[Full text] Lauren's Blog: DOGE Is Destroying Social Security, and
Seniors Are Already at Risk
https://lauren.vortex.com/2025/03/25/doge-destroying-social-security-seniors
Social Security is in a DOGE-created crisis, and seniors are already
at terrible risk.
DOGE moved quickly to order massive changes to Social Security,
originally to essentially end all phone-based Social Security support,
and then after major blowback to that -- since so many people
dependent on Social Security don't use computers or have Internet --
this was revised to continue phone support other than for changes to
functions like payment accounts, and also for identification issues.
Those crucial functions will no longer be doable by phone and will
have to be by Internet -- which again many of the people who need
Social Security can't use, or via in person visits to Social Security
offices -- which can be difficult or completely impossible for many
elderly or disabled persons, especially in rural areas.
On top of this, DOGE ordered the closure of around 50 Social Security
offices and the firing of thousands of their employees, so in person
visits become even harder.
As I've said many times before, technical people often don't really
understand the situations that nontechnical people, especially older
persons have to deal with. Often there's a totally wrong assumption
that pretty much EVERYBODY uses the Internet. But like I said, a large
percentage of seniors do not use the Internet for anything like this,
or at all.
Now DOGE originally said all of this was to fight fraud. But its early
claims that 10s of millions of deceased persons over 100 years old
were getting Social Security payments were apparently incorrect --
it's important to understand these systems -- DOGE reportedly didn't
realize that those historical records did not mean all those dead
people were getting payments, other aspects of the systems prevented
payments to them.
And studies have shown that apparently improper Social Security
payments amount to about 1% of overall payments, mostly errors not
fraud, and 2/3 of mistaken payments were clawed back.
This all really erupted over the last few days when the
administration's new Commerce Secretary, billionaire Howard Lutnick,
made some stupendously tone-deaf and clueless comments in an
interview. He said that it's fraudsters who would complain most loudly
about missing Social Security payments, saying that his 94-year-old
mother in law wouldn't call to complain -- she'd assume there was
something messed up and she'd get her payment the next month.
That of course means having faith that the next payment won't also
fail to appear due to the same problem, but then again having a
billionaire son-in-law probably would make that missed payment of
somewhat less concern. Unfortunately, most Social Security recipients
don't have billionaire sons-in-law. He said cutting off payment system
payments is the easiest way to find a fraudster, because whoever
screams is the one stealing.
As you can imagine, Lutnick has been widely criticized for these
statements. You really have to wonder what planet he's been living on.
Because the reality is that 40% of retirees rely on Social Security as
their sole source of income, and for many more it's a primary source.
You cut off Social Security from these retirees, even for just one
month, either by declaring them dead when they're still alive --
reports of that are already increasing -- or by making it impossible
for them to quickly fix payment or identification problems by phone
when they can't travel to a Social Security office or use the
Internet, and many won't have any way to pay for food or lodging or
anything else.
And these changes that are going to so negatively impact so many
seniors dependent on Social Security, were only announced VERY
recently and are being rushed into effect at the end of THIS month
just a week from now, leaving seniors in an even worse situation, and
many of them don't have anyone locally to help them even if they had
more time.
This situation has gone from bad to disastrous. Actually improving
Social Security is indeed a good goal, but creating a massive mess
that will leave so many vulnerable seniors at such risk, is both
gruesome and utterly unacceptable.
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
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Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
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Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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