The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 7 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Elon Musk is gunning for Social Security, and the results are already looking like they could be disastrous. The Washington Post reports that a top official at the Social Security Administration privately admitted that Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is in charge as the agency is downsizing itself with cuts. The official also said that DOGE will “make mistakes.” Cuts to Social Security, of course, are politically deadly. So, do Trump’s political team and the Republican Party really believe turning over Social Security to Musk is a good idea for them? Do they think their disinformation powers are so formidable at this point that they can overcome this too? Today, we’re talking about all this with Tracey Gronniger, a managing director with the advocacy group Justice in Aging. Tracey, thanks for coming on.
Tracey Gronniger: Thank you for having me.
Sargent: This Washington Post report is pretty extraordinary. The acting SSA administrator said of DOGE’s involvement the following, “Things are currently operating in a way I have never seen in government before.” He described the DOGE boys who are whooping it up inside Social Security as “outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs.” This is all according to detailed notes of a meeting that were leaked to the Post. Your thoughts on all this, Tracey?
Gronniger: Yes, I think it’s really scary to imagine that we have in the Social Security Administration people who don’t understand how it works. This is a really popular program. Social Security is important and vital to over 70 million beneficiaries, and it has strong support around the country. People know that Social Security is how you survive. It’s income for people who have been working all their lives and are now retired, for survivors of deceased workers, for children of workers, and for people with disabilities who are unable to continue working.
Sargent: It’s real-life stuff. It’s not like one of Musk’s playthings—or, well, maybe it actually is one of Musk’s playthings now. That’s the problem.
Gronniger: Yes, that’s the scary part.
Sargent: Right. So as far as we know, the administration plans big cuts at Social Security, to the tune of thousands of jobs. They’re looking to close a lot of regional offices. Now Trump has promised not to cut benefits. Putting aside what Trump said for a second, what do we know about what the administration and DOGE really want to do? What will the practical impact of cutting those jobs be? What jobs could they plausibly look at eliminating without touching benefits? What’s a reasonable scenario to expect?
Gronniger: We’re really concerned because they’re talking about cutting thousands of jobs within the Social Security Administration. These are people who are working in the field offices that people go to to get help with benefits, and in the regional offices that are also helping to process these benefits. These are the places that people go. And in particular, for our demographic group of older adults who are unable sometimes to go online and process benefits and get information that way, they need to be able to go into an office; they need to be able to call on a phone. When you’re cutting these staffing positions, you’re creating barriers to accessing benefits because people then aren’t able to apply or fix mistakes, and their benefits are affected.
You may say that it’s not a benefit cut, but when you don’t have adequate staff and you don’t provide adequate services to the people who need them, then you are in effect cutting their benefits—because they can’t apply or get access to the benefits that they’re entitled to.
Sargent: Musk regards this kind of stuff as a big joke, right? He just thinks he can bring in his efficiency whiz kids and just remake everything really easily. But these are older people who maybe aren’t that good online, as you say, and they’re going to be relying pretty heavily on these types of federal workers, right?
Gronniger: Yes. We’ve heard already that the result of these cuts and the increased phone time that people have to wait mean that you can’t actually get help. We’ve heard of people being on the phone for hours trying to get in touch with someone to talk to about accessing their benefits. And as you say, these are people’s income. This is what they need to pay for food, to pay for rent, to get around for transportation. This is their lifeline. So when we’re creating these barriers and closing offices and getting rid of the expert personnel who know how these systems operate and know how to make sure people’s benefit checks are getting out on time, we’re harming real people. That is something that we really want to highlight: that these are real people and it’s really affecting them significantly when you’re cutting their services and the support that they need to get their benefits.
Sargent: Right. Musk and Trump and Republicans and DOGE know that these are real people, so this is where the fraud canard comes in. They say, OK, we’re just coming in to find fraud in Social Security. And The Washington Post reports that DOGE tech engineers are now rummaging through Social Security for exactly this purpose—finding this fraud. We already saw that Musk ridiculously claimed that huge numbers of people aged 150 years old, or dead, are getting fraudulent checks; that blew up in his face. But then during his speech to Congress, Trump picked this up and said they’re finding huge amounts of fraud. Tracey, Social Security is efficient and well-run. Isn’t that the story? Are they going to be able to find anything real here?
Gronniger: I’m waiting for them to show all of this supposed fraud because I haven’t seen it. They’ve made a lot of claims that have turned out to not be true, and they’re, as you say, reiterating things that are just not factual. If you look at it, where is this supposed fraud? All I see is office closures; all I see is staff being reduced. I don’t see some huge fraudulent activity that’s being stopped; I see people being let go of and people and offices being closed. And that’s not about fraud—that’s about cutting services. It’s all to point us in one direction while they do something else that is completely harmful to older adults and all the people who are beneficiaries of Social Security.
