Former agency head on preserving Social Security
The Social Security Administration was already at its smallest size in 50 years, and, now, Elon Musk's D.O.G.E. team has cut another 14% of its employees — 7,000 people — and eliminated phone service for new retirees. About 80,000 people a week will now have to drive to field offices.
The administration's website has repeatedly crashed, and the agency's own website puts the average phone wait time at about four hours.
"They've already pushed service to people back, nationally, to a pretty horrifying extent. And it's probably going to get worse in the next couple of months," said Michael Astrue, who served as commissioner of the Social Security Administration under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
"I'm getting calls now all the time, from people that can't get through on the telephone, from people that can't get appointments in the field offices. And it will, in some cases, delay benefits," Astrue shared. "This is a very tough thing for millions of Americans."
Referencing arguments by President Trump and Musk that prioritize trimming so-called "waste" at federal agencies like the Social Security Administration, Astrue said the idea of such excess on staff is "just not true" and added, "there is no data to support that claim."
"In fact, what experts worry about is not fraud, which the agency itself estimates is below one one-hundredth of a percent of its payouts," he continued. "It's the Social Security time bomb."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Social Security program in 1935, during the Great Depression, as a safety net to keep Americans out of poverty. Speaking about the initiative around the time of its inception, FDR told Americans that the measure would provide "at least some protection to 50 million of our citizens."
Roosevelt enacted a program where the government takes a piece out of every working American's paycheck and pays it to people reaching retirement age. Today, those checks average about $2,000 a month, and they're the primary source of income for 40% of older Americans.
"If Social Security were not here, you'd have about 22 million Americans who would be considered poor under the federal standards," said Astrue. "Some of them have no other income."
For years, this all worked pretty well. Social Security became America's biggest government program; today, it pays $1.6 trillion to 73 million retired and disabled Americans. But, when World War II ended, the baby boom happened, and all those babies got older. Now, there were a lot more people getting money from the system — and fewer people paying in.
And we started living longer. In FDR's day, the average age of death was 63. Now, it's 77, which is 14 more years of payments per person.
"You will hear a lot of people saying there will be no Social Security for you. And that's, in all likelihood, not true," Astrue said. "If Congress does nothing, which you have to accept is a real possibility these days, they'll get about 80% of what they get now. And that will be a significant hit for a lot of Americans. We're looking at 2033, 2034, when the bottom will drop out."
We've seen this moment coming for years, and all kinds of solutions have been kicked around. We could increase the tax a little. We could shrink the payments a little. We could delay the retirement age, now defined as 62. We could invest the money in the stock market instead of Treasury bills, but that's really risky. A market crash could wipe out the whole thing overnight.
Today, you and your employer each contribute about 6% of your paycheck to Social Security, up to a point. There's no tax on anything you make over $176,000. The income line grows.
So, here's another idea: Tax more of your earnings by raising that limit. Or even eliminate the limit. The taxable area grows.
Astrue expects it'll be some combination of those ideas.
"The likelihood is that Congress will panic right toward the deadline," he said. "There will be some cuts in benefits and there'll be some increase in taxation."
That deadline is eight years away, but Astrue says that the more immediate problem is the indiscriminate cutting.
"The way they're doing it, which is just, meat-axe cuts that are fairly random, is not the way. It's actually going to impair the agency's ability to make productive changes," said Astrue, who clarified that he is a Republican. "I voted for President Trump, so I'm all for change, but I'm all for intelligence change. And the people who are trying to drive this change don't understand the system. I don't think they care."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Former Alabama Congressman Jerry Carl to run for Congress
MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — Former Alabama Representative for District 1 Jerry Carl has filed his paperwork to run for Congress. UPDATE: Mobile police identify 2 men killed in industrial incident Carl served in the United States House of Representatives from 2021 to January 2025, where he represented District 1. Carl lost the 2024 Primary Election after he was pinned against Rep. Barry Moore once Alabama redrew its congressional districts. for the redrawn District 1 seat and is currently serving in the 119th Congress term. Argument over burglary leads to man shot in the chest in Wilmer: MCSO Moore announced Tuesday that he plans to run for the Alabama Senate seat that is being vacated by Tommy Tuberville as . Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Boston Globe
35 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Pete Hegseth's macho approach to the military threatens our national security
