During a House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee hearing on Tuesday, former Social Security Administration Martin O'Malley spoke about the Trump Administration's cuts to Social Security.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Madam Co-Chair and Leader Jeffries, thank you very, very much for pulling together this
00:06hearing and for focusing our attention on this very imminent threat to a program that
00:14has never missed a payment in 90 years.
00:21For 73 million Americans, half of all seniors who live alone, you know, over 65, Social
00:28Security is the only thing that separates them from living in dignity or living and
00:34dying in poverty.
00:36For 73 million Americans, it's a lifeline, not only retirees, but also people who unfortunately
00:42have suffered a disability, can no longer work, and for a lot of kids who receive supplemental
00:49security income with severe disabilities.
00:52I had the honor, as you said, of leading these men and women, and I watched them rally at
00:57one of the most difficult times in the agency's history, and seeing the progress they made,
01:04I likened it to, you know, they were sprinting up a downward moving escalator.
01:11And what was moving it downward at such an increased velocity was the greater numbers
01:16of people every single day that they were serving.
01:20Because of, dare I say here, this committee is much younger than me, due to baby boomers
01:23of my generation, the ranks of their beneficiary customers, every single day was a new record
01:29high, and after 10 years of staffing reductions imposed by House Republicans, their staffing
01:37was at a 50-year low.
01:40This graph kind of sums it up to the men and women of the committee.
01:46You can see, and it was projected for many, many years, Social Security operates on a
01:4975-year projection.
01:51All of those baby boomers were born post-World War II, and we knew they were coming.
01:57But even with seeing the growing numbers of beneficiaries, level funding for this agency
02:02over the last 10 years has meant that they have to let the grim reaper of attrition bring
02:08them to a balanced budget by the end of the year.
02:11And lest anybody look at that yawning gap and think, well, why don't they just make
02:15up for it with better IT?
02:16Well, that'd be a great idea, except they've had to postpone, push off for years and years
02:21IT modernization.
02:23It's not that they're dumb.
02:24It's not that they're stupid.
02:25It's not that they want old technology.
02:27It's that we have failed to invest in their ability to modernize their IT.
02:33So from my knowledge of this agency, from what I've learned from these hardworking men
02:38and women, this chainsaw of the Musk-Trump co-presidency is gutting this agency.
02:47It is breaking it from within, and it ultimately will lead to cascading failures, interruptions,
02:55and system shutdowns that will eventually, and I think within the next couple of months,
03:03lead to benefit interruptions for the first time in 90 years.
03:11And the reason for this crisis is not a mystery.
03:15House Republicans have remained silent in the face of this looming threat.
03:22They're allowing this agency to be broken from within and allowing Donald Trump and
03:27Elon Musk to degrade customer service and drive experienced employees out.
03:32If you want to find waste at Social Security today, look at the cash payments of our money
03:41and beneficiaries' money in earning their benefits.
03:44Look at the cash that they are burning by paying experienced, if overworked, men and
03:49women to leave the agency.
03:53Some of them, they're paying for the entire year not to show up for work again.
03:57Don't let the door hit your backside on the way out, and no knowledge transfer, which
04:02is critically, which creates a critical situation, especially in IT, where so many are retirement
04:11eligible.
04:12In the Office of Benefit Information Systems, 40% of those employees are retirement eligible,
04:17and they have been dealing these last two years with a hostile work environment intentionally
04:21brought on by the Trump-Musk doge teams and telling people, if you don't take the cash
04:29to get out now, you take your chances walking the plank of further rifts and firings if
04:35you don't take the cash to get out now.
04:38What would you do if it was your family that was at risk from this threat?
04:43And it's not just a threat.
04:45In their first week with their new appointed acting commissioner, they brought in two of
04:50the highest performers of the agency.
04:53One was the head of the Office of Customer Service Transformation, the other the head
04:56of the Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, set them both down individually, and said,
05:02you're being fired for cause.
05:04Tell everybody in your office, you're being fired for cause, too.
05:10Put your stuff in a cardboard box.
05:11This is your last day.
05:13It created a spectacle in the full parking lot at the end of that day, with men and women
05:19who had given their lives to this mission crying on each other's shoulders, saying
05:23goodbye to colleagues.
05:26That's the atmosphere that's been created at this agency.
05:29I truly believe that the Moss-Trump co-presidency has already taken 90% of the actions necessary
05:35to crater this agency.
05:38And this is the chronology that you will see unfolding in the weeks ahead.
05:42You've already seen it in the weeks behind.
05:45Largest number, greatest exodus in the agency that the agency's ever experienced over such
05:51a short period of time.
05:52I believe it's hard to get good numbers out of the agency anymore.
05:56It's kind of become the hermit kingdom.
06:00I believe they're probably at about 6,000, 7,000 people that have already separated.
06:07And I believe that they're going to drive out another 3,000 or 4,000.
06:12That's in an agency that was already at a 50-year low with customers at an all-time
06:15high.
06:17As they do that, you are then going to see intermittent interruptions of the applications
06:24that process the claims, not the green screen cobalt that has all of our earnings in it
06:29and the personal identifying information, but the applications that sit on top of that.
06:35You're going to see them go down.
06:36In fact, I think today they were down for three hours.
06:40They're going to happen more frequently.
06:43And then in the weeks ahead, you're going to see them lasting a longer period of time
06:47Instead of just down for three hours, you'll see them getting to three days.
06:51Ultimately, the combination of those things will see this agency head into a cascading
06:58event that will ultimately interrupt the payment of benefits for some time.
07:06I don't know what that period of time will be, but knowing what I know about the agency,
07:14that batch goes through in various segments every month for pay.
07:20And I truly believe that for the first time in 90 years, those benefits are going to be
07:25interrupted for some time.
07:27I don't know how long.
07:29The goal, of course, in all of this, I've come to believe, it's not mere arrogance.
07:34Could be ideology.
07:35But it would appear that what they're trying to do is crater this agency and kneecap its
07:43ability to serve the public.
07:46They have to do that because 80% of Americans believe that Social Security should be strengthened
07:50and made better.
07:52So they can't really rob it until they wreck it and sour enough of the public against it.
08:01So you see a common thread going through a lot of their changes.
08:05No longer can seniors who have a hard time getting to a field office, no longer can they
08:10get their business done on the phone.
08:12Lower policing fraud.
08:13So no longer can they do it by the phone.
08:16They have to go to a field office.
08:19The enumeration beyond entry, which actually was going on during the first Trump administration,
08:24the automation when USCIS sends the Social Security, people who are immigrating lawfully
08:30and says, send them a Social Security card for work purposes.
08:35Oh, you can no longer do that.
08:36There might be fraud.
08:37You know, it's all part of a blue conspiracy to give immigrants the right to vote.
08:41So they make them go to a field office.
08:43I could go through other ones, but it seems that what they're trying to do, even as they
08:48threaten to close offices, is to jam them up and give people the worst possible experience
08:53they can have.
08:55So then after wrecking it, they can rob it.
08:57What they want to do with the $2.7 trillion, I cannot tell you.
09:02You all have your theories.
09:04But I can see that they're trying to wreck this agency.
09:07And the people of the United States who are in this benefit need to stand up right now.
09:11I truly believe only an aroused democracy can stop them from doing what they're already
09:1590 percent of the way to doing.
09:17And it's my great hope that because of this hearing, because of the focus, because Leader
09:22Jeffries, if you and your colleagues raising the alarm, that maybe we can even persuade
09:29some reasonable Republicans to lend their voice to the cause of securing Social Security
09:35for the future.