No One Knows Whether Social Security is Safe from Musk and Trump, But There Are Some Reasons for Guarded Optimism
Social Security happens to be one of my primary areas of academic expertise, and it unfortunately has become a focus of attention in the Musk-Trump Administration. Unsurprisingly, Elon Musk seems to have heard from some bro somewhere that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, which has excited him. (I can easily imagine him yelling "Ponzi!!" in the same way that he bellowed "Chainsaw!!" at a conference last month.) My latest column on Verdict, published in two parts yesterday and today, addresses the latest madness.
The idea that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme is an especially absurd example of financial illiteracy, as I explain (again) in Part One of today's column. Part Two explains why Social Security is essential to the country and then points out that the program is almost shockingly inexpensive to run. That is why the title of the column is: "Social Security is Essential, Efficient (Gasp!), and Definitely NOT a Ponzi Scheme."
Frequent readers of Dorf on Law know very well how much I scorn the inherently incoherent concept of efficiency, which should provide a sense of how important it was to me to make that point. Musk repeatedly demonstrates that he truly is a "budgetary simpleton," a label that I bestowed on him in January, but if anything I might have been too kind. His idea of "government efficiency" means nothing more than "cutting things (including hundreds of thousands of people's livelihoods)," without even the thought of any cost-benefit tradeoff. Or in this case, without even being aware that Social Security is "government efficiency" in its most intuitive form: very inexpensive to run.
I began today's Part Two of the column by noting that Donald Trump is trying to have it both ways with Social Security -- as he does on so many issues -- with the White House angrily announcing that Trump has promised "over and over and over again" not to touch Social Security, even while he is setting himself up to change his tune and go after the system. After noting his reversals on lowering consumer prices ("You know, it’s very hard.") and on ending Russia's war on Ukraine in 24 hours ("I was being a little bit sarcastic when I said that."), I pointed out that Republicans have spent decades lying about Social Security as part of their strategy to privatize the system.
On the privatization point, I cited some prominent Republicans talking about that idea only a year ago, which means that I did not even need to go back to George W. Bush's failed attempt at partial privatization in 2005. Of course, the Bush II Administration was only occasionally lawless (see Iraq, invasion of) and evidently decided that they were not willing to take the political hit from doing something that was immediately and massively unpopular. In other words, they did not simply push ahead with an anti-democratic power grab by using executive powers to destroy Social Security.
Will Trump "go there"? He certainly has been going there again and again on a daily basis in very scary ways (most obviously including flouting the law to rendition "gang members" to an infamous prison in El Salvador). If Trump is feeling truly invincible, why would he not just allow Musk to declare war on Social Security, falsely asserting that is already broken as an excuse to get rid of it?
But again, will Trump go there on Social Security specifically? Part of the answer has to do with how much Trump cares about that issue one way or the other, compared to how much he cares about being idolized. He thrives on being the person at the center of a cult of personality, and that cult includes a lot of older people who depend on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. (To be clear, Medicaid is nominally only for poor people, but huge numbers of senior citizens become poor over time and end up relying on Medicaid, no matter that they were middle or even upper-middle class for most of their lives.)
It is worth remembering that, on a surprisingly large number of issues, Trump follows rather than leads. When he was booed for trying to tout his first Administration's connection to COVID vaccines, he immediately backed off. He once interrupted himself during a speech to comment about how surprised he was that his crowds were so motivated by anti-trans bigotry: "I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy. Who would have thought? Five years ago, you didn't know what the hell it was." Even his "drain the swamp" thing in 2016 was essentially crowd-sourced, with Trump saying "I hated it" because it was too "hokey." But when the crowd loved it, he changed course.
So because Trump glories in his rallies, it is possible that he will not do anything that would directly harm his own people.
