'Massive cuts down the road': How MAGA is laying its 'pretext' to gut Social Security

President Donald Trump and SpaceX/Tesla/X.com leader Elon Musk — who now heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — are citing "fraud" as a reason for mass layoffs at federal government agencies. One of them is the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA), founded in 1935 during President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first term.

On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump insisted that cuts to Social Security and Medicare were not on the table. But recent comments from Musk during an appearance on Fox Business are fueling fears that Social Security may be on the Trump Administration/DOGE chopping block.

Musk told Fox Business' Larry Kudlow, former economic adviser for the first Trump Administration, "Most of the federal spending is entitlements. So that's the big one to eliminate."

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That type of comment, The Hill's Nathaniel Weixel reports in an article published on March 12, is what has defenders of Social Security worried.

"President Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk are ratcheting up false rhetoric about Social Security, repeatedly claiming the program wastes hundreds of billions of dollars in fraudulent payouts that need to be eliminated," Weixel reports. "Their position is confounding experts and worrying advocates, who fear the claims are a pretext for massive cuts to the program down the road."

Weixel notes that Trump and Musk "insist they are targeting waste, fraud and abuse and are not going after benefits as a whole." But Weixel points out that Musk "showed his hostility to Social Security earlier this month when he referred to it as 'the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.'"

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) is among the Democrats who is sounding the alarm about Social Security.

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On the Senate floor on March 11, Schumer warned, "Elon Musk confirmed what many of us had been warning about for a long time: Republicans are getting ready to gut Social Security and Medicare. The richest man on Earth repeated again a bevy of lies that entitlement programs, (which) tens of millions of people rely on, are riddled with fraud and abuse. That's a pretext to slashing them. But it's false."

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Read The Hill's full article at this link.