

The quote is: "We would advise President Trump to focus on Social Security – a program that has worked splendidly for more than 90 years to provide Americans with basic retirement security."

He also said Trump is trying a backdoor way of privatizing it.

O'MALLEY: It's not just him. Treasury Secretary Bessent said that those Trump accounts — which were ostensibly wedged into that "big, ugly" or "beautiful" bill, depending on how you look at it — were set up as their backdoor way of privatizing Social Security. He's said this himself, on the record. You can look it up. It's not just Max saying it or imagining some motive — Bessent stated it out loud: this is their backdoor way of privatizing Social Security.

And let's keep in mind, in all of this, that Wall Street and cryptocurrency are gambles. Social Security is a sacred trust backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Wall Street is a gamble; Social Security is a guarantee — a guarantee that has been there without fail every month for 91 years.

A shower of outrages

ROZSA: It's interesting you say that, because Senator Ted Cruz recently called it a "dirty little secret" that the plan is to privatize Social Security through these backdoor methods. My question is: why do you think there isn't more public outrage over what they're doing?

O'MALLEY: Because we live in a time of a constant shower of outrages every day. Let me back up a second. We live in a time when this president has blown through so many laws, so many constitutional requirements and prohibitions, and so many societal norms, that it's hard for any single issue to break through the cacophony of daily breaking news.

Having said that, a vast majority of Americans oppose privatizing Social Security. Instead, they want it made stronger and better. They don't want the money they've put in through a lifetime of earnings gambled on the stock market, or on Donald Trump's latest cryptocurrency, or on Trump accounts. They want the program to work as it has, without fail, for 91 years.

ROZSA: My next question refers to your recent interview with BTL Online, where you said they've reduced staffing at the Social Security Administration to "the largest loss of staff in the shortest period of time in the history of that 90-year agency... that's never, ever once missed a monthly payment." Can you go into detail about (a) the consequences of this for the agency's effectiveness and (b) the impact it's had on the employees who were there?

O'MALLEY: Sure. Social Security is struggling to operate right now, with Trump having reduced staffing to a 63-year low, even as the baby boomer generation swells the ranks of active beneficiaries to a new all-time high every day.

The impact has been this: workload has increased while staff to handle it has shrunk. Processing claims, and even mundane routine things like changing your direct deposit account, changing your address, or updating a survivor benefit when a spouse dies — people are having more and more difficulty accomplishing these things. "Ghost offices" are popping up all over the country.
Social Security maintained 1,211 field offices for the longest time — small places close to home where people could go, just like the post office. But unlike the post office, this is about life-and-death, earned benefits people depend on. A "ghost office" is one that hasn't officially closed, but if you walked in, you'd find no one there.

I was in Lincoln, California, and a man with a walker told me Social Security said he was being overpaid. He tried to call and couldn't get through. He went to the field office, and there was no one there — no one behind the glass, no one in the waiting room. The only person there was the security guard, who told him he'd have to figure it out online. That's a ghost office.

The Trump administration's propaganda machine might tell you they haven't closed a single office, but in effect they have, by decimating the staff. In my time there, that only happened once, and we got it back up and running within 30 days.

When you create a hostile work environment — when you push nine or ten thousand people out the door in such a short period, under threat of future restructuring if they don't leave now, when you pay people with our own money to quit — that's what they've done: cash incentives to leave immediately. If you were retirement-eligible and left by March, they even paid those people through the end of the year, provided they were out the door by the end of March.

Now they're acknowledging they need to start hiring again. But good luck with that — after the way they've treated this agency, what person in their right mind would want to begin a career there under this group, who seem intent on wrecking Social Security's customer service so they can wreck the public's trust in the program, and then rob it. Because it's the only agency that maintains a $2.5 trillion surplus, which I believe is the latest count.

That surplus was intended and built up since 1982, as Congress designed it, to cover the lifespans of the baby boomers. The reason it's being depleted before the baby boomers have passed on is income inequality — the kind of income inequality Donald Trump has put on steroids, in this grotesque display of greed without bounds.

