Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told CNN host Anderson Cooper how unelected billionaire Elon Musk is cutting staff at the Social Security administration to make the 85-year-old program fail, which would give Musk and President Donald Trump reasons to privatize it.
The Washington Post reports how Musk and his teenage DOGE team wanted to cut phone service for elderly people trying to call Social Security, but changed their minsd to end direct deposit information by phone instead:
The Social Security Administration late Wednesday abandoned plans it was considering to end phone service for millions of Americans filing retirement and disability claims after The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service team was weighing the change to root out alleged fraud.
The shift would have directed elderly and disabled people to rely on the internet and in-person field offices to process their claims, curtailing a service that 73 million Americans have relied on for decades to access earned government benefits.
However, Social Security and White House officials said the administration will still move ahead with another far more limited element of the original proposal: Customers will no longer be able to change a direct deposit routing number or other bank information by phone.
(Source: CNN/YouTube, The Washington Post)