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Hegseth's rationale for banning 'gender ideology' from military academies, which train officers, is that it inhibits the unity and meritocracy required for military readiness among service members. As Hegseth's order states, 'The strength of the DoD comes from our unity and our shared purpose. We will focus on lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards, and readiness.' Advertisement This is deeply ironic because no one is doing more to make explicit the deep cultural connection between war and masculinity than Pete Hegseth. He's revealing something that's always simmered beneath the surface of military culture: that war is the sole province of men. Advertisement And the way Hegseth thinks about gender in the military and the whole point of fighting wars is fundamentally flawed — not to mention detrimental to the armed forces and our national security. Out of the shadows I used to have to make the argument that the military's culture was affected by ideas and beliefs about masculinity in mostly subtle ways. The only people who came right out and said war is about achieving manhood were centuries-old thinkers and a few contemporary military leaders or obscure far-right commentators. But now the sitting secretary of defense is unabashedly advancing this view and basing military policy on it. If you want to see how ideas about masculinity warp those about war and the military, look no further than Hegseth's last book, published in 2024, 'The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.' Hegseth asserts that the military exists to allow men to find their natural purpose as warriors. The military is the institution for turning undisciplined boys into real men. As he says, 'The military has always been about social engineering … It takes average American boys, breaks down their body and mind, and builds them back up into members of a warfighting team.' This point is brought home in a chapter titled 'Men Need Purpose, Not Inclusion.' Here, Hegseth provides a macho, first-person narrative of his experience in Iraq in 2006. As an important part of a team of warrior men engaged in killing the enemy, he says he found his calling as a man. His operation 'was all man, all merit, all mission.' He and his teammates were 'tough, manly, and unapologetically lethal.' He discovers that 'feeding a well-oiled killing machine' is his 'jam.' He closes the chapter with the hope that the military continues to provide this purpose to other men. Advertisement The clichéd, gendered language he uses throughout the book to describe good soldiers is staggering. Proper warriors are 'red-blooded American men,' 'strong men,' 'fighting men,' 'courageous men,' 'rock-ribbed men,' 'masculine men,' 'tough' men, 'normal dudes,' men who do 'PT' and wear 'Carhartt jackets,' 'cowboys,' and 'alpha males.' He compares them to the fictional characters John McClain from the movie 'Die Hard' and the superassassin John Wick, And he goes on to describe the men who question the value of this type or hinder their unapologetic violence as 'candy-asses,' 'pussies,' 'whores to wokesters,' 'effeminate,' those who 'suppress natural masculine instincts for honor,' 'beta-male[s],' and 'so-called men' who would 'neuter' the military. For Hegseth, a good man is a disciplined killer and protector of the weak. By nature, men are 'life-takers.' Their societal role is to use violence to protect their communities. Women, according to him, have a different nature. Women are 'life-givers' whose biology prescribes caregiving and nurturing. Their job is to reproduce and raise future generations as well as provide succor to warrior men. This is why he thinks women should not serve in combat. For Hegseth, including women in war upsets the natural gender order. Making women into warriors separates them from 'the natural purposes of their core instincts.' And it undermines men's 'instincts' to treat women gently. Advertisement There is also reason to wonder if Hegseth believes women should be full citizens. This all has had devastating impacts on women and gender nonconforming people in the military. Hegseth has overseen the But the effect of Hegseth's gender crusade extends well beyond the culture of the military. It has a dangerous impact on the way we fight wars. There is a direct relationship between treating men in the military as killing machines and a misguided way of thinking about war. Hegseth argues that the masculine nature of military service is linked to the nature of war. War is really a contest of masculine violence. If you outkill your opponent, you will win the war. Lethality is all that matters from a strategic point of view. He claims, 'Land warfare … is defined by how many people you can slaughter in one space, at one time — limiting the will and capacity of your enemy to fight.' Advertisement The problem with this is that it reduces winning wars to winning battles. But at least as far back as Carl von Clausewitz, an early 19th-century Prussian general and military theorist, strategists have understood that there is much more to winning wars than winning battles. The point of war is to achieve a nonmilitary political good like sovereignty or a just peace. There is not always a connection between winning battles and achieving these goals. In fact, you can win every battle yet lose the war — as the United States did in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States entered these wars with The United States does not have a problem with lethality on the battlefield. We have a problem understanding how our lethality affects the world and a tendency to think martial violence can solve complex problems. We need to be better thinkers, not better killers. We need more historical and cultural understanding, not better tactical skills. Hegseth doesn't see it this way. According to him, the United States lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because we didn't kill enough. If it weren't for the lawyers — or 'jag-offs,' as he calls them — restraining military tactics out of concern for noncombatant casualties and detainee abuse, we could have ended the wars sooner and won. The wars dragged on because we lacked the warrior impulse to do what was required to win. He says, 'The fact that we don't do what is necessary is the reason wars become endless. Modern wars never end, because we won't finish them.' Advertisement In Hegseth's worldview, wars are contests in killing because wars are contests of warrior masculinity. The side with the real men is the winner. If we lose a war, it must be because we lack real men. Whereas America failed in Iraq and Afghanistan because of a misguided faith in war, Hegseth is overseeing 'reforms' of the US military to emphasize battlefield fighting that simply double down on this faith. This may make the military more 'lethal,' but it makes us less ready to use the military for good. I fear we are now even more likely to engage in ill-conceived war than we were 20 years ago. So, in a sense, Hegseth is right: 'gender ideology' is a threat to national security. But it's his ideology that we should be worried about.
