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Trump and Musk Target Social Security and Veterans’ Benefits, While Using DOGE to Enrich Themselves   

Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s war on Americans’ essential services reached new lows this week as the Administration’s cuts to Social Security and veterans’ benefits hit communities across the country. After eliminating thousands of employees from the Social Security Administration’s workforce earlier this year, reports reveal that Social Security field offices are struggling to perform their basic duties, with some offices losing as many as half of their employees. That meant increased wait times and worse services for seniors who have paid into the earned benefits for their whole lives. Trump and Musk’s cuts to Veterans Administration benefits have also meant the elimination of the only affordable home lending program for veterans who are struggling to make ends meet, after earlier this year, Trump and Musk’s DOGE promised they would cut 80,000 VA employees.  

At the same time, Musk is reportedly racing to build a centralized database housing Americans’ personal financial information, directly threatening privacy and security protections that are intended to stop the government from accessing Americans’ data. DOGE’s mining of Americans’ personal information not only exposes families to being hacked by adversaries, but it also opens the door for the Trump Administration to misuse highly sensitive data for their own retribution campaigns. 

And while working people see an all-out assault on the services their taxpayer dollars pay for, Trump, Musk, and their lieutenants have used DOGE for self-enrichment schemes to benefit themselves. A series of recent damning reports reveal that top DOGE aide Gavin Kliger appeared to have violated federal ethics rules by investing in companies that stand to benefit from cuts he was involved in making at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Kliger holds as much as $715,000 of stock in companies, including Tesla, Apple, cryptocurrency, and more, that are expected to benefit from the decimation of the agency. It’s the latest profit scheme from Trump Administration officials who care more about padding their pockets than bringing down costs. 

Trump and Musk’s actions make clear that they simply don’t care about cutting red tape, eliminating fraud and abuse, and increasing efficiency so that the government can better serve the American people. Instead, DOGE is a vehicle for advancing their real agenda – abusing the power of the presidency to enrich themselves, while ordinary Americans pay the price with higher costs.

 

HOW THE TRUMP-MUSK ADMINISTRATION’S DOGE IS HARMING FAMILIES 
  • Enacting devastating cuts to Social Security, sabotaging seniors’ benefits: Earlier this year Donald Trump and Elon Musk announced they would cut 7,000 jobs – or 12% of the workforce – from the Social Security Administration, the agency which serves 69 million seniors by administering the earned benefits they have paid into for decades. Already, the impact of DOGE’s drastic cuts is hitting Social Security field offices across the country, causing significant increases in wait times for service, and the Social Security Administration website has crashed multiple times. One employee described the situation by saying “the impact on those offices in particular is going to be significant, where you are going to see waiting times for visitors, including those who have appointments, go up exponentially.” 
  • Axing affordable lending for Veterans: In Trump and Musk’s latest insult toward veterans who have served our country in uniform, last week DOGE shut down the “only affordable option for many vets who are seriously behind on their VA home loans.” The now-eliminated VA Servicing Purchase program has helped at least 17,000 veterans save their home, and the cuts come at a time when 90,000 veterans are behind on their VA home loans. As one Iraq veteran made clear: “I was willing to die for what I believed in. And for someone [to] … take away the home that my family lives in? Like we’ve paid enough, we’ve really paid enough.”
  • Killing jobs and stunting local economic growth: Trump and Musk’s DOGE have cut thousands of public servants’ jobs – now, as a result local economies are feeling the pain as job cuts trickle down. A report released this week showed that more than 4 in 10 Washington, DC area residents live in households that experienced a federal worker or contractor losing their job. The cuts have meant increased economic hardship and difficult choices for families like delaying home repairs and pulling children out of summer camps and day care programs. 
  • Cutting off scientific research, limiting opportunities for breakthroughs: Last week, Trump and Musk axed 700 scientific research projects which had been funded through the National Science Foundation – kneecapping the potential for scientific breakthroughs in America. The cuts come as Musk’s DOGE promised it would cut NSF’s budget by 55% and eliminate half of its staff. The CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the largest scientific societies in the world, said that the DOGE’s NSF budget cuts were “a crisis, just a catastrophe for U.S. science.”
  • Forcing Americans to go hungry, gutting food bank support: After Trump and Musk cut nearly $1 billion in U.S. Department of Agriculture funding for food banks and domestic agriculture, a new report reveals how food banks across the country are struggling to serve Americans in need, with “sudden cutbacks hit[ting] hard in Appalachia, where hunger is especially prevalent and government aid plays an outsize role in fighting it.” The cuts have led to cancelling of 11 or 16 food trucks to a West Virginia food bank which serves hundreds. In the words of a food bank supplier who described the DOGE cuts: “They don’t understand: ‘Hey, you’re cutting the backbone of America.’”
  • Eliminating hundreds of Americorps employees, gutting funding for projects that help Wisconsin communities: Following Trump and Musk’s DOGE cuts, communities in Wisconsin are seeing the elimination of dozens of AmeriCorps projects which combat homelessness, expand health care, and increase literacy. The cuts have resulted in at least 420 AmeriCorps employees losing their jobs, and a number of Wisconsin community projects which create economic opportunity losing funding. In the words of one AmeriCorps staffer, “People feel really hopeless right now, and really scared about what will be taken away from this community next. It feels like those in power making these decisions really don’t care about service.”
  • Targeting Peace Corps employees who support international humanitarian work: A recent report revealed that Trump and Musk intend to target the Peace Corps with significant staff cuts. The federal program has nearly 1,000 employees overseeing volunteers living worldwide who are working on public health and economic development efforts – efforts which both advance diplomacy and counter the global influence of foreign adversaries like China. 

  

SOCIAL CONTENT TO LIFT
  • @accountable-us.bsky.social‬: Head Start changes lives. These parents shouldn’t have to beg Congress to protect the basics. Congressional Republicans are choosing cuts over kids—and families will pay the price.
  • @schumer.senate.gov: Today, Senate Republicans are threatening Social Security by voting for Frank Bisignano. The last person we need overseeing seniors’ benefits is a DOGE fanatic who will accelerate office closures, rollbacks, and risky practices that DOGE set in motion.
  • @oversightdemocrats.house.gov‬: Elon Musk & DOGE are getting rid of the workers who make sure billionaires & corporations pay taxes. It’s going to increase the national debt—no matter how much Republicans try to cut Medicaid and food assistance. Terrible deal for Americans.

 

 

Budget cuts by DOGE are hitting critical services hard—healthcare, farmers’ aid, research, veterans’ care, and Head Start programs. 
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