Joe Biden, breaking his silence, slams Trump on Social Security cuts

Former US President Joe Biden speaks at a conference in Chicago in his first major speaking appearance since leaving office in January. Photo / Getty Images

Donald Trump has repeatedly disparaged his predecessor since taking office. Joe Biden has not spoken out publicly – until now.

Former US President Joe Biden, in his first public comments since leaving the White House, slammed the Trump administration’s handling of Social Security, saying sweeping cuts to the programme’s staffing have left beneficiaries uncertain whether they will receive their payments.

“In fewer than 100 days, this administration has done so much damage and so much devastation. It’s breath-taking that it could happen so fast,” Biden said, though he never mentioned Donald Trump’s name during the speech. “They’re taking a hatchet to the Social Security Administration, pushing out 7000 employees, including the most seasoned officials.”

Biden added: “People are now genuinely concerned for the first time in history – for the first and only time in history – that their Social Security benefits may be delayed or interrupted. They’ve gotten it during wartime, during recessions, during the pandemic – no matter what, they got it. But now, for the first time ever, that may change. It would be a calamity for millions of families, millions of people.”

As Trump and his ally Elon Musk have pursued drastic cost-cutting efforts throughout the US Government, the Social Security Administration has lost thousands of employees, with thousands more expected to follow. Amid that turmoil, the agency has faced website outages, technical glitches, unanswered phone lines, attempts to access private data and other problems.

Democrats have seized on those struggles to hammer home a broader message that Trump is pursuing a chaotic agenda at the expense of ordinary Americans, an argument that is likely to be central to their message in the 2026 midterms.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, a Democrat who headed the Social Security Administration under Biden, introduced the former President, saying that “when he left office, [he] left the agency heading in a better direction, but now so many of those gains have been wiped out”.

O’Malley now chairs the advisory board of Advocates, Counsellors and Representatives for the Disabled, the group hosting Biden in Chicago.

The Trump administration took strong issue with the Democrats’ narrative.

Before Biden’s remarks, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that Trump would sign a presidential memorandum aimed at “stopping illegal aliens and other ineligible people” from obtaining Social Security benefits. That would expand a fraud prosecution programme to at least 50 US Attorneys’ offices, she said.

“Let me make it very clear ahead of former President Biden’s remarks,” Leavitt added. “This President, President Trump, is absolutely certain about protecting Social Security benefits for law-abiding, taxpaying American citizens and seniors who have paid into this programme.”

She also took aim at Biden’s age, or at least his capacity. “I’m shocked that he’s speaking at night-time,” Leavitt said of the 82-year-old former President. “I thought his bedtime was much earlier.”

Trump is 78.

Social Security may be another. Politicians for years have hesitated to suggest cuts in the programme, which serves 73 million Americans, in recognition of its popularity and the sense of many Americans that after a lifetime of paying into the programme, they deserve its benefits.

Musk raised the issue in colourful fashion in an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast several weeks ago, calling Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time”. Musk argued that the amount being paid into the system is dwarfed by its future obligations.

In his March address to Congress, Trump cited “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security programme for our seniors and that our seniors and people that we love rely on”. He complained that the programme is paying money to thousands of people who are purportedly 160 years old or older, a claim that has repeatedly been debunked.

O’Malley today slammed “the ‘big lie’ that there’s a massive zombie apocalypse of dead people, some of them not only 150 years old, they’re 300 years old. Not true”.

– Washington Post