Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed it into being in 1933, America’s Social Security system has been overwhelmingly popular. While faith in other government programs and agencies has notably waned over the decades, Americans’ opinions about New Deal-era programs has remained shockingly resilient. The reason for this seems pretty simple: People like retiring, and they know that they can’t do it without the federal program’s help.
There is really only one demographic that hates Social Security, and that’s the people in this country who are rich enough to not need it. For years, billionaire-funded rightwing organizations have lobbied to make severe cuts to the program, arguing that reductions are necessary for government “efficiency.” One of those organizations, the Heritage Foundation, is the same one that underwrote much of the policy for the first Trump administration and that, via its much-maligned Project 2025 initiative, would seek to do the same thing for his second term.
Unfortunately, there’s another person who seems to be—at the very least—curious about gutting the popular welfare program and that’s the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. On Tuesday, Musk platformed a thread on X written by Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee which sought to cast Social Security as a nefarious government plot to rob the American people of their hard-earned money. Lee’s thread, which garnered 39 million views, was received by Musk with cautious interest. “Interesting thread,” Musk quipped.
This would be less alarming were Musk not also simultaneously heading a so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a newly created government agency that claims to be dedicated to reducing federal bureaucracy and government waste, and that has made known it plans to attack existing government programs that don’t align with Trump’s goals. Musk is also, notably, a core member of the Republican constituency—a political party that, in recent days, has stepped up public attacks on the Social Security system, despite previous claims that the GOP would not advocate for cuts to those programs.
Indeed, Senator Lee’s thread is only the latest of several recent examples of Republican congressmen taking aim at the long-cherished program. In a recent interview on Fox News, Republican House member Rich McCormick, of Georgia, similarly said that “some hard decisions” need to be made when it comes to Social Security and Medicare and that there are “hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved” if America has the “stomach” for such cuts.
To be clear, Lee’s thread is devoid of context or useful information and seems largely designed to trick people who otherwise don’t know how the federal government works into believing that the Social Security program is ripping them off. In his screed, Lee referred to the program as a “Ponzi scheme” and claimed that the government “routinely raids” the fund for its own benefit. “Do the math: with Social Security, you’re looking at a return that’s pathetic compared to market averages. It’s not even an investment; it’s a tax.”
Lee’s logic here is admittedly pretty weird. By Lee’s definition, all government programs are “Ponzi schemes.” However, most uses of taxpayer funds seem palatable to Lee. For instance, he apparently doesn’t have a problem with the government using billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to, say, drop bombs on people in Gaza. He also doesn’t seem to care about the billions of dollars that are regularly funneled from the American taxpayer to subsidize plutocrats like Musk (SpaceX alone is said to have garnered as much as $20 billion in subsidies since 2008). No, no—apparently, the taxpayer-funded system that needs reforms is the kind that has a long track record of helping tens of millions of Americans retire each year.
Musk’s platforming of Lee’s comments signals a willingness on the part of the billionaire to promote cuts to the program, despite the fact that DOGE has claimed that it will not make cuts to mandatory spending programs. In fact, those programs are so popular with Trump’s base that, earlier this year, the Republican Party was forced to make overt commitments not to cut either of them. The fact remains, however, that the GOP has long been filled with people who have advocated for cutting those programs and, now, people within Trump’s orbit—like Musk—seem to be actively working to turn public opinion against Social Security. A core part of the MAGA movement’s modus operandi has been to demonize public agencies that provide services to Americans—a strategy that seems to be on full display here.
Defenders of the federal program have been quick to criticize both Lee and Musk. On Tuesday, Max Richtman, the president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, rebuked Lee’s comments about the program, calling them “a misrepresentation of Social Security’s history.”
“There is nothing deceptive about Social Security. The social insurance program has been working just fine for nearly 90 years and has never missed a payment,” Richtman said, via a statement shared on X. “The kind of propaganda Sen. Lee posted undermines public support for Social Security, making it easier to cut or privatize the program. It is perhaps no coincidence that Sen. Lee’s second-biggest campaign contributor by industry is the securities and investment sector.”
Richtman went on: “The Senator’s Wall Street backers would love to get their hands on workers’ Social Security contributions to risk them on the markets. This kind of Republican attack on Social Security conflicts with President Trump’s promise not to tamper with Americans’ earned benefits. It signals where Trump’s MAGA allies in Congress are heading — toward privatization and benefit cuts, something the majority of Americans across party lines say they do not want.”
