Democrats across the country are responding to Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), after he touted at potentially cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in Social Security and other federal benefit programs, arguing the move would hurt millions of Americans.
Among those Democrats is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), who slammed Musk, the richest person in the world, for his comments that as many as 20 million "dead" people are receiving Social Security benefits.
"Elon Musk confirmed what many of us had been warning about for a long time: Republicans are getting ready to gut Social Security and Medicare," Schumer said on the Senate floor.
"The richest man on earth repeated again a bevy of lies that entitlement programs, [which] tens of millions of people rely on, are riddled with fraud and abuse. That's a pretext to slashing them. But it's false," Schumer said.
On Monday, Musk, who nicknames himself "first buddy" for his close relationship to Trump, teased at cutting federal benefit programs, which he claimed are filled with fraud. He suggested that $500 billion to $700 billion in waste needed to be cut.
"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 in an interview with Fox Business' Larry Kudlow. His comments came in response to a question about whether there would be a report on targeting waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending.
Similarly, Sen. Bernie Sanders, (Vt), who has been on a national tour denouncing President Trump and Musk's actions, warned that the cuts are an alarming step in the direction of Social Security privatization, a longstanding goal of a group of right-wing politicians.
"Well, he has called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. They have already laid off 2,500 employees of the Social Security administration," said Sanders. "If you ask me, I think this is a prelude not only to cutting benefits, but to privatizing Social Security itself. I think that's in the back of their mind."
"Why do you lie so much about Social Security? Why do you make it look like it's a broken, dysfunctional system?" Sanders asked. "The reason is to get people to lose faith in the system, and then you can give it over to Wall Street. That's my view."
Following Musk's comments and the Democrats' response, the White House was quick to push back on the message, arguing Musk was talking only about cutting fraud.
"The Trump administration will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits," the White House said in a press release. "President Trump himself has said it (over and over and over again)."
The administration also linked to government findings of waste and fraud in entitlement programs, including an August 2024 report from the Social Security Administration's office of the Inspector General that found nearly $72 billion had been improperly paid.
Trump has repeatedly said he does not want to cut Medicare or Social Security. But he has said he would seek to get rid of fraud in those programs, which critics argue the president and his allies could use as a pretext to cut benefits, The Hill reports.
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