'They can rob it': DC insider sounds alarm on Social Security 'collapse' under Trump and GOP

Social Security recipients could soon see their benefits interrupted or delayed as a flood of cuts hits the agency, thanks to the efforts of Elon Musk and DOGE. Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who served as Social Security commissioner under President Biden, says the system is on the brink of collapse as the Trump administration pushes out thousands of staffers and peddles lies about who actually benefits from its services. The former commissioner adds that he believes “they’re trying to wreck Social Security’s reputation, wreck its ability to serve its customers, wreck its unbeaten string of regular monthly payments, so that, having wrecked it, then they have an emergency under which they can rob it.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Our next guest, former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley, is warning Social Security recipients could soon see their benefits interrupted or delayed. In a recent interview, O’Malley said moves by the Trump administration to cut costs at the Social Security Administration could, quote, “crater the agency and lead to a system collapse.”

The Washington Post recently reported a flood of cuts pushed by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and DOGE are already leading the Social Security system to breaking down. The Post reports, in March, Social Security website crashed four times in a 10-day span, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts. Phone lines have also been overwhelmed due to staffing cuts.

According to the group Social Security Works, around half of all seniors rely on Social Security for most of their income, while 25% of seniors rely on it for virtually all of their income. The average annual payout to these seniors is just $20,000 a year.

Last month, Trump’s commerce secretary, billionaire Howard Lutnick, sparked outrage after suggesting only fraudsters would complain if Social Security checks don’t go out on time.

COMMERCE SECRETARY HOWARD LUTNICK: Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain. She just wouldn’t. She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining.

AMY GOODMAN: Trump adviser Elon Musk recently described Social Security as a Ponzi scheme during an interview with Joe Rogan.

ELON MUSK: Well, I mean, the government is one big Ponzi scheme, if you ask me.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, well, you could tell better than anybody.

ELON MUSK: Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.

AMY GOODMAN: Elon Musk’s attacks on Social Security come as the Trump administration is moving to cut off benefits to more than 6,000 immigrants who had lawfully obtained Social Security numbers, were paying into the system for years. The administration is doing this by falsely labeling them as dead to cut off their benefits.

We’re joined now by Martin O’Malley, who served as Social Security commissioner under President Biden. He’s also the former governor of Maryland and the former mayor of Baltimore.

It’s great to have you with us, Governor O’Malley, Commissioner O’Malley. If you can start off by explaining why you say that you think the Social Security system in this country is on the brink?

MARTIN O’MALLEY: Well, because of all of the things that Elon Musk and the DOGE team and Donald Trump have been doing to Social Security, with a speed and a virulence that I think is stunning, shocking. I mean, they have, Amy, actually been paying people, with our money, at an agency that was already at a 50-year low of staffing and all-time high beneficiary customers — they’ve been paying them to leave. They have created a hostile work environment. They have engaged in wholesale, like, firing entire offices and divisions. They have driven out almost, by now, 10,000 people out of the agency. They say 7,000. It’s going to go down to 10,000.

And part of that is a 50% reduction in the people that keep the IT systems going, the same IT systems that never missed a beat and sent out the checks, the right amount to the right person at the right time, every month all through COVID. They have cut the IT department in half. You’re seeing, as you just mentioned, outages in some of the customer-facing aspects of it. Those outages are going to become more regular, rather than intermittent. They’re going to happen for longer durations. And ultimately, you’re going to see that cascade into a collapse of the entire system and an interruption for some time of benefits. I don’t see — with the path that they’re on, I believe they’ve taken probably 90% of the actions necessary to accomplish that aim.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you explain this master death list and putting 6,000 people who’ve paid into Social Security on the list that says they are dead — we’re talking about immigrants — and where this master list goes?

MARTIN O’MALLEY: Sure. That’s an operational question rather than a question about what their intent is. I mean, this is some really chilling stuff. By law, Congress requires that the Social Security Administration, which maintains a lot of personal data on all of us, from our first summer job, from the first moment we’re born, actually — and so, Social Security is required to keep what Congress has dubbed the master death file. And so, Social Security has contracts with all 50 states, the territories. And the second that a death certificate is recorded, Social Security lists that in the master death file, and then a lot of other entities ping off of that — in other words, our banking systems, credit companies, the IRS. And so, if you list somebody as deceased, when clearly they’re not deceased, it has the effect — as their puppet acting commissioner of Social Security said, it has the effect of terminating the financial lives of people here in the United States.

