Former 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 program’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 breathtaking that it could happen so fast,” Biden said, though he never mentioned Trump’s name during the speech. “They’re taking a hatchet to the Social Security Administration, pushing out 7,000 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 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 (D), who headed the Social Security Administration under Biden, introduced the former president, saying that “when he left office, 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, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled, the group hosting Biden in Chicago.
The Trump administration took strong issue with the Democrats’ narrative.
Ahead of 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 program to at least 50 U.S. attorney’s 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 program.”
She also took aim at Biden’s age, or at least his capacity. “I’m shocked that he’s speaking at nighttime,” Leavitt said of the 82-year-old former president. “I thought his bedtime was much earlier.” Trump is 78.
Biden himself took a shot at his age during his comments, joking, “Back when I was a senator, 400 years ago … .”
He argued that the Trump team was seeking cuts to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. “They’re following that old line of tech firms — ‘Move fast and break things,’” Biden said. “Well, they’re certainly breaking things. They’re shooting first and asking questions later. And the result is a lot of needless pain and sleepless nights.”
Social Security has long been a battlefield between the two parties. Republicans suggest overhauling the program to cut costs and put the program on a sounder financial footing. Democrats argue that such cuts would hurt elderly and disabled Americans, especially if they are used to subsidize tax cuts for the wealthy.
The Social Security Administration, in its 2024 annual report, found that its trust fund for the elderly would be able to pay 100 percent of its scheduled benefits until 2033. Unless changes are made, the fund’s reserves would be depleted, and only 79 percent of benefits could be paid at that point.
Tuesday’s speech carried a political drama that went far beyond the future of the program itself.
Biden is the sole politician to defeat Trump, having driven him from the White House in 2020 after a campaign in which he portrayed Trump as immoral and unfit to serve. Trump has never accepted that defeat, alleging falsely and repeatedly that the election was stolen and insulting Biden as “Sleepy Joe” or “Crooked Joe.”
Even after Biden ceded the 2024 Democratic nomination to then-Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump often seemed to attack Biden as much as Harris. And since taking office in January, Trump has repeatedly slammed Biden, blaming him for problems such as inflation and the Russia-Ukraine war that Trump promised to fix instantly but is struggling to address.
Biden had followed the tradition in which presidents avoid criticizing their successors. He welcomed Trump to the White House after the election, and he has not spoken publicly since Inauguration Day — until now. The former president appeared fit Tuesday evening, although he occasionally stumbled over his words, as he had toward the end of his presidency.
As a growing number of Democrats voice their frustration with Trump’s unprecedented moves to cut the government, circumvent Congress and challenge the courts, former president Barack Obama also criticized him, indirectly at least, in a recent talk at Hamilton College in New York.
Without mentioning Trump by name, Obama suggested that the United States is at risk of abandoning “this basic idea that we are a rules-based society.” He added, “This is the first time I’ve been speaking publicly for a while. … It is up to all of us to fix this.”
Biden on Tuesday echoed other Democrats in depicting the administration as needlessly callous to many Americans. “The last thing they need from their government is deliberate cruelty,” he said. “Social Security is about more than retirement accounts. It’s about honoring the fundamental trust between government and people. It’s about peace of mind for those who worked their whole lives.”
As Trump has opened his second presidency with a rapid-fire barrage of edicts and actions, Democrats have seemed stunned at times and struggled to unite behind a coherent message. The president’s on-again, off-again tariff announcements, which have rattled the markets and forecast higher prices, have given them a potential rallying point.
Social Security may be another. Politicians for years have hesitated to suggest cuts in the program, which serves 73 million Americans, in recognition of its popularity and the sense of many Americans that after a lifetime of paying into the program, they deserve its benefits.
Musk raised the issue in colorful 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 program for our seniors and that our seniors and people that we love rely on.” He complained that the program is paying money to thousands of people who are purportedly 160 years old or older, a claim that has repeatedly been debunked.
O’Malley on Tuesday 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.”
