What Elon Musk’s DOGE is really trying to do us
Donald Trump has kept one of his campaign promises-to issue a flurry of executive orders. The problem with most of those orders is that they have had life-altering, sometimes devastating impacts for people working with the federal government. According to Newsweek, the released National Park Service employees are also now homeless, as they lived in government housing. This type of action required an in-depth investigation, not Elon Musk-who was not elected to office-picking and choosing. Jasmine Crockett asked during a committee meeting why there were no auditors present. That’s who can best determine wasted funds, not some billionaire who knows squat about the government. Musk is trying to gain access to things which aren’t necessary.
CNN believes that because of misinformation and lies, Musk is trying to access the social security database. Just as they began with layoffs and cutting foreign aid, both Trump ask Musk used lies and disinformation to gain access, but there is no need to access Social Security’s database. According to Musk and Trump, millions of dead people are getting social security checks. We know better than that. The acting commissioner, Michelle King, stepped down over DOGE’s insistence that they be allowed to access Social Security recipient information. Our personal information should not be a part of anything happening in the government, and it should remain private. CNN makes clear that Trump and Musk are making this stuff up, likely for nefarious reasons. CNN undertook its own investigation to determine the truth.
Social Security has acknowledged that there have been some problems, but those problems represent less than 1%. Further, the Treasury Department announced that it had recovered $31 million in erroneous payments before Trump even took office. The Social Security Administration keeps tight reign on the funds it pays out. There are no “tens of millions” of people over 100 receiving checks. The former SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley told CNN: “There is not like a zombie apocalypse of people, you know, cadavers running around with social security checks coming out of their pockets.” This claim is utterly ridiculous.
Currently, there are approximately 69 million retirees, disabled workers, dependents and survivors who receive Social Security. Musk would not only gain access to personal information for those people, but according to CNN, they could get data on hundreds of millions of people because of SSA’s multiple data systems, which contains personal data on most people living in the U.S. and people who have died. Kathleen Romig told CNN that SSA’s data runs “from cradle to grave.” That is obviously how they keep up with recipients and especially recipients who have died. DOGE was created to “modernize federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,” which has no connection whatsoever to people’s personal information.
Musk and Trump are getting into dangerous territory from which they should be excluded. Creating efficient systems has nothing to do with people’s personal information. Let them start messing around with Social Security, and they will have a mass of angry taxpayers on their doorstep. It won’t be pretty.
Shirley is a former entertainment writer and has worked in the legal field for over 25 years