Possible, but not certain. In an appearance on Stephen Colbert's show last night, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pointed out that Trump had spent several minutes of his interminable State of the Union speech last month blatantly lying about Social Security. (Side note: I will be returning again to the ongoing Schumer fallout on Monday.) Because of the blizzard of news in which we all currently find ourselves, I had honestly forgotten entirely that Trump had used that high-profile speech to repeat some laughable misinformation that he had seen in a Musk tweet. His rambling claims so obviously fail the smell test that it is worth quoting him at length:
We're also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors, and that our seniors and people that we love rely on. Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security numbers from people aged 100 to 109 years old.
It lists 4.7 million Social Security numbers from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don't know any of them. I know some people that are rather elderly, but not quite that elderly. 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149, and money is being paid to many of them, and we're searching right now. In fact, Pam, good luck, good luck. You're going to find it.
But a lot of money is paid out to people, because it just keeps getting paid and paid, and nobody does, and it really hurts Social Security. It hurts our country. 1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159, and over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are age over 160 years old. ...
Including, to finish, 1,039 people between the ages of 220 and 229; one person between the age of 240 and 249; and one person is listed at 360 years of age, more than 100 years — more than 100 years older than our country. But we're gonna find out where that money's going, and it's not going to be pretty.
By slashing all of the fraud, waste and theft we can find, we will defeat inflation, bring down mortgage rates, lower car payments and grocery prices, protect our seniors and put more money in the pockets of American families.
All of that is entirely false, and it had been thoroughly debunked more than a week before Trump's speech. Yet there he was, repeating the words that Musk had put in his mouth. More to the immediate point, as CNN described it in a fact-check of Trump's speech: "Trump has promised not to cut Social Security, but [he] clearly feels that eliminating fraud is not a cut. He will need to prove there is fraud, and he’s asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute some people." Well, "prove" is not exactly the right word there, though, is it?
So given that Trump changes his mind frequently, that he feels free to wave off even things that he has said "over and over and over," and that his boss is apparently fixated on Social Security as a cesspool of fraud, it is not at all difficult to imagine him soon saying that "not touching Social Security was very hard," or "I was being a bit sarcastic when I said that," or some word salad that amounts to saying that he can do whatever he wants to do.
On the other hand, there was a bit of good news yesterday that is pertinent here. Trump abruptly withdrew Rep. Elise Stefanik's nomination to be the US Ambassador to the United Nations, and his reason for doing so was very encouraging. As Reuters described it, Trump snatched the prize away from Stefanik "because the Republicans need to maintain their slim majority in the House of Representatives to advance his 'America First' agenda." Trump's explanation was telling: "'It is essential that we maintain EVERY Republican Seat in Congress,' Trump said in a social media post. 'With a very tight Majority, I don't want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise's seat.'"
That is, dare I say, normal! It is highly significant that Trump's people, for all of their cockiness and full embrace of the unitary executive theory, felt the need to protect a seat -- especially one in a very red district in Upstate New York -- because they are worried about losing even one vote in Congress. The current split in the House of Representatives is 218 Republicans, 213 Democrats, and four vacancies, meaning that two Republican and two Democratic seats have become vacant since the 220-215 results in November. Republicans are even worried about the seat in the very red Florida district that noted Signal user Mike Waltz vacated to become Trump's national security advisor, with a surprisingly tight special election coming up next Tuesday.
Even if the Waltz seat stays in the Republican column, I repeat that this is encouraging. From my perch as the resident hyper-pessimist on Dorf on Law, even I can see that these developments provide some reason for optimism. If it is true that we can learn more from watching what Trump does than from listening to what he says, these are not the actions of someone who thinks that he has absolute power (at least not yet). And because the mindless cruelty that Musk has already inflicted on Social Security is almost certainly a big part of what is making reliably red districts suddenly competitive for Democrats, it might well be that Trump will not decide to impoverish tens of millions of Americans who have paid into Social Security for their entire lives.
Again, however, "it might well be" is hardly a sure thing. That Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are no longer politically safe is truly scary, and the stakes could not be higher for the American people. Even so, there is good reason to celebrate optimism when we see it. I continue to believe that this will all go very, very badly, but days like today suggest that the odds of the worst things happening are not 100 percent. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call guarded optimism.
--Neil H. Buchanan