Social Insecurity – Disaembly and Full-Frontal Attack

 

Social Insecurity – Disaembly and Full-Frontal Attack

How the MAGA GOP is continuing to assess how to continue benefits for the richest, cutting benefits for the rest

It’s no secret that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is slamming into Medicaid and the sustainability of small rural hospitals, with the most dire cuts conveniently slated to kick in after the midterm elections… if these elections occur and if they are not sufficiently gerrymandered into a GOP rubber stamp. But today’s blog is focusing on Social Security, and how Republicans want to destroy it or replace it with tax incented private investment alternatives.

So first, I will examine the underlying funding assumptions, when FDR signed Social Security into law in 1935. The structure envisioned a shared contribution between employee and employer, based upon an assumption that there would be vastly more active workers than retirees, an essential basis for how Social Security would be funded. While those assumptions were most valid for the time the program was established, the economic/labor world of 1935 compare to today are as different as Mars and Jupiter. Here is how the ratio of workers to retirees has changed:

“The historical ratio of workers to Social Security retirees in the United States has significantly declined over the decades. In 1940, there were approximately 159 workers for every retiree, which drastically decreased over time. By 1960, this ratio was around 5.1 workers for each retiree. However, as of 2023, the ratio has fallen to approximately 2.3 workers per retiree, and it is projected to decrease to about 2 workers per retiree by 2050. This decline indicates an increasing financial burden on those contributing to the Social Security system as the number of beneficiaries rises relative to the number of workers.” SocialFactCheck.com, January 3rd. Logically, with these profound changes in that critical change, using the original ratio of workers to retirees under current realities is a recipe for ultimate insolvency.

Meanwhile, as the above Pew Research chart illustrates, the rich have gotten wildly richer while the middle class generated a decreasing share of income… and the poorest levels have been decimated into stagnation. Thus, in the modern Western world, the United States has both the widest income and wealth gaps. To make matters worse, the difference between CEO and average worker pay has become absurd.

“Back in 1965, CEOs earned 21 times more than the average worker; by 2023, this ratio had escalated to 290 times. The situation is even worse for 100 out of the S&P 500 corporations, where in 2022 this ratio was 603 times. As a result, real (inflation-adjusted) CEO compensation in large firms increased by 878% from 1978 to 2022, while real worker compensation rose by 4.5% during this period.” Fortune Magazine, April 15, 2025. Common sense tells you both that using the current shared employee/employer Social Security deduction to fund this social program (read: social program, not “socialism”) does not work, and that the vast increase in wealth and pay at the top illustrates the most obvious source of financial support to keep Social Security fully funded and able to fulfill its mandate to support elder Americans in retirement.

But the Republican Party has been dreaming and scheming about how to annihilate Social Security since it was passed. During his term, President George W Bush argued passionately for a plan that would push Social Security into the stock market, which would work… until there was a plunge in the marketplace. It was his most cherished program, but it crashed and burned in a sea of outrage. From the March 22, 2005, Slate: “In the months since the president first presented the idea as his top domestic priority, Democrats in Congress have unexpectedly unified in opposition to any reform based on private accounts. Several Republican senators whose votes would be needed for passage are resisting private accounts as well. And public opinion, which has never favored any form of privatization, is trending even more strongly against Bush’s scheme. At this point, there’s just no way that the president can finagle enough votes to win.” But the GOP just keeps on trying, clinging to an argument that Social Security is unsustainable… not mentioning why that is so.

But as Los Angeles Times business correspondent, Michael Hiltzik tells us (in his September 17th contribution, the source of the second chart above), based upon a new report by Kathleen Romig and Devin O’Connor, Social Security experts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Trump 2.0 is embracing restructuring that may appear to be cost efficiencies but are in fact policies that, if not reversed, will slowly erode the entire Social Security structure from top to bottom: “[T]he Social Security Administration’s regional office staff ‘have been mostly eliminated, robbing front-line staff of key supports.’ Headquarters staffing has been cut by nearly half, including technology experts. Field office and call center staff also have been eviscerated.

Few departments within SSA have been spared — not even the office tasked with helping members of Congress assist their constituents with Social Security issues and helping to develop legislation… The so-called Office of Legislation and Congressional Affairs was cut to three employees from 50. Constituent caseworkers in congressional offices have been receiving ‘bounce-back emails and no-replies from legislative liaison offices that were previously responsive to congressional inquiries,’ according to a letter sent by 50 Democratic House members to the SSA in July.

“Even Republicans, who generally have been willing to go along with the administration’s rampage through agency budgets, raised the alarm about customer service failures at SSA, noting in a legislative markup that ‘there are significant service delivery challenges at SSA that are impacting critical services that millions of Americans count on’… ‘Because there aren’t enough workers in SSA’s local offices, applicants wait over a month on average for an appointment. Because there aren’t enough people answering the agency’s 800 number, most callers wait over two hours on average for an answer, as of early August,’ [the authors] write. ‘Because there aren’t enough disability examiners, applicants wait eight months for an initial decision on their eligibility for disability benefits, with an additional seven-month wait for those who appeal.’

“Meanwhile, more information has emerged about the incursion of untrained representatives of Elon Musk’s budget-cutting DOGE service into Social Security’s most carefully guarded databases. The outcome has been the exposure of workers’ and beneficiaries’ private personal information to outsiders, all without adequate oversight.” In a sea of executive orders, massive, rubber-stamped budget bills and an untamed assault on Social Security that began with Elon Musk and DOGE, it is easy to see why most people have missed both the big picture and unmistakable trends to eat away at Social Security program until it implodes in oblivion… so that the rich can ger richer.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I never cease to be amazed at the new right-wing effort to make the richest in this nation vastly richer by reducing or eliminating programs meant for the rest of us.