Sheldon Whitehouse Accuses Musk Of Using DOGE To Undermine Social Security In Push To Privatize It

Sheldon Whitehouse Accuses Musk Of Using DOGE To Undermine Social Security In Push To Privatize It

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Madam President, I'm pleased to supplement the remarks of our
distinguished leader with respect to Social Security Rhode
Island, as, I believe the largest participation per capita
of Social Security in the country.
Social Security is what brought American seniors out of poverty
into a distinguished and fair retirement.

(00:25):
And it really matters that we defend it and that Social
Security remain unbroken. The threat is pretty clear.
The president keeps talking about imaginary fraud.
Why would you talk about imaginary fraud in the system
unless you have some motive? And it wasn't just him.

(00:47):
Elon Musk talked relentlessly about fraud in the Social
Security system. The Secretary of Commerce went a
mile out of his lane to add a shot at Social Security being
riddled with fraud, and then thepresident went to the other
building, the other end of the building there stood at the
rostrum of the house and lied tothe American people, flat out

(01:10):
lied to the American people about Social Security fraud.
He let Elon Musk call it a Ponzischeme as well.
This is a battering ram of misinformation and
disinformation, and it doesn't happen without a motive.
And the motive here is to degrade public confidence and

(01:32):
Social Security. The same time you send what I
call your little Muskrats, you send your Muskrats into Social
Security to disrupt its operations so that you have the
rhetorical attack happening overhere.
And then you begin to have Social Security fail because you
broke it and get what has been referred to as an interruption

(01:55):
of benefits, an interruption of benefits.
And then you also have your private equity people and your
tech Bros over there so that when the interruption of
benefits happens, they can come in swoop to the rescue of the
problem that the administration caused.

(02:18):
And next thing you know, what have you got privatized Social
Security with private equity guys and tech Bros running the
show because thousands of the employees who know how to run
the Social Security Administration have been forced
out. That's the concern, and it's a
very real concern. I want to give Mr. Bizzignano

(02:43):
good remark, good marks for saying that he's not going
there. He said that he will not
privatize the agency, will not. He said that under his
leadership, the Social Security Administration will remain a
government agency and remain an agency that is run for the
benefit of the American people and benefit recipients.

(03:07):
Now, the problem is I find nominations statements hard to
believe up against the power of that pressure from the White
House and from Musk and from thesecretary of Commerce and from
whoever else is trying to accomplish the Republican

(03:29):
extremist goal for decades of getting rid of Social Security.
So I have, I was a no vote in committee.
I'm going to be a no vote out here.
I hope very much that I'm wrong,but I also hope very much that
Secretary Rubio would stand up for Ukraine and that he'd be an
anchor as Secretary of State to defend Ukraine against the

(03:50):
predatory, brutal, criminal war crimes of Vladimir Putin.
But what we've seen instead has been the Putinization of our
strategy to Ukraine. And the Secretary of State has
been entirely complicit in it from all the signs that I see.
So when you have somebody who says one thing, and in the case

(04:12):
of Secretary Rubio, who actuallylived it, he was actually an
ardent advocate for defending Ukraine, and then you get into
Trump zone and suddenly all yourprinciples disappear, all your
commitments disappear. Everything just becomes you just
become a tool of the Trump political operation.
I've seen that too often. So I'm going to vote no.

(04:36):
We need as a Senate to send a clear message that Social
Security is inviolable. That is a promise amongst us all
as Americans to protect our seniors, to protect ourselves
when we get to that age, and that no one will be allowed to
break it. And one of the things I'm going
to ask is to make sure that we go into Social Security's

(04:58):
databases and make sure that those muskrats, when they went
in there, didn't do any permanent damage, didn't set off
mines to go off later, and didn't leave back doors for the
information to be exfiltrated out to private sector folks for
whom it's as good as gold. I'll say one last thing, and

(05:21):
that is that Mister Beziano saidhe would work with me on the
Benefit Cliffs, where you're fine at full benefits, and then
one little thing happens, you miss 1 little mark, and it's a
complete crash. There's a better way to deal
with that. Benefit Cliff smoothing is a
technical thing. He promised he would work with
me. I intend to hold him to that
promise. And my friend Mr. Cornyn, the

(05:43):
senator from Texas, has been patiently waiting.
So I will yield the floor now tohim.