With swagger, DOGE approaches the third rail

Social Security is often called “the third rail of American politics,” a term that harkens back to the old streetcar days when most city folks understood that touching the third rail of a trolley line could kill you.

Maybe we need a new expression for the current condition of the federal agency, which sent a check to 73 million Americans this month, one more attuned to the age of electric vehicles and artificial intelligence.

It was clear from a “Fact Check” released last week by the White House that Social Security remains an extremely sensitive subject, but in the eyes of this administration perhaps not a deadly one.

“The Trump Administration will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits. President Trump himself has said it over and over and over again.

“Elon Musk didn’t say that, either. The press is lying again,” the White House release said. Musk is only talking about eliminating waste and fraud in entitlement programs, it argues, not the entitlements themselves.

Musk has described the Social Security system as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” He has spoken in detail about his belief that Social Security and other entitlement programs are being used by the Democrats as an incentive to draw in illegal immigrants, a conviction so far supported by no evidence. The Department of Government Efficiency has increased the number of staffers detailed to finding all those dead people still getting benefits who are supposed to be generating so much of the waste and fraud Musk is supposed to eliminate.

Meanwhile DOGE has announced plans to cut staffing at the Social Security Administration, which is already at a 50-year low, by an additional 12 percent. DOGE has offered early retirement to the entire SSA staff. Plans reportedly are to cut the number of field offices from 10 to four.

None of this sounds like the third rail is in very good repair. For decades, the agency Trump accused in his speech to Congress of “shocking levels of incompetence and probably fraud” has been sending out those monthly checks with a minimum of fuss, and those checks have been a mainstay of local economies just about everywhere in the country. Suddenly, the certainties of many years are being put to a severe test.

It would be political suicide to attempt to eliminate Social Security by an act of Congress or an executive order. But it can be cut down, a check at a time, a service at a time. Every disability application that gets delayed for months, every address change that doesn’t register, all the little problems that are likely to multiply with the DOGE cuts will become part of Musk’s argument that the system is unworkable and should be privatized. Opportunities for fraud will skyrocket with these dramatic staff cuts, again reducing confidence in the system.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that Musk has brought on one of his most trusted advisors, the investor Antonio Gracias, to work in the Social Security Administration. That’s a very clear indication that, far from being protected to some degree from the buzzsaw tactics of DOGE, Social Security has emerged as a prime target.

Will Social Security prove to be as politically deadly to its detractors as the old adage suggests? The administration isn’t going to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits, and probably wouldn’t be able to do so if it tried. It can do a lot to undermine the long-term viability of the Social Security system and appears to be actively launched on that project already.

None of this is going to be good news for the widow applying for survivor benefits for her child or the accident victim trying to get on Social Security disability. The Social Security Administration fills a lot of needs most people know about, as well as the one everybody knows about.

The new administration appears to be making the calculation — the riskiest, politically, which it has made so far — that it can touch the rail.