Letter from Jeanne Dewey

O’Malley: ‘Start Saving Now’

Are you counting on Social Security for your current income or for your retirement years? If you are, you’re not alone. There are more than 70 million Americans receiving reliable monthly payments. They qualified by working and paying into the system for many years.

But now, Elon Musk has aimed his chainsaw at the Social Security Administration, and things aren’t looking good. The Trump administration wants 12 percent of the workforce gone—so who is going to process claims and payments?

The agency is already at a 50-year low for staffing, despite the fact that the population of the country and the number of those eligible for social security (think Baby Boomers) is growing.

According to Martin O’Malley, former commissioner of the Social Security system, Social Security is already running lean, with overhead of 1.2 percent. Compare that to an insurance company like Liberty Mutual, with overhead of 23 percent.

Declaring a war on “waste and fraud” may make headlines, but for the Social Security Administration, which already operates with an error rate of just one percent, the impact of cutting staff is most likely to have the opposite effect. Errors are more likely as experienced staff members get pushed out the door with their knowledge of how to keep things running smoothly.

O’Malley has this warning: People should “start saving for what I believe is the inevitable cratering of this agency and the interruption, for some time anyway, of…benefits.”

Probably good advice.

It is also a good idea to let your elected officials know how you feel about disruptions to Social Security, a program people have paid into their entire working lives and do or will rely on for income in their later years. Musk calls it a Ponzi scheme. It’s not.

Jeanne Dewey
Cooperstown