A former Social Security chief under both the Bush and Obama administrations says Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) goons have devastated the welfare agency by running it as if it were a tech start-up.
“I think you have a group of very immature people coming out Silicon Valley bro culture, and they have decided federal agencies are filled with bad people doing bad things, and if you go in and hack away, and you don’t have to know what you are doing, you can improve it because less is more,” Michael Astrue told the Washington Post Sunday.
Astrue’s comments come as Democrats, after months of uncertainty and bickering over the best line of attack against the GOP’s gutting of Social Security.
Last week, President Joe Biden used his first public appearance since leaving office to blast the new Republican administration for causing “so much damage” with its attempts to “cut and gut” the agency.
WaPo reports that Democratic Party ads are also beginning to target incumbent Republicans over the issue, with Democrats in the Senate apparently setting up a “war room” to coordinate messaging.
A Gallup poll published earlier this month found that public concern over Social Security has reached a 15-year high, with more than three-quarters of respondents expressing concern about the system’s longevity.
Nor are those fears unfounded. Elon Musk, who has described Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” has led a crusade against the agency as part of his DOGE cost-cutting drive.
Those efforts have resulted in more than 4 million Social Security payees being written off as dead despite many turning up at agency offices across the country with IDs in hand.
The revelations were followed by stark warnings from former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley that DOGE-led layoffs and interference at the agency would likely result in interruptions and delays to payments being sent out “within the next 30 to 90 days.”
“Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse, and there will be an interruption of benefits,” he said during a Friday interview with CNBC. “I’ve never hoped I was wrong so much in my life.”
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