INDIANAPOLIS — Some 1.38 million Hoosiers receive Social Security benefits, which inject $24.3 billion into our economy annually. For the past eight decades, it has been a vital and enduring American safety net. Every one of my paychecks shows I’ve paid into the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, or FICA.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who heads President Donald Trump’s unofficial “Department of Government Efficiency,” sees Social Security as the “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment setup where money from new investors is used to pay existing ones.
I’ll let Musk explain his thoughts: “Most of the federal spending is entitlements. So that’s the big one to eliminate. That’s the sort of half trillion, maybe six, 700 billion,” Musk said on earlier this month in an interview with Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow.
Eliminate? Social Security? The so-called “third rail of American politics” (you touch it and you die)?
Musk, speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in February, said, “There’s our present-day debt, but then there’s our future obligations. So when you look at the future obligations of Social Security, the actual national debt is like double what people think it is because of the future obligations.”
Musk said on U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast on Monday, “By using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants. And buy voters.”
There are viable options for shoring up Social Security, which will be depleted by 2037. One would be to lift the maximum amount of earnings subject to FICA which is $176,100 this year. Another would be to inch up the retirement age a year or so. This would assure solvency and benefit payments well past the Baby Boom demographic bulge.
But Musk and DOGE are on a course to discredit Social Security. Axios reported on an internal memo from the Social Security Administration that “proposes changes to its phone service that could derail the benefits application process for many Americans.”
The proposal, which goes into effect on March 31, would reduce its toll-free phone line, and require applicants to show up at a local field office for those who can’t provide online identity verification. This would mean that 75,000 to 85,000 people per week would need to visit a local office to complete the verification process.
SSA announced in February it seeks to cut about 7,000 employees, or 12% of staff, by closing six out of 10 regional offices. Indiana is part of the Chicago regional office. There are 15 field offices in Indiana, located in Anderson, Auburn, Bloomington, Columbus, Crawfordsville, Elkhart, Evansville, Fort Wayne, Gary, Indianapolis, Michigan City, Muncie, New Albany and Richmond. As of Wednesday, none are scheduled to close.
The draft of the memo viewed by Axios says the proposed limitations will be “significant” for those living in rural areas in particular. The version of the memo ultimately sent to acting Director Leland Dudek acknowledges that “service disruption” and “operational strain” would be “a risk and challenge” of implementing this plan.
ProPublica reported on a meeting audio recording where Dudek said, “I need to do what the president tells me to do. I’ve had to make some tough choices, choices I didn’t agree with, but the president wanted it and I did it. I work for the president. DOGE is part of that.”
If Musk gets his way, good luck getting an “identity verification” appointment in the future.
Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley predicted a probable benefits interruption due to tactics being employed at SSA by DOGE, expecting “cascading effect that I believe we’ll see manifest itself in an interruption of benefits some time in the next 30 to 90 days.”
There are other changes afoot with the staggering, DOGE-infested Trump administration that could impact tens of thousands of Hoosiers. There is a proposed dismantling of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, which for more than eight decades has protected consumers from banking collapses.
Walk into any of Indiana’s 92 banks and 14 subchapter S institutions and you’ll find the FDIC logo promising to protect up to $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category should that institution fail.
CNN reported the Trump administration is discussing the possibility of dismantling the FDIC, giving the Department of Treasury oversight of deposit insurance, and allowing the federal government to substantially shrink or even close the rest of the agency. It was part of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 that has been the game plan for Trump 2.0.
“This idea would pose an enormous risk of terrifying Americans about the safety of their deposits and triggering bank runs,” Patricia McCoy, a law professor at Boston College and former federal regulator, told CNN.
Remember that 2008 financial crisis? Without the FDIC it could have spiraled into our second Great Depression.
President Trump and Elon Musk are billionaires, and Trump has created a second administration cabinet with 13 billionaires. They just didn’t tell you what they were really up to.
“Elections have consequences,” Dudek wrote in a March 1 email to the agency’s staff. Or as he said in that recording, “I’m the villain. I’m not going to have a job after this. I get it.”
The question for all us little folks is, will we have access to our benefits? And will our savings be protected when the DOGE dust settles?
Brian A. Howey is senior writer and columnist for Howey Politics Indiana/State Affairs. Find Howey on X @hwypol.