Sargent: And these are government service cuts that people are going to feel. That’s dangerous, right? The National Academy of Social Insurance had a poll recently which found large majorities opposed cutting Social Security benefits, large majorities support raising the payroll tax to replenish its funding, including taxing themselves—not just the rich but everybody. There’s also strong support for Social Security disability benefits, which I find important because that’s a frequent target for Republicans. That’s a place where they like to say fraud has crept into, disability. It’s clearly not an argument people buy. Isn’t the big story here that this is an area where people really, really like government? Can you talk about that a bit?
Gronniger: Yes. This poll was really illustrative of the broad support that Social Security has. As you mentioned, the poll found that the respondents all found Social Security to be a really important part of their retirement security. And this was a bipartisan feeling—Republicans, Democrats, independents all thought that Social Security was a really important program. And as you said, they thought that we should be providing benefits, even if that meant raising taxes. One of the popular proposals was making people who have more than $400,000 in earnings pay into the Social Security system. And that [had], again, across the board, bipartisan support. So this support for Social Security is something that Americans all agree on and think is important.
Sargent: I think they have a problem on their hands. It seems like there’s some real tensions here among Republicans who often want to cut the safety net. Musk recently described government beneficiaries as the “parasite class.” But Trump, whatever his true intentions, does seem sensitive to voter perceptions of Republicans as being out to decimate the safety net. Trump positions himself sometimes as being different in that regard. He used Paul Ryan as a foil during his first run and so forth. He knows a lot of aging working-class voters are his own, and he knows the new GOP coalition that elected him the second time has a lot of those people in it. Now, I don’t know what Trump’s true intentions are, but Musk really does want to cut Social Security and, I guess, get rid of all those “parasites” who are benefiting from it or something. How are they going to navigate that tension? It’s a real thing, right?
Gronniger: I think that is why the way that we have seen Social Security being attacked is by attacking the administrative side and making it seem as though they’re being efficient—we’re going to consolidate, we’re going to make things better. And instead, what they’re really doing is cutting services. They’re bringing fewer people, fewer staff to the field offices. They’re providing fewer phone services. People then are not able to access benefits. The end goal there is to undermine people’s faith in the system, make it so difficult for people to access these benefits that it feels like there is no benefit. And I think that’s where we have to come in and say, No, you’re cutting our Social Security; you are cutting Social Security by cutting the agency and by reducing the staff and consolidating all of the different parts that are critical to making everything function. Social Security is a huge program; it’s really complex. It also serves tens of millions of people, and has data and records on hundreds of millions of people. So it needs adequate funding, adequate support to be able to function—and this backdoor benefit cut by cutting the services and support is the way that they’re trying to have it both ways, with some support of the program on one side while the program is being decimated on the other.
Sargent: And the other thing is that Donald Trump really wants Musk to deliver, in a general sense, with DOGE. I think Donald Trump recently said to Elon Musk something like, You’re doing a great job, but get even more aggressive, which is really code for saying, Where the hell are the goods, man? You got to come up with some real cuts here. Come on. Find some real fraud. Come on. So this is going to be an area where Musk is under pretty heavy pressure, oddly enough from Trump himself, to find big cuts and big examples of fraud but without cutting into the program actually—and that seems like it’s an impossible straddle to pull off.
Gronniger: Yeah. I think, at the end of the day, there isn’t a level of fraud that would create savings. That’s not the way that you’re going to be able to get money back. The way that you’re going to do it is by cutting the agency and making it nonfunctional. And that is where we have to really be on guard, and we have to tell Congress, This is not okay. You can’t cut these services. You can’t stop people from accessing benefits this way. We’re not going to allow this backdoor benefit cut.
Sargent: The name of the game right now is really finding ways to drive a wedge between Republicans and Congress on one side and Trump and Musk on the other. You’re seeing Republicans already getting pretty damn antsy about what Musk is up to. They’re getting hammered at town halls and stuff. The cuts to Social Security that they’re going to try to attempt are a really, really right place to drive that wedge, right? Because that’s going to be a place where congressional Republicans will come under extreme pressure from their own voters.
Gronniger: Yes. From the polling, we saw that both majorities of Republicans and Democrats care about Social Security—so there’s no way to cut Social Security and still have the country in your favor. I think that it’s true that we have an opportunity here to protect the program, but we also have to be careful that we aren’t allowing so many cuts to be made to the agency and so many changes to be made so that the agency can’t function, that then we’re stuck. If you don’t have enough people providing the services and support, I think we’re going to see a lot of problems because the actual agency won’t be able to function. That’s when we’re going to start to see people not receiving their benefits, people not able to apply for benefits—and it’s going to really have a negative impact on older adults, people with disabilities, the survivors, children, all the people who really depend on Social Security benefits.
