Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) took aim at tech billionaire Elon Musk and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Monday, saying they’re engaging in an “assault” on Social Security.
“I never thought I’d say this, but social security is under assault,” King said in a video posted to X.
“Every day we learn something new, where Elon Musk and his crowd are in the Social Security databases. They’re trying to get personal information. They are pushing aside the professionals that work there. People are being fired. Regional offices are being closed,” he continued.
King, who caucuses with the Democrats, noted that Lutnick suggested late last week that if Social Security “didn’t send out their checks this month,” his “mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain.”
The billionaire businessman added, in a podcast: “She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining.”
King, however, suggested most Americans don’t have the same experience as Lutnick’s mother-in-law.
“Well, I’m sorry, but there are people across the country, if that check doesn’t come, they’re in trouble,” King said in the Monday video. “Medications, food, rent. There are millions of people in this country that Social Security check makes all the difference.
“And what worries me is that what we’re seeing is a kind of slow motion — actually, it’s not that slow motion, it’s pretty fast — undermining of the structure of Social Security,” he added.
His comments come after Musk, whom President Trump tapped to head up the Department of Government Efficiency, called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” earlier this month and suggested there could be hundreds of billions of dollars of potential cuts targeting waste in entitlement programs.
The rhetoric has prompted pushback from experts and advocates who have accused Trump allies of spreading false claims about the amount of fraud actually found in the program.
Trump has vowed not to cut Social Security benefits.
Lutnick also said on Thursday that he’s against raising the retirement age — a proposal some Republicans have floated in Congress as a way to help shore up solvency for the program.
