Summary
Senator Bernie Sanders warns that Elon Musk’s plan to cut Social Security Administration staff by up to 50% could cause 37,000 additional deaths yearly among disability benefit applicants and extend average wait times to 412 days.
While the SSA clarified they’re targeting a reduction from 57,000 to 50,000 employees (not 50%, or 300,000), Republican leaders like Mike Johnson and Rick Scott have discussed “reforming” entitlement programs for long-term solvency.
This contrasts with Trump’s assurance that “Social Security won’t be touched.” Democrats argue staffing cuts effectively reduce benefits by limiting access and delaying payments for vulnerable Americans.
That’s not how they’re doing it. They’re just slashing anything they don’t understand, entire departments. There are many interdependent systems and each uncalibrated attack brings them closer to failure/disruption.
There is no careful analysis about “people not doing their jobs” going on here.
Very much this. DOGE and Musk have taken zero time to try and understand what any of these programs they are cutting do or how they operate. They are under the impression that much of the important work can “be simply automated” via LLM’s or some nonsense.
They truly are the chainsaw, not the scalpel.
Stop engaging with trolls