Sargent: They may be calculating that they can get away with those types of cuts— things that put older people in a more difficult, practical position in terms of getting their benefits—as long as they don’t touch the benefits themselves. And as far as I can tell, Trump is adopting the usual Republican playbook of essentially saying that the program is riddled with fraud and so forth. But it seems harder to get away with with Social Security.
Gronniger: I think it’s also harder to get away with because Social Security is such a vital part of people’s income security. You’re going to see an impact when people can’t get into an office or get in touch with someone over the phone. The people who are experiencing those problems are going to start calling their members of Congress and they’re going to say, What’s going on? Why can’t I access my benefits? Why can’t I apply for benefits? Why is it taking so long for me to hear back from someone? These are going to be effects that are felt very soon, and you’re not going to be able to say, We’re dealing with fraud, because we already know that there is very little fraud within the Social Security program. That’s not the reason. The reason is going to be that you’ve been cutting services, you’ve been cutting support, you’ve been cutting staff. And now, you have constituents who are feeling the pain of that and aren’t able to access their benefits.
Sargent: It’s probably worth reminding people that we were in a very similar situation after George W. Bush was reelected in early 2005. He seemed unstoppable, totally dominant; if anything, [he was] in a stronger position than Trump is now. Then came the Social Security privatization scheme. That plus things like the Iraq War going south and Katrina, which was a disaster, revealed the GOP to be corrupt and incompetent. Democrats then were able to unite in defense of Social Security against Bush. Then came the 2006 midterm victory for Dems, and then 2008 the Obama coalition emerging. I wonder if we can see something similar now. Are you confident in Democrats ability to prosecute this case as effectively as they did at that time?
Gronniger: I see, both from my perspective and the perspective of the advocates that I work with, that we’re sharing the information about how people are being impacted. We’re sharing that information with Democrats, with Republicans. We’re making it known that people are feeling the effects of some of these cuts. And I think that that is going to spur action; I think it’s going to spur action for both parties. And I think this is the opportunity that Congress has to make changes and to provide the support that the agency needs. As we’re seeing the pain points and as we see people suffering because of these closures, it’s going to be an opportunity. And it’s an opportunity for all members of Congress because, we’ve said it, Social Security is popular.
If you are on the side of protecting Social Security and making sure that people can access benefits, that’s going to help you. There’s an opportunity for members of Congress to really increase their own popularity, to make popular changes that everyone agrees are important—and I think they should take it. This is the time and place for them to do it.
Sargent: Well, hopefully Democrats can do that. Just to bring this back to Musk and the DOGE boys monkeying around inside Social Security, it seems like, with Musk’s numbers really tail spinning, he’s pretty unpopular now. It seems like there’s genuine backlash to Musk. In this case, there’s at least the potential for two ingredients to kick in together. One is the popularity of Social Security and public opposition to it being cut, and the other is Musk, right? The public sees Musk as this reckless billionaire figure who’s just slashing away. He seems out of control in the eyes of most people. Putting those two things together, it seems like the potential for something politically, really highly combustible is there.
Gronniger: Yeah. I think that people think there’s no mandate for someone to come in unelected and unappointed to make these changes to really basic programs that have been around for decades. Social Security is 90 this year; it is not something that people think someone can walk in and dismantle in a month. I think that is causing a lot of concern, and people are afraid. I think that is definitely part of the mix, and it’s going to be something that will affect how people react to all of the things that are happening right now.
Sargent: There’s a lot of dissatisfaction with Democrats right now—but if they can’t come up with a good solid message about Elon Musk taking a hatchet to Social Security, then we’re in real trouble.
Gronniger: It seems like there’s a message there (laughs).
Sargent: It does, right?
Gronniger: Definitely. The thing that we always bring it back to is that the people who depend on these programs have elected these members of Congress to stand up for them. They want to have those members of Congress doing what needs to be done to make sure that these programs are effective, that they operate. When you have these large majorities of people saying that this program is critical to them and to their families, that’s the mandate that you need to then say, OK, we’re going to do more. We’re going to make sure that these programs are protected. We’re going to make sure that our parents and our grandparents and our children who are Social Security beneficiaries are getting the benefits that they’re entitled to. And they have the support of Americans around the country. There’s no majority that’s saying, No, don’t do this, we don’t care about Social Security. Instead, it’s the exact opposite.
Sargent: Right. And what we’re seeing at these town halls is Republicans really are having a hard time defending Musk. And that’s before they’re having to defend him taking a hatchet to Social Security.
Gronniger: It’s not popular. It’s not popular at all. If there’s one thing we can say, it’s that Social Security is a program that Americans believe in and rely on.
Sargent: Tracey Gronniger, thank you so much for coming on with us today.
Gronniger: Thank you so much for the opportunity. I’m really happy to have the chance to talk about this.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.