Business Insider
36 minutes ago
- Business Insider
A boomer living on Social Security applied to 3,700 jobs in 7 years. He suspects ageism set him back in the job market.
"I received kissoff in email 2/5/2021," Mark Porter wrote, adding, "I asked if the woman I phone screened with had any further feedback as to why I wasn't hired." That's one of 224 similar notes about rejections that Porter has entered into the spreadsheet he uses to track the nearly 3,700 job applications he's sent out in the last seven years. After being laid off from a full-time job in early 2018 at the age of 60, he's been unable to secure another permanent role. Porter, now 67, has spent most of his career in payroll and accounting roles, including stints as a payroll specialist, accounting associate, and accounts receivable clerk. In the years since his layoff, he's earned some income from short-term contract roles, the last of which was a payroll specialist job that ended in the summer of 2024, when the original employee returned from maternity leave. "I had to burn through my 401(k), and I had to burn through money that my mother left me," said Porter, who rents a one-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts. "It's been really rough." Porter's story reflects the challenges many older Americans are facing. They're struggling to find work, draining their savings, and watching retirement slip further away. Business Insider has heard from thousands of older Americans who are having trouble affording necessities with limited savings and Social Security income. Hundreds have said they are still working full time, have taken part-time jobs to supplement their income, or are actively looking for work. These challenges are compounded by a cooling job market. While the unemployment rate for Americans age 55 and older remains low compared to historical levels, it's ticked up over the past two years as various factors, ranging from economic uncertainty to the early impacts of AI adoption, have led many companies to cut back on hiring. US businesses are now hiring at nearly the slowest pace in more than a decade, and white-collar jobs, which include the payroll and accounting roles Porter is looking for, have been particularly affected. The number of accounting job postings on Indeed has declined significantly since 2022. Business Insider has heard from hundreds of Americans over the past year who are struggling to find work as US businesses slow hiring and flatten management structures. Share your story by filling out this quick form and read more below: I'm a 53-year-old middle manager who can't find a job. I burned through my savings and even resorted to selling plasma — this market is a black hole. A boomer moved to Panama so her retirement would be more affordable. Now she's struggling to find a job, and her dream is slipping away. From six figures to $25 an hour: These struggling job seekers are settling for lower-paying jobs to pay the bills Job searching in 2025? It's a mess no matter how old you are. Combatting age bias in the hiring process Since April 2017, Porter has tracked every job he applies to in a Google spreadsheet, which includes the company name, job title, pay, location, and which version of his résumé he used. Despite holding a bachelor's degree from Boston College and having decades of work experience, Porter has had trouble landing interviews. This has led him to conclude that his age is a major factor holding him back. Porter said job searching started to become more difficult in his fifties and persisted throughout the Great Resignation, even as job postings and hiring surged amid the post-pandemic recovery. He said he knows several people his age facing similar struggles. Through conversations with them, Porter heard a theory that applicant tracking systems can detect a candidate's age based on certain phrases in résumés, potentially hurting older applicants' chances. Porter said a professional résumé writer he hired about two years ago believed the theory had some merit. "She said rewording will get you past a lot of these résumé readers that just toss résumés in the trash based on how old they think you are — by the tone of the way the résumé is written," he said. Porter said he couldn't recall exactly what tweaks were made to his résumé, but that they didn't seem to boost his response rate from employers. Though age discrimination is difficult to prove, in a survey published by Harris Poll and the American Staffing Association in 2024, 78% of baby boomers said they believed their age would be a contributing factor when being considered for a new position, and 53% said they thought their age limited their career opportunities. Financial challenges have had personal and career impacts Porter said his age isn't the only thing complicating his job search. A few years ago, Porter said he interviewed for a role at a financial services company that seemed promising — until the company asked to run a credit check. At the time, he was in bankruptcy, the result of credit card debt he'd accumulated to cover living expenses while unemployed. The company told him that because the role involved handling financial securities, his bankruptcy could complicate his hiring, and the interview process stopped there. Porter said he hopes to emerge from bankruptcy in the coming months and may reach back out to the company to see if any opportunities are still available. In the meantime, Porter's roughly $2,000 a month Social Security check, which he said he began collecting two years ago, is what's keeping him afloat. "That's the only reason I have a roof over my head and food to eat," said Porter. His Social Security income is critical because he was forced to deplete much of his savings during his years of job hunting. Looking ahead, Porter plans to keep applying for positions through Indeed, but he said there seem to be significantly fewer job postings than there were a few years ago. In recent months, he said he's broadened his search, even contacting the owner of a plumbing company to ask whether someone his age could realistically be trained and hired. He didn't get a firm answer. When he's not looking for work, he said he can't afford to vacation as much as he used to, but that he's found ways to stay productive. "There's a pool at my apartment complex where I can swim during the summer," he said. "And the rest of the year, I go to a health club and I have books I can read. I keep myself busy."
