Latest news with #Astrue
Yahoo
13-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Former agency head on preserving Social Security
Social Security has been getting a lot of attention lately — and not the good kind. 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." Idaho teen with autism dies after controversial police shooting Nature: Chimpanzees Chimp Haven, the world's largest chimpanzee sanctuary
CBS News
13-04-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Former agency head on preserving Social Security
Social Security has been getting a lot of attention lately — and not the good kind. 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."
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Bush's Head of Social Security Trashes Musk's Fraud Claims
A former commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) who served under both presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, has slammed Elon Musk's claims that the agency is a hub for financial fraud. Michael Astrue, who was commissioner for six years, stressed in an interview with NPR published Monday that while the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) can 'go in and put in efficiencies to bring down the size of the agency' there's a 'smart way to do it and there's a stupid way' emphasizing that DOGE is landing on the latter rather than the former. 'We need a perspective other than the DOGE perspective. I'm all for cutting waste, I'm all for efficiencies. And if you look back at the productivity increases in my six years, they were substantial,' Astrue explained. 'If you want to go in and put in efficiencies to bring down the size of the agency, you can do that. But there's a smart way to do it and there's a stupid way to do it. And we're doing it the way that 22-year-old frat boys that have never seen the system think is a good idea, and that's a mistake.' Musk has rallied a small team—of largely twenty-somethings—to streamline his efforts for government downsizing. A healthy chunk of the work DOGE has been doing has apparently been scouring through federal agencies' records and coding systems to identify potential waste or fraud. So far, however, the only things they've been able to turn up are lots of line-items that, politically, they disagree with. In the case of the SSA, the agency relies on a 60-year-old code system—the Common Businesses Oriented Language (COBOL)—which Astrue notes Musk's team likely have never seen before. Misunderstandings likely paved the way for a misunderstanding of the agency's finances, he said. 'You can't fault them for that because they haven't ever seen COBOL code before,' Astrue said. 'But you can fault Elon Musk because, instead of admitting error, he doubled down and had the president of the United States make that claim. And that's a real disservice to President Trump.' When probed by NPR if the SSA was in fact rife with fraud to the extent that Musk has claimed, Astrue said: 'No, it's not. And the big claims are just flat out wrong.' 'It's just a product of the fact that they sent in a group of 20-year-olds with laptops who are used to seeing certain types of code. They went in without the proper authorities and didn't understand it,' the former commissioner argued. Musk has repeatedly claimed that the SSA is plagued by 'immense waste' and 'extreme levels of fraud.' These allegations have been swiftly parroted by President Donald Trump, who in a joint address to Congress earlier this month claimed that Musk and DOGE have identified 'shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud' at the agency. Some ideas that have been floated to tighten up the agency include mass layoffs and administering stricter protocols, like verifying the identity of Social Security recipients in-person to bestow checks. 'It's at least going to cause delays,' Astrue said of the Trump administration's proposed changes. 'In some cases they may just not get it at all. And to put in this requirement at the same time that you're cutting back staff and office space dramatically is going to compound what is already a big problem.' A spokesperson for the SSA told NPR that the agency remains focused 'on identifying efficiencies and reducing costs.' The administration currently distributes benefits to more than 70 million Americans.
