Trump Slashes Meals on Wheels While the Military Feasts

Vultures are circling the Social Security Administration and programs like Meals on Wheels

Last week, former weekend cable news host and current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised a record $1 trillion Pentagon budget. Do you know how much money that is? If you spent $1 million per day, it would still take you over 2,700 years to spend down that budget.

This is colossal. Not only in terms of domestic government spending but globally. The next-highest military budget is China, which spent nearly $300 billion in 2024. To illustrate just how massive this would be, the proposed Pentagon budget for one year would exceed the budgets of China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine, France, and Japan—combined!

Another year of bloated military spending will only further enrich the military industrial complex and solidify America’s resolve as a nation dedicated to forever wars.

But this also comes at a time where, we’re told, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, must make sweeping and sizable cuts to the federal government. It’s about efficiency, after all. Right?

Of course not! It was never about shrinking the government, writ large. Republicans in power are more than comfortable with inflating our military at taxpayer’s expense. They’re stealing our Medicaid, Social Security, even cancer research funding, to pay for even more resources to our already-expensive military.

In March, Musk—one of the wealthiest people on the planet and one of Trump’s largest donors—called Social Security "the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time."

Let’s be clear. None of that is true.

Vultures are circling the Social Security Administration, with hopes of dismantling “one of the most successful anti-poverty programs in the history of our country.”

Martin O’Malley, the former commissioner of the Social Security Administration under President Biden, captured it perfectly on MSNBC last month: Trump, Musk, and MAGA Republicans are trying to break Social Security so they can privatize the agency.

As a first step, the Trump administration announced last month that it was eliminating 7,000 jobs and closing regional Social Security offices. O'Malley said in response that these cuts alone could result in the "collapse" of the Social Security system "within the next 30 to 90 days."

Ask yourself: Who would benefit here? Would it be your hard-working family member or neighbor who paid into Social Security their entire career? Or would a privatized Social Security further enrich an already gluttonous Wall Street?

The answer is clear.

By gutting Social Security, Musk, Trump, and their billionaire friends will benefit from massive tax cuts and profit from our struggle.

And it’s not just the collapse of a social safety net that we are all entitled to. For many Americans, collecting their earned benefit is a matter of life and death.

“Most at immediate risk are those applying for disability benefits. Already, large numbers of disabled workers find themselves homeless, and a staggering 30,000 Americans die every year while waiting to receive their earned benefits. Now that number is likely to rise significantly,” Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, wrote recently.

Over the last month, DOGE’s cuts to Social Security infrastructure instilled panic and a heavy burden for retirees and disability recipients. The agency planned to eliminate the ability for beneficiaries to file for benefits by phone starting April 14. This sudden change would have had senior citizens travel, in some cases over forty miles, to the nearest field office or attempt to file on the Social Security website which, due to DOGE cuts to the IT department, has been repeatedly crashing. After major outcry over the new policy took hold, the Social Security administration backed off from this draconian policy last week.

But we’re still not out of the woods yet. Last week, nearly 40% of staff at the Administration for Community Living—the agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that funds efforts like Meals on Wheels—received notice they are being laid off.

Now, the over 2 million seniors who are served 251 million meals each year are subject to greater risk of food insecurity and going hungry.

We all deserve to retire with dignity and to support ourselves and our loved ones after experiencing a severe/qualifying disability, and Social Security is a lifeline for more than 72 million Americans. We must fight back. And fast.

- MoveOn