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Tractor spraying pesticides on soybean field with sprayer at spring
Yes, Trump Really Does Want to Kill Social Security
How ironic: The most inefficient bureaucracy in government turns out to be Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”
That might be humorous except that DOGE—a creature of the right wing’s Project 2025—has been devastating to millions of people. And it’s about to get worse. Elon Musk—the flighty, überrich autocrat put in charge of “efficiency” by his buddy Trump—is now going after the Social Security deposits of 73 million senior citizens.
But wait, hasn’t Trump himself promised—loudly and often—that he would not ax this essential retirement program? Yes, but Musk is his “gotcha.”
Rather than an honest kill, Musk is trying to strangle the program with, believe it or not, bureaucratic red tape. Claiming to be cutting waste, he eliminated the jobs of 7,000 people who administer the program, shouting, “Bureaucratic excess!” Except Social Security is actually a renowned model of government efficiency, spending less than 1 percent of its revenue on administration. So, by whacking the people who do the work, Musk is actually whacking the people who are due to receive their earned benefits.
He also decreed that the public could no longer apply for benefits or resolve questions over the phone and would have to travel in person to some distant Social Security office. But the staff there was also decimated, so the people who came from afar were told to go back home and call for an appointment.
What’s at work here is a Musk-Trump ploy to wreck Social Security’s remarkable record of efficiency. Their intent is to make the service so bad that they can then let profiteering corporations privatize your retirement.
Thankfully, due to public backlash, the Trump Administration backed off the in-person requirements. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try something else equally nefarious.
Should America’s Farm Bill Serve Need or Greed?
The federal budget is not only about money, but also our country’s morality—our commitment to fairness, equality, and unity.
That brings me to our nation’s farm bill. This sprawling piece of legislation, updated every five years, intends to combine the interests of farmers with consumers, production with conservation, grassroots cultures with corporate systems, and more. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s downright messy.
But now, with plutocratic ideologues and culture warriors dominating their caucus, Republican lawmakers have not even been able to produce an agreement among themselves, so the comprehensive farm bill that America needs is a year overdue and no longer being pursued by the party in charge.
Instead, the GOP chair of the House Committee on Agriculture, Glenn Thompson, of Pennsylvania, is jerry-rigging a stripped-down sham of a bill limited to the two spending priorities of MAGA Republicans: First, hand out billions more of our taxpayer dollars to subsidize agribusiness giants and rich speculators who own the biggest farms, mainly because they’ll then keep funding and voting for Republicans. Next, whack America’s poorest families. Thompson is banking on the minginess of extremist Republicans who oppose the Department of Agriculture’s programs to fight hunger, which help 40 million poverty-stricken Americans—including one in five children—afford the groceries they need.
So there we have the GOP’s farm bill ethics: Cut the poor to give more to the rich in order to buy votes for more of the same. One word for this is “corrupt.” Also, “cruel.”
Indeed, it takes an exceptional level of political shamelessness to steal food from the hungry in order to fatten some of the richest people in our country. To fight their depravity, go to ruralorganizing.org.