The Department of Government Efficiency is continuing its efforts to streamline the federal government, which may soon include changes to Social Security.
While President Donald Trump has vowed not to slash Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare, many Americans worry that the services they depend on could soon be affected by DOGE.
Monique Morrissey, a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, recently joined WWL News Radio to discuss how the department could affect Social Security.
Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who is leading DOGE, recently referred to Social Security as a Ponzi scheme, stirring concerns that he may try to enact sweeping changes within the program. But while Musk insists there is fraud present, Morrissey says she disagrees.
“I disagree with that characterization of Social Security,” Morrissey said. “Social Security is like a lot of other government programs. You know, people pay, and then they get something later or vice versa. You go to school, and it’s paid for by taxpayers, and then later on, you pay taxes. So it’s not any different from most government programs in that there are different phases in your life when you’re either paying in or you’re taking out.”
She added that Musk may be trying to refer to Social Security in a negative light because he has intentions of shutting it down.
Morrisey added that Social Security has its own financial issues, but they are more “moderate” than opponents of the aid program make it seem. While many point to the increase in recipients, thanks to a rather large generation of Americans retiring, saying it is an issue for the program, Morrisey says that it was actually planned for.
“Because of the Baby Boomers retiring, the amount that’s going out has been increasing. And this is totally normal, and it was planned for,” she said. “The actuaries for Social Security knew about this decades ago and put more money in the trust fund, and now we’re drawing down the trust fund. People think that drawing down that trust fund is a problem, but that’s what it was there for because Social Security really is designed to be current.”
Still, there are ways that the program can be streamlined, as Morrisey says Social Security is due for an adjustment, as it was last adjusted in 1983.
“It’s high time that we increase revenues into the system because costs, long-term, are going up about 1% of GDP,” she said. “This is manageable. It’s not like a cluster going up, increasingly year after year. It’s like they went up, and then they’re gonna level off, and we just need to close that shortfall.”
As for what may happen with DOGE’s influence on Social Security, Morrisey noted that the “vast majority of Americans” support keeping Social Security funded and expanding benefits.
While Musk has claimed that people are taking advantage of Social Security, suggesting that people who have been dead for decades are still receiving benefits, Morrisey says there is no truth to the allegations.
“DOGE is really a bunch of 22-year-olds running around who are programmers, and they don’t actually understand the government program. They just understand programming,” she said. “So, initially, Elon Musk and others have said stuff like, ‘There’s a 150-year-old getting social security.’ And they said, ‘There’s millions of dollars being sent to 11-year-olds for small business loans.’ And it turns out that there’s no basis for this.”
Morrisey said that the claim of the dead receiving benefits was because the exact death dates weren’t being used when looking through the database, resulting in a programming issue. For the 11-year-olds, the loans were small business loans, they were orphan annuity payments.
“The issue isn’t just that they were making stuff up and they didn’t understand what was going on. It’s that there are really, really strict rules about who can rummage through this data,” Morrisey said.