Trump officials call social security “mistake” as the administration lays the foundation for massive cuts
Donald Trump and Elon Musk are raising unfounded claims that thousands of dead are collecting Social Security payments, laying the foundation for reducing “waste” and “fraud” The foundation is because they hope to make dramatic cuts for some of the most expensive programs in the federal budget to pay cuts for the wealthiest households in the United States.
Despite the promise in the campaign that his administration would not touch on social security and claimed that his democratic rivals were the ones who tried to end it, Trump and the world’s wealthiest people and his allies tried to prove cuts in social security And the federal health plan is justified by Medicare and Medicaid have proposed Musk’s target figures of more than $1 trillion in savings.
exist Jesse Waters Primetime Lutnick said on Wednesday’s Fox News, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently confirmed that he praised Musk’s so-called government efficiency ministry’s work, which “will reduce trillions of dollars in waste fraud and Abuse.”
“Think about it. We have nearly $4 trillion in rights, and no one has seen it before,” he said.
“You know Social Security is wrong, you know Medicare and Medicaid are wrong, so he’s going to cut a trillion dollars,” Lutnik added. “Get out of all these tax scams hammering the Americans, we’re going to raise trillions of dollars in revenue, and our goal is Donald Trump, is to balance that budget.”
Lutnick also suggested that Trump would create “external tax services” and repeal the IRS, leaving “all outsiders” responsible for the federal taxes that Americans were responsible.
Howard Lutnick says Social Security and federal health insurance plans are “wrong”
In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, which aired Tuesday, Trump promised: “Social security won’t touch except for fraud or something.”
“It will be strengthened,” he said. “Medicare, Medicaid – none of these things will be moved.”
In a speech at Mar-A-Lago supporters on Wednesday, Trump returned to Musk’s false claims that hundreds of years old were collecting social security.
“We have a very corrupt country. Very corrupt country. It’s a sad thing, but, well, we’re figuring it out. But, about the benefits of social security and what I’ve read is if you cancel all of this Numbers, because they are obviously fraudulent, or incompetent, but if you take all these millions of people out of Social Security, all of these Trump said: “Suddenly, we have a very powerful one Social Security, people aged 80, 70 and 90, but not 200 years old. ” “So this is a very positive thing. ”
“In certainly dead, marking tens of millions of people as “alive” is a huge problem,” Musk wrote on X on Monday.
“Obviously. Some of these people were originally alive before the United States existed as a country. Think for a second,” he said.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump
Musk’s forged statements stem mainly from social insurance running on software using the COBOL programming language, which does not include date types, wired Report.
However, according to the 2024 Inspector General Report, Social Security Managers have admitted that less than 1% of benefits are available. In a country with more than 330 million, the number of beneficiaries aged 99 or older is less than 90,000, according to government data.
Earlier this year, the government began collecting more than $31 million in federal payments (not just Social Security) that seemed to be mis-distributed to the deceased. The Treasury Department estimates that the recycling process will charge $215 million over the three years in 2026, well below Musk’s $1 trillion target.
Any meaningful reduction in government spending to get Musk’s $1 trillion or $2 trillion figure will require confining severe cuts to expensive but crucial government plans and the combination of the Ministry of Defense cuts, and Increase taxes.
According to the party’s Congressional Budget Office, Treasury bonds are expected to increase by about $20 trillion over the next decade.
Meanwhile, Trump directed lawmakers to cut taxes on a large scale for the wealthiest families in the United States. House Republicans proposed a budget blueprint that will increase the new deficit by $4.5 trillion through tax cuts and cuts an additional $2 trillion in “mandatory” spending, covering programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and food aid .
The budget plan negotiated by House Speaker Mike Johnson and approved by Trump will cut $880 billion from Medicaid over the next decade to cover part of the president’s proposed tax cuts.
Trump has separately promised to exempt Social Security benefits from income tax, which will cost the program more than $2 trillion over the next decade without having to recover those fees elsewhere.
