06/02/2026
For 90+ years, Social Security paid every benefit in full and on time. And for nearly a century, Wall Street has been looking for a way to destroy it.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk are on a path to gut Social Security through the back door: by bleeding the Social Security Administration dry.
Since 1935, the Social Security Administration recognized that when people need to contact the agency, it’s at the most critical moments of their lives -- marriage, retirement, the death of a loved one -- and they trained staff to help people make the right choices.
Then, Donald Trump and Elon Musk came along. Even after Trump promised over and over not to touch Social Security, he unleashed Musk’s DOGE project to push out more than 8,000 Social Security workers, including at field offices where people have been getting help for decades.
Today, there are more than 70 million, with more than 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day. Yet the number of people working for the agency has actually declined. There are Social Security offices all over the country that are effectively “Ghost Offices.” They’re not technically closed, but they don’t have the staff to properly open either.
Trump’s cuts have created a cascading failure. Even after the offices close and staffers are pushed out, the people still need services. It just takes longer for the few staff to get through the backlogs. When you’re facing a disability, you don’t have the luxury of waiting several months to get through.
The SSA isn’t like other agencies. It receives funding from all of us, with every paycheck we earn. Out of every dollar paid in benefits, less than a penny goes to administration. Private pension plans spend upwards of 15%. That’s why Wall Street wants to destroy Social Security. They want to collect fees on Social Security’s $2.7 trillion trust fund – to shift that money into their pockets and leave less money for us.
There’s a simple solution: Congress should step in and restore funding and staffing levels to the SSA, and end the national scourge of ghost offices.
