Summary
Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley warns that staffing and funding cuts under Elon Musk could cause Social Security payments to halt within 30 to 90 days.
The SSA is reducing its workforce and closing offices, prompting concerns from Democrats, who accuse the Trump administration of trying to dismantle the program.
O’Malley predicts a major political backlash if payments are interrupted.
Meanwhile, leadership changes at SSA have added further instability, with no confirmed commissioner in place.
Between Social Security Insurance and Supplemental Income, there’s about 70 million recipients (holy wow - just shy of 20% of the U.S. population). Most of them are elderly, sure - but not all, and not all of those elderly will be infirm.
The way I see it is if these checks don’t come in April, we’ll start to see protests as the winter weather fades into spring.
I think a lot of folks feel disempowered by the system. Voting doesn’t work. And even when voting does work, the political parties seem to have their own agenda that is divorced from their purported constituents, their promises, and even reality. (Purported, because we know that voters are just the vehicle, but money is the fuel under our current system. The constituents they claim to have are not the constituents they serve.) Beyond that, they’re slapping felony convictions onto college kids who protested a genocide. Even if you want to soften the language, they were protesting violence in a nonviolent way, and they are going to have their entire lives impacted by criminal charges for expressing their ‘right’ to freedom of speech. Add in that a lot of folks are trapped in media bubbles and don’t even realize there are problems, or if they realize there are problems, they don’t really recognize their severity. And as we’ve repeatedly seen, Trump does not see justice, and there are no advocates for democracy or the rule of law. The only person that a lot of people felt was ‘on their side’ was Luigi Mangione, and failing attempts to paint him as a terrorist, the media has done their best to quash coverage of him to erase him from the national consciousness. The deck is clearly stacked in every which way.
So I mean, the consequences are dire, the impact of Trump’s actions are not yet being felt broadly or acutely enough yet, and it’s frankly kind of shitty outside, so no one wants to go stand in freezing temps, cold rain, or ceaseless winds for no gain, and incredible peril. I hate to serve up excuses, but I think the situation will have to get much worse before people are driven to action.
Oh, we are definitely getting protests. But, will we see riots? Will we see people taking control of their workplaces? Will people start growing their own food and shopping at farmer’s markets instead of grocery chains? The only people who have the ability to dismantle the vestiges of power that control them are the people themselves.