Ranking Member Larson in MS NOW: “Election deniers may have your Social Security data — thanks to DOGE and Elon Musk”

"When you grow up in a project like I did, you learn how important it is to stand up to a bully," Larson wrote. "I will not stand by as Musk, President Donald Trump, or any of their MAGA allies raid the data compiled by the Social Security Administration or diminish the benefits that Americans have earned over a lifetime of work. If Republicans refuse to defend their constituents from this unprecedented overreach, then the American people's demand for accountability will only grow louder."

Read the full op-ed HEREand below:

Months after telling the American people that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency had no access to Americans' sensitive Social Security data, the Trump administration has finally admitted in courtthat DOGE illegally accessed and agreed to share that data.

According to a filing by the Department of Justice last month, an advocacy group looking "to overturn election results in certain states" made contact with "two members of SSA's DOGE Teamwith a request to analyze state voter rolls that the advocacy group had acquired," and one of them signed a "'Voter Data Agreement,' in his capacity as an SSA employee, with the advocacy group."

Under the guise of "cutting costs," the Trump administration allowed what may be the most reckless breach of public trust in Social Security's history. A whistleblower from the Social Security Administration had already said during the summer that DOGE transferred Americans' data to a vulnerable server and that the team's actions constituted "violations of laws, rules, and regulations, abuse of authority, gross mismanagement and creation of a substantial and specific threatto public health and safety." Then last month, we got the government's acknowledgement that the data may have been shared with a group working to overturn election results.

While Americans may think that the "DOGE" task force Elon Musk oversaw has been disbanded, nothing could be further from the truth. He's gone, but DOGE staffers remain inside the Social Security Administration, in position to access Americans' most sensitive personal information, including birth dates, home addresses, work histories and more.

That is why I am calling for any DOGE employees responsible for the reported agreement with the election-denial group to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law - and for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to stop blocking our inquiries, legislation and calls for investigations. Protecting unvetted insiders who appear to have broken the law and certainly broke the public trust is shameful and a betrayal of their oath.

When you grow up in a project like I did, you learn how important it is to stand up to a bully. I will not stand by as Musk, President Donald Trump, or any of their MAGA allies raid the data compiled by the Social Security Administration or diminish the benefits that Americans have earned over a lifetime of work. If Republicans refuse to defend their constituents from this unprecedented overreach, then the American people's demand for accountability will only grow louder.

Social Security isn't the only system being targeted. The Trump regime also reportedly granted unprecedented access to taxpayer information at the Treasury Department to Peter Thiel's data-mining company, Palantir.

These efforts are not isolated. They form a coordinated attempt to breach systems that safeguard Americans' economic security.

To understand what's happening, follow the money.

Before Trump took office in 2025, he enlisted Musk to identify $2 trillion in cuts, and he sent DOGE into federal agencies, including the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Though Trump insisted he would never touch Social Security, Musk called the program a "Ponzi scheme," and he said, ""Most of the federal spending is entitlements. That's the big one to eliminate."

The reason they're targeting it is simple. The Social Security trust funds hold $2.7 trillion of Americans' earned benefits, the largest pool of public capital in the federal government.

For the billionaire class advising Trump, that fund is not a safety net - it is a target.

DOGE's actions follow a familiar playbook: Break the system, declare it unworkable and then argue that privatization is the only solution.

Career experts inside Social Security were pushed asidewithin weeks of Trump taking office in 2025 because they refused to hand over protected records. At the time, I warned that DOGE had nothing to do with government efficiencyand everything to do with ensuring the billionaire class controls the levers of power.

That warning proved accurate.

Nearly a year ago, Democrats introduced legislation to block DOGE and Palantir from accessing sensitive, protected taxpayerand beneficiaryinformation. As the ranking member of the Social Security Subcommittee, I filed an inquiry demanding transparency. House Republicans killed itthe first chance they got and then changed House rulesto block any other similar inquiries.

Given Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's remark that with its Trump Accounts, the administration has created a "backdoor" to privatize Social Security benefits, it's clear to me that Trump's plan isn't to save Social Security but to destabilize it from within, undermine public trust and hand over control of its $2.7 trillion to private interests.

President George W. Bush's privatization schemecollapsed after public backlash in 2005, but Trump's effort is quieter, more complex and backed by some of the world's most powerful tech billionaires.

Musk has repeatedly attacked Social Security and promoted extreme austerity. CEO Alex Karp's Palantir profits from government data. Together, they have gained unprecedented access to systems that were never intended for private-sector control.

While DOGE was undermining Social Security's internal operations, the administration pursued cuts that would make the program appear dysfunctional. They planned to eliminate telephone supportfor seniors and people with disabilities, close field officesand reduce thousandsof workers, thereby weakening the public-facing infrastructure that millions rely on to access earned benefits. The greater the dysfunction, the easier the argument for privatization: "Look," they say, "the government cannot run Social Security. Let the private sector handle it."

The American people know better, as does every Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, the committee charged with overseeing Social Security.

Social Security is the most successful program in the history of this nation and our No. 1 anti-poverty program. It's an earned benefit, paid for by workers with every paycheck. It has lifted generations out of poverty and provided security to millions of retirees, people with disabilities and surviving families. It is not a playground for billionaires, an investment scheme or a slush fund for privatization.