ROZSA: What's your advice on broader economic policies that could reduce the income inequality you mentioned?

O'MALLEY: The solution to this 2032 cliff is pretty straightforward: scrap the cap that currently allows the wealthiest Americans to pay next to nothing into Social Security. Most Americans think it's unfair and outrageous that someone making a billion dollars a year pays the same amount into Social Security as a family of four making $187,000. And they're right — because Social Security tax doesn't apply to any income above $187,000.

There have been bills introduced in both the House and Senate. One would apply the Social Security tax to income above $400,000; another, with plenty of co-sponsors, would apply it to income above $250,000. That's really where the future debate in Congress is headed. Every senator elected this year will eventually cast a vote either to privatize Social Security or to strengthen it.

If you scrap the cap and require wealthier people to pay the same Social Security tax the rest of us do, you could both increase benefits and guarantee the ability to pay 100 percent of earned benefits far into the future — well beyond 2090. So if we can protect Social Security through the Trump years from being privatized, looted, or funneled into cryptocurrency or Trump accounts, the future debate will really be about where to set that cap — income above $250,000, above $400,000, or somewhere in between. I believe that's where the debate will be, if we can save Social Security from being dismantled entirely or turned into lump sums, with people told to save their own money or gamble it on the stock market, or trust that his cryptocurrency will keep rising in value as he devalues the full faith and credit of the United States.

Calling your congressman

ROZSA: What can people do to fight for Social Security, and do you think they already are?

O'MALLEY: Yes. People need to call their members of Congress. Sadly, they now have to call their members of Congress just to get routine work done at Social Security. The more the public does that, the more responsive Congress will be to protecting and strengthening it rather than gutting it.

Social Security is very much on the ballot this year. The Republican nominee in Texas, Ken Paxton, recently said through a spokesperson that Social Security should be privatized. Ramaswamy, running for governor in Ohio, has said the same thing. But there's a glimmer of hope — Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), who isn't up for reelection this year, has publicly said he doesn't understand why wealthy people don't pay the same Social Security tax everyone else does.

People need to bring the truth back to their own tables of democracy — whether that's the kitchen table or the table at work — and spread the truth about this program: if wealthier people were required to pay the same Social Security tax as everybody else, there would be no problem at all. The program would be strengthened, with the ability to pay 100 percent of benefits far into the future. That's the most important thing people can do.

Social Security is definitely on the ballot this year. 2032 is what legislators call a "decision-inducing event" — what you and I would call a deadline. They'll have to act before that deadline hits, and whether they act to strengthen the program or weaken it will be determined by who we elect to the United States Senate this year, and perhaps to Congress. Because there's a chance, Matt, that if Democrats retake the majority in the House, one of the very first bills you'll see reported out of Ways and Means and onto the floor is one requiring wealthy people to pay the same Social Security tax as the rest of us.

ROZSA: Thank you so much for taking the time.

O'MALLEY: Can I say one other thing?

ROZSA: Absolutely.

O'MALLEY: When Donald Trump first came into office, he was decrying all the waste, fraud, and abuse at Social Security — 12 million dead people receiving checks, which was a lie; seven million immigrants receiving checks, which was also a lie. To date, they haven't produced a single prosecution of anyone, dead or alive, who was improperly receiving Social Security benefits.
The waste they claim exists at Social Security isn't a bloated bureaucracy by any measure — they've reduced staffing to a 63-year low, and its overhead is now around seven-tenths of one percent of benefits paid. No — the "waste" these eugenicists are talking about is human beings they consider disposable.

They believe a person with a disability who can't work is a waste. That an elderly person is a waste. That an orphan child is a waste. That's why so many of the hardest-right ideologues — like Elon Musk, who says empathy is the greatest weakness in the Western mind — are going after Social Security. Not only is it the one agency with money in the bank they can rob, but it's also an agency that defends a principle most of us still cling to: that in America, there's no such thing as a spare American — no such thing as a human being who is a waste. That's what these ideologues, eugenicists, and monopolists are going after.

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