Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

To the editor:
Will cuts to and disruptions of our Social Security benefits be the price we pay- the suffering?
The Social Security website is seeing crashes due to the number of people heeding warnings. Some high-echelon employees in the Social Security Department are even telling their family members to go to the ssa.gov website and get a hardcopy of their Lifetime Work Records. How? Find Card and Record at the top of the website page, go to Personal Record (you may have to create an account) and print out your Earnings Report. Why? In case, in Musk’s purge, it gets deleted.
Headlines are indicating, thanks to DOGE, the Social Security Administration is in a mess. Thousands of career workers have been fired and replaced by young tech savvy novices. Is the use of AI inevitable too? How long have Think Tanks had their eyes on Social Security cuts? Some time back, I wondered why Dick Armey, then chair of FreedomWorks who had been seen as the face of the Tea Party, was at a local church slamming governmental services so many depend on in their retirement years.
Fast forward to Elon Musk. It’s been pointed out, while retirees average receipts of $65 a day from the government, Musk earns $8 million a day for his federal SpaceX contract. Research shows when you add up SpaceX money, Tesla (electric vehicle) money, loans, subsidies, tax credits and government contracts, he is $38 billion dollars richer. Yes. Billions of taxpayer money. And he uses it to buy votes while calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” He spends it while, falsely, claiming tens of millions of dead people are getting checks.
The latest? Musk says his fraud finding, deficit reduction will result in increases to our benefits. Meanwhile, on the hill, some lawmakers are saying to watch out for backdoor cuts to Social Security.
When I look at all the billionaires in the administration, and some of the cuts, I question whether I can trust them to advocate for the best interest of a peon like me.
Alice Garrett Brown, Mocksville