The simple solution to this demographic and fiscal challenge? We could move to once and for all end the special Social Security privileges that America’s most affluent continue to enjoy.
Elon Musk and his fellow deep pockets oppose, naturally, this simple solution. Their alternative? Squeeze the Social Security Administration. Cut the agency’s staff. Shut down Social Security offices and limit the services that aging and disabled Social Security recipients can easily access.
Create, in other words, a public Social Security system that no longer works. And, in the meantime, let billionaire-bankrolled politicians push schemes that position privatizing Social Security as the only way to “fix” what ails it.
This gameplan has already begun unfolding.
In late February, DOGE-inspired cutbacks eliminated 7,000 jobs from Social Security’s already depleted ranks. Other cuts are canceling the leases of some 800 Social Security field offices. Last week, the under-the-Musk-gun agency announcednew policies that will force elderly and disabled people who’ve been able to verifytheir ID by phone to visit the distant field offices that remain open.
“The combination of fewer workers, fewer offices, and a massive increase in the demand for in-person services could sabotage the Social Security system,” reflectsMax Richtman, the president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
“One has to ask,” adda Richtman, “why the world’s richest man — who has received in the tens of billions of dollars in federal contracts — is targeting the agency that helps so many Americans keep their heads above water financially.”
Right-wing lawmakers in Congress, meanwhile, are backing moves to increase the age seniors have to reach to access, without penalties, Social Security retirement benefits. Other right-wingers are laying the groundwork for privatizing Social Security outright.
Can right-wingers succeed with this brazen assault on the financial security of America’s working people? Maybe. President Trump is giving Musk and his gang all the political cover they need, claiming, on the one hand, that nothing about Social Security is going to change while — at the same time — letting Team Musk continue its attack on both Social Security’s image and infrastructure.
But Social Security does still remain — at least for now — the “third rail” of American politics. You mess with Social Security, as the conventional political wisdom goes, you’re going to feel a shock. The task today for Social Security’s defenders: to make that shock for Trump and Musk as sharp as possible.
Equally as crucial: ending the “free pass” on Social Security funding that America’s most affluent have long been enjoying. The dollars that this free pass is costing Social Security have been soaring just as spectacularly as America’s income and wealth has been concentrating.
In 2023, the most recent year with full stats available, some 6 percent of U.S. income earners took home incomes higher than that year’s Social Security tax cap. That 6 percent, economist Teresa Ghilarducci noted earlier this year, would have contributed over $388 billion more into Social Security’s coffers if that tax cap had not been in place.
Those rich who pocketed over $50 million in 2023 paychecks, Ghilarducci also notes, would have paid $3.6 billion in Social Security tax without that tax cap in existence, a payout into Social Security that would have been greater than the total Social Security tax that Americans making under $57,000 — 77 percent of working Americans overall — actually paid that year.
How can we bring some semblance of fairness into how we fund Social Security? We have choices.
Public policy experts at the Brookings Institution last month advanced an approach to overhauling Social Security “intended to appeal to Republicans and Democrats alike.” Their proposal would stabilize Social Security’s finances by increasing the cap on earnings subject to Social Security tax. The new cap would subject 90 percent of all paycheck earnings to that tax and shut down the loophole that lets some business owners now totally escape the Social Security payroll levy.
The Brookings reform would also increase the retirement age for high earners and “strengthen child benefits and protections for Americans with disabilities and the survivors of workers who die.”
Other reformers like Rep. John Larson, a long-time congressional champion of Social Security from Connecticut, are emphasizing the importance of expanding both Social Security’s benefits and tax base. The pending “Social Security Expansion Act” — introduced in the Senate by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — speaks to both those goals.
If enacted, notes the bill’s co-sponsor Rep. Val Hoyle from Oregon, this legislation “would expand Social Security benefits by $2,400 a year and ensure Social Security is fully funded for the next 75 years by applying the Social Security payroll tax on all income above $250,000.”
What’s going to happen next in the congressional Social Security debate? Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill appear likely to become ever more nervous. Elon Musk’s maniacal — and ongoing — attacks on Social Security already have these Republicans exceptionally ill at ease.
“Going after the United States Institute of Peace is one thing, going after Social Security is something entirely different,” notes Rutgers University political scientist Ross Baker. “The ironies of a person of such immense wealth targeting a program that provides a modest benefit to ordinary people has the worst possible aura about it.”
But Musk’s hundreds of billions have the power to buff up any aura. Stopping his assault on Social Security is going to take a national groundswell every bit as sweeping as the 1930s grassroots ferment that created Social Security in the first place.
