Martin O'Malley didn't run the Social Security Administration for long: The former Maryland governor spent just under a year as President Joe Biden's commissioner for the agency before leaving the post in advance of President Donald Trump's return to the White House.
But since then he hasn't given up working on behalf of the system — a mission that brought him to a town hall in Westmoreland County with former U.S. Rep Conor Lamb Monday night.
"The only thing that's going to save Social Security," O'Malley told WESA that afternoon, "is if the voices of the people are heard."
O'Malley has been appearing at town halls across the country as concerns about the popular government retirement program have mounted since Trump took office. In an effort spearheaded by Elon Musk and his Department of Governmental Efficiency, the agency has shed 7,000 jobs, including those who have experience O'Malley says the system depends on.
"It's a complex program when it's applied to individual lives," he said. "It's not like we're driving through a McDonald's."
Social Security has long faced a number of problems, including chronic short-staffing and a gap between the cost of benefits and the revenues coming in to sustain it. The latter has been a focus of attention for years, though O'Malley describes it as a "solvable problem," that could be addressed by taxing a larger share of the income of the wealthy. (Lamb himself cosponsored a bill that supported such goals, though conservative critics say the move in and of itself would be insufficient to address future shortfalls.) But the more immediate threat, O'Malley says, "has been precipitated by Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and their DOGE team with their chainsaws."
The staff departures — which come amid a spike in the number of people applying for benefits — have reportedly led to longer wait times for service. O'Malley said things could get worse if, as critics have warned, the system crashes and there is no one on the payroll who knows how to correct it.
O'Malley said there was a real threat of "a total system collapse and the interruption of benefits for some time. … The people that have been in IT that I continue to speak with, the ones that have left, many of them are surprised it hasn't collapsed already."
O'Malley has been warning of such an outcome for the past few months, estimating it would take place "within the next 30 to 90 days" more than two months ago. It hasn't happened, at least not yet. But given how heavily many seniors depend on the program — an estimated 4 in 10 rely on it for half their income — O'Malley said such a collapse would be disastrous. And he said the best way to protect themselves would be to stand up for the program now.
"I think we're going to find that many things we took for granted our whole lives as Americans are being shaken to their core. Like Social Security," he said. "People need to make sure their voices are heard. There is no Plan B for what happens when Medicaid and Social Security go away."
O'Malley also decries the loose accusations of fraud — like Musk's claim that benefits are being paid to millions of people who are more than 100 years old — being tossed around about the system.
"They're spewing out big lie after big lie on a repeating loop," said O'Malley. "Big falsehoods like 'There's a zombie apocalypse and there's 20 million walking dead with checks spewing outta their cadaverous pockets.' Not true."
Some fraud accusations have already proven groundless, and purported anti-fraud efforts have reportedly been abandoned. But O'Malley and Lamb both say the claims are part of an ongoing effort to undermine confidence in the system — and ultimately to undermine the system itself.
"There was no reason to mess with Social Security at all," said Lamb. "It brings you back to ask, 'What problem was this solving? Why did they have to do this?'"
Neither he nor O'Malley had a definitive answer to that question. But Michelle McFall, who serves as Westmoreland County's Democratic Party chair, said the party had joined with the Westmoreland County Labor Council to organize the town hall because people needed to be part of that discussion.
While Social Security has been protected by a bipartisan consensus until now, she said, "The rules just seem out the window and all the institutions we've built seem so fragile. I think people are concerned about this moment in a way they haven't been before."
That's partly due to Westmoreland County's demographics: Roughly one-quarter of the people living in Westmoreland are 65 or over, well above the average for the state and region.
"Westmoreland is an aging county, with a lot of people moving into a period of life where they are going to be relying on this program," said McFall. But more than that, she said, "We want people to feel like they aren't stranded in this vacuum, and we want them to show up at the polls."
McFall said she looked to figures like Lamb and O'Malley to focus the attention of the party as a whole. Even on an issue as popular as the protection of Social Security, she said, "We're having trouble getting the message through. We're still working out an iteration of what our message needs to be. I think that just like us, our elected officials are vulnerable to the shock and awe of these headlines dropping every single day."
Lamb left politics in 2022, after he chose not to run for Congress to run for the U.S. Senate in a race ultimately won by John Fetterman. But he's re-emerged in recent months, calling for Democrats including Fetterman to defend their party's values even after a punishing 2024 election cycle. That's raised speculation that Lamb may be planning another Senate run in 2028, though he has denied that.)
Lamb said the challenge may go deeper than Trump: "I have never thought that many national Democratic leaders talk about core issues like Social Security enough," he said. "I think they get taken for granted: They are seen maybe as not sexy or attention-getting enough"
But Social Security reflects core Democratic ideas of fairness and the "ability to keep a promise to take care of the people who took care of us. And we know that we're right about this. I think circumstances are forcing us to get back to who we really should have been."
O'Malley agreed. "The source of my optimism is is that the grassroots are ahead of the ladders in Washington," he said. "That's what gives me hope — the public understands that there's no Plan B."
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