Leonard Witt: AARP warns of the real threat to Social Security

To The Daily Sun,

The AARP recently sent this alert to its members: “The AARP is hearing from thousands of older Americans confused and concerned about their Social Security payments, the status of Social Security field offices, and inexcusably long wait times on the phone to get their questions answered.”

It also reminds its 38 million members, “Every working American earns Social Security. And after an entire lifetime of hard work, it’s YOUR money.”

It's not the government’s money. And especially not Elon Musk’s and Donald Trump’s money.

The threat, at least not right now, is not cutting benefits, but rather gutting its administrative officers and staff. The Trump/Musk administration has already started to cut 12% of its workforce, making the system more and more inefficient, so that in time people will give up on it. The end game is to privatize Social Security.

Ever since Social Security came into being under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration a segment of the super-rich has been trying to kill it off.

Now it appears to have been given a death sentence by thousands of cuts to its infrastructure.

Nearly 70 million of us get Social Security benefits — and another 30 million Americans are over 55. The vast majority of us worked hard to receive its benefits in our retirement years — and we vote.

Republicans, Democrats, independents, let’s start calling, going to Congressional and Senate offices, emailing, protesting and demanding that everyone in government remember that Social Security belongs to us, we worked our entire lives for it and we are not about to let a bunch of greedy billionaires take it away from us.

Leonard Witt

Sandwich