It is a stunning, willful, criminal act, any one of those counts to put a false information into a federal record, and in particular a Social Security record. And yet they’re doing it with a breadth in total violation — a breadth and a scope and a depth way beyond anything that’s happened before, and actually in direct contravention and direct — exactly opposite of what a federal judge ordered them to do, which was stay the hell out of our personal data.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you have, at the same time that all of this is happening, the degrading of the system, President Trump insisting that he’s not planning to cut Social Security. But can you talk about what you see as Trump and Musk’s ultimate vision for Social Security? Do they just want to make it unworkable so that it’s privatized? And in this, talk about the history of Social Security. How many people get it, Social Security and disability benefits, as well?

MARTIN O’MALLEY: Sure. For 90 years, Social Security has never, ever missed a monthly payment. And right now there are approximately 73 million Americans who are in pay status, who are beneficiaries, whether in the survivor and old age aspect and widows and orphans, or whether it’s people with disabilities who can no longer work.

Now, the question you ask, Amy, about what their ultimate goal is, it’s hard to — hard to figure. Social Security, as you probably know and many of your viewers know, is not a Ponzi scheme. It is a pay-as-you-go program. Americans working this year pay in $1.3 trillion, and Social Security pays out those same dollars to beneficiaries. And when, as now, with baby boomers moving through the system, Social Security makes up any difference from its large surplus reserve. And many people believe it is that large surplus reserve — the only agency that runs a large surplus reserve — of $2.6 trillion that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have their eyes on.

I don’t know what they want to do with that money, but it does appear that they’re trying to precipitate an emergency situation, knowing that Congress would never allow them to touch it, absent an emergency. I do believe that they’re trying to wreck Social Security’s reputation, wreck its ability to serve its customers, wreck its unbeaten string of regular monthly payments, so that, having wrecked it, then they have an emergency under which they can rob it.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk about what has happened when it comes to — first they said they were going to cut off the phone ability to call a helpline, which for so many Social Security recipients is the only way they could communicate with Social Security. That would force them to satellite offices, of which they closed many. What is happening right now? And what do you say has to happen to fix this system at this point?

MARTIN O’MALLEY: Well, it is going to take years now to build back Social Security. In our last year, the men and women of the Social Security Administration achieved some of the best customer service timeliness achievements, and certainly since before COVID, some of them, you know, the best timeliness in 10 years. For example, answering that phone used to be an average — average — wait of 42-and-a-half minutes. They got that down to just over 12 minutes. But now all of those things are going in the wrong direction.

Social Security is one of the most trusted brands in the entire federal government, second only to the National Park Service and Smokey the Bear. So, what they have to do in order to get away with whatever their end goal is, you know, with their eyes on the big trust fund, they have to degrade its ability to serve customers. They have to turn people away from it or against it. You’ve heard a lot of big lies about Social Security. You’ve heard Elon Musk say it’s a Ponzi scheme just like the rest of our government; illegal immigrants get Social Security benefits, when they don’t. You’ve heard about the zombie apocalypse, that is, you know, millions of people roaming the Earth and taking our money. None of those things is true.

But the other big lie you hear, Amy, is that Social Security is bad, it’s always been bad, it’s never really worked. So, that’s the big lie they’re pushing. And then they demonstrate it by cramming as many people into Social Security offices as they can for services that they used to be able to get online or used to be able to get on the phone. And that’s going to be the evidence, then, that they create, that “it’s always been bad, so, you know, we had to privatize it, or we had to liquidate it. Here’s your lump sum. Be happy. Go away. It was always a Democratic program that never worked.” So, that’s what’s going on here, and it’s happening with a stunning speed that I think Americans are waking up to.

AMY GOODMAN: And in the 10 seconds that we have left, this allegation that immigrants are being fraudulent in getting Social Security. They have paid into the system for years. It’s their money.

MARTIN O’MALLEY: Well, actually, illegal immigrants, so-called, people working here outside of legal status, cannot receive any Social Security benefits, and never have been able to. They’re prohibited by law. But they do pay in $25 billion for the benefit of the rest of us and into the Social Security trust fund. It’s a total lie. Illegal immigrants do not receive Social Security benefits.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet they pay. Martin O’Malley, thank you so much for being with us, former Social Security administrator.

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