Trump Marks Social Security Anniversary With Praise, Attacks

President Donald Trump used the 90th anniversary of Social Security to defend his administration’s handling of the program while taking fresh shots at Democrats.

From the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump signed a proclamation calling Social Security “monumental” and promised to keep it intact.

“I recommit to always defending Social Security,” it read. “To this day, Social Security is rooted in a simple promise: those who gave their careers to building our Nation will always have the support, stability, and relief they deserve.”

But Trump also leaned into his trademark partisan combat.

“You keep hearing stories that in six years, seven years, Social Security will be gone,” he said. “And it will be if the Democrats ever get involved because they don’t know what they’re doing. But it’s going to be around a long time with us.” He added that Social Security was “going to be destroyed” under his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden.

Social Security, funded by payroll taxes, provides monthly payments to retirees, widows, and the disabled. It’s a lifeline: a 2024 Pew poll found nearly 80 percent of Americans oppose any cuts, and 40 percent support expanding it.

But the math is grim. The Social Security Administration warned last year that its trust funds could run dry by 2033 unless reforms are made.

Trump downplayed those fears, but critics say his own policies are part of the problem.

Since his return to the White House in January, Trump, with then-adviser Elon Musk, laid out sweeping plans to shrink the federal government, including the Social Security Administration (SSA). The agency has already announced cuts that would shrink its workforce by more than 7,000, a 12 percent reduction.

DOGE, the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, even floated slashing SSA phone services before walking the idea back after public pushback.

Both Trump and Musk have also blasted the program itself. Musk called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” and both men repeated claims that millions of dead people are still receiving payments. Independent watchdogs and audits say those claims don’t hold up.

The SSA’s outdated COBOL system does show inactive entries with impossibly old birthdates, but the Office of the Inspector General confirmed they do not receive payments. Updating the system would cost millions while yielding “limited benefits” against fraud.

Still, Trump repeated the line on Thursday.

“We had 12.4 million names where they were over 120 years old,” he said. “There were nearly 135,000 people listed who were over 160 years old and, in some cases, getting payments. So somebody’s getting those payments.”