Elon Musk’s endeavors as unofficial head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are making many people nervous about their financial future. His focus on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is particularly concerning to the millions of Americans who draw some form of federal benefit each month; for many of them, their benefits are the only funds standing between them and the poverty line.
Elon Musk has set his sights on “waste and fraud” in government departments
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and a confidant of President Donald Trump’s, has been vocal about supposed fraud and wasteful expenditure in federal departments. However, to date, he’s provided no proof of this.
Musk has thrown out a figure of $700 billion that he believes can be cut from core relief and assistance programs in the United States. These include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and food stamps. He recently stated to the media:
“Reports don’t mean anything, you’ve got to actually take action.”
Musk lacks facts to back up his claims
Between them, Musk and Trump assert that Social Security benefits are being paid to deceased people over the age of 100, or even 300, as Trump claimed in a recent address to Congress. This is demonstrably false. Musk has also been calling Social Security the “biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” but he has nothing further to say to back this up.
Musk, Trump, and DOGE are targeting the SSA
As the head of DOGE, Musk has already implemented mass lay-offs in various government departments and he’s also calling for numerous contracts and leases to be terminated. Some Social Security field offices have already been shut down and there are plans to do the same with dozens more. Scores of workers have been let go whose duties included helping the elderly access their benefits.
The gaps in staffing and assistance and the inconvenience caused are likely to be felt by the general public. Experts and stakeholders warn that cuts based on access to data that Musk and his DOGE team don’t understand threatens the entire Social Security program and ability to function adequately.
It’s predicted that the result of Musk’s sweeping policy changes will be an interruption in benefits payments to Americans who rely on them for essential living costs such as food and housing, or medical benefits through Medicare or Medicaid.
What’s the current context around DOGE cuts to Social Security?
Elon Musk’s “slash-and-burn” style, with Donald Trump’s blessing, is generating real tension among the American public, and even Musk’s companies are feeling the effects. Tesla stock has been plunging as vehicle sales decline and activists protest outside showrooms. Vandals who have strong feelings about Musk’s attitude to the average man in the street have been tagging Cybertrucks with graffiti and tossing animal waste in their direction.
One major media outlet, The Washington Post, suggested that some officials within the Department of Government Efficiency are beginning to have serious concerns about “bad PR.” Within hours, Musk made statements about cutting safety-net programs in the name of curbing wasteful expenditure and fraud:
“The waste and fraud in entitlement spending — most of the federal spending is entitlements — that’s the big one to eliminate. That’s sort of half trillion, maybe $600-700 billion a year.”
Musk also offered his theory on why Democrats oppose his safety-net cost-cutting measures, saying that it’s got a lot to do with illegal immigrants:
“This is why the Democrats are so upset about the situation, because they’re losing — if we turn off this gigantic money magnet for illegal immigrants, then they will leave and they will lose voters.”
Experts predict that before long, Donald Trump’s Republican administration will start to lose actual voters. Already, millions of student loan debt holders across the US who may have been Republican voters have shifted to the Democratic side after Trump halted student loan forgiveness programs that Joe Biden implemented.
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