Posted on Friday, April 11, 2025

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by Shane Harris

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Elected Democrats and many in the corporate media are attempting to sow chaos and confusion over the Trump administration’s long-overdue improvements at the Social Security Administration (SSA). But the facts make clear that these changes will make the agency more responsive to beneficiaries while also eliminating mountains of fraud in the program.

The manufactured Social Security panic began before President Trump even won last November’s election, with the liberal establishment claiming that he wanted to “cut Social Security” and kick seniors off their benefits. In reality, Trump has repeatedly promised to “not touch” Social Security.

But the lies and misdirection have only grown more egregious since Trump took office, with every upgrade to how the program is run and every revelation of fraud treated as tantamount to ripping grandma’s check out of her hands.

The New York Times, for instance, recently alleged that there were “rushed changes and anxiety at Social Security.” Business Insider went with the headline “Baby Boomers prepare for the worst as Social Security faces service cuts,” while Newsweek was even more dramatic, claiming Social Security is in a “death spiral,” and Axios told its readers that “Social Security’s Core Mission Is at Stake.”

The truth is quite different from this doom-and-gloom world the media lives in. Not only is the Trump administration protecting seniors’ benefits by eliminating fraud, it has taken significant steps to modernize SSA’s operations to better serve beneficiaries.

For instance, far from some false media reports that the SSA is closing down field offices, the agency is actually shifting more of its personnel to answering phones and taking in-person claims, along with instituting surge capacity to deal with increased demand. Thanks to President Trump’s executive action requiring federal employees to return in-person to the office five days a week, beneficiaries can now count on being able to speak face-to-face with SSA employees.

Contrary to claims that SSA is reducing phone services, the agency will also continue processing all claim types via telephone. Last month alone, SSA spent $16.5 million to modernize its phone services nationwide.

At the same time, thanks to new anti-fraud software, Americans who rely on Social Security can be more confident than ever that their benefits will be delivered on time to the correct person. This updated software enables SSA to flag abnormal behavior on a person’s account, requiring identity proofing for flagged individuals. Just like Voter ID is a critical measure to safeguard American elections, identity proofing will help root out fraud in Social Security.

President Trump’s proposal to eliminate taxes on Social Security income is further proof of how absurd it is to claim that his administration wants to “cut” Social Security or otherwise jeopardize benefits. Excluding cost-of-living increases, eliminating this tax would effectively be the largest boost to seniors’ checks in the history of the program.

What President Trump does want to eliminate is waste, fraud, and abuse in Social Security, which both Republicans and Democrats have done nothing about – even as they have publicly acknowledged the problem and talked about doing something for decades. Despite the fact that Social Security is barreling toward insolvency as soon as 2033 (or sooner if Democrats get their way and add millions of illegal aliens to the program), successive presidential administrations have allowed billions of dollars in fraud and improper payments to go out the door every year.

For instance, an SSA Inspector General report released last August, when Joe Biden was still in office, found $72 billion in improper payments from fiscal years 2015 through 2022. That report further noted that previous audits resulted in “dozens of recommendations for the Agency to prevent improper payments before they occur as well as to detect and correct existing improper payments,” but that “to date, many of those recommendations remain unimplemented.”

Elon Musk and his DOGE team have also identified enormous levels of other potential fraud that pose an immediate threat not only to Americans’ pocketbooks but also to democracy itself. Speaking at an event in Wisconsin earlier this month, Musk and venture capitalist Antonio Gracias shared a chart showing a dramatic spike in the number of new Social Security numbers issued during the Biden administration.

“In 2021, you see 200,000 people [gaining Social Security numbers],” Musk said. “It goes all the way to 2.1 million in 2024. These are non-citizens that are getting Social Security numbers.”

“This literally blew us away,” Gracias added. “If I hadn’t seen this myself, I’m not sure I would have believed it. I went through it myself and mapped it. And Elon is right. This is true… We found some by sampling that actually did vote.”

This is the real threat to Social Security – millions of people who shouldn’t be on the program being added to advance a liberal political agenda while fraudsters rip off taxpayers and Democrats try to cover it all up. But in our bizarro world where the media are professional cheerleaders for the left, we are told that the Trump administration’s efforts to save Social Security from complete destruction are the problem.

The real loser of the left’s misinformation warfare, as is so often the case, is the American people – and American seniors in particular, as Democrats look to stoke fears of benefit cuts for their own political gain.

Shane Harris is the Editor-in-Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.