Democratic Claims on Social Security 

Changes at the Social Security Administration have some experts concerned. A reorganization, thousands of staffing cuts, exaggerated claims about widespread fraud and other issues could lead to administrative errors or disruptions, they say. And Democrats have been criticizing the Trump administration over these worries. But as Director Lori Robertson writes, some statements have left the wrong impression that benefits mandated by law are being cut.

There has been no proposal to do that.

“They’re setting the groundwork to ‘eliminate’ Americans’ hard-earned benefits like Social Security and Medicare all to fund tax breaks for their ultra-wealthy backers,” the Democratic National Committee claimed in a March 17 statement. Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said the administration is “prepared to destroy Social Security,” among other programs, “in order to make themselves even richer.” 

Other Democrats have raised the specter of privatization. For instance, Rep. John Larson told MSNBC: “The plan, unlike previous plans to privatize Social Security, is to scuttle the agencies themselves.” 

As Lori wrote, "Most of these comments are speculative, and as other news organizations have reported, and as experts told us, there is reason to be concerned about rushed changes and false fraud claims leading to problems with Social Security. But despite those concerns, the administration hasn’t put forth any plan to privatize the SSA, nor any plan to change the amount of benefits now promised to retirees, as many of these claims suggest."

Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Lori that concern is “warranted” that some of the administrative changes could affect people’s ability to apply for benefits, especially for disability benefits, which already face very long delays. But that’s different from rules set in law that determine eligibility and the size of someone’s benefits. Any changes to that would have to go through Congress.

Boccia said that conflating the two issues amounted to "fearmongering."

For more, read the full story: “Democrats Question Social Security Administration Changes in Misleading Terms.”

We've been using our social media channels to highlight our work when we spot a politician repeating a claim we have fact-checked before.

During Trump's announcement of new tariffs on April 2, he repeated a misleading claim about the Canadian government charging triple-digit tariff rates on dairy products exported from the U.S. As we said in the video below (and in our original story), there are rates that high on the books, but they would only be charged if U.S. exports exceed predetermined tariff rate quotas, which the dairy exports don’t come close to meeting. 

The video gained 2.8 million views on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. 

Wrapping Up

Here's what else we've got for you this week:

• Cómo combatir la desinformación: La desinformación no es nada nuevo. Sin embargo, se ha vuelto omnipresente y, en algunos casos, desmentirla es más difícil y laborioso que nunca. Aquí encontrarás nuestros consejos para identificar publicaciones falsas y distorsiones de la realidad.