The Social Security Administration was called out by an analyst for passing along a blatantly inaccurate claim about the Republican domestic policy bill.
President Donald Trump and other Republicans have spent months making false claims about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that narrowly passed last week, as well as equally bogus warnings about what would happen if the bill failed, but MSNBC's Steve Benen said that one falsehood stood out as particularly egregious.
"[There's] one claim in particular that the White House and its partners have been especially excited about: the idea that the far-right megabill eliminated taxes on Social Security benefits — a claim Trump and other Republicans have leaned into with unnerving enthusiasm, before and after the legislation cleared Capitol Hill," Benen wrote.
Social Security officials peddled the same misinformation in an email to beneficiaries, saying that Trump's tax cuts would eliminate federal taxes on entitlement benefits for nearly 90 percent of recipients, which Benen said was simply not true.
"First and foremost, the idea that the megabill eliminates federal taxes on Social Security — a claim Trump has made repeatedly of late — is plainly false," he wrote. "In fact, congressional Republicans relied on the budget reconciliation process to advance the package, and it’s procedurally impossible to change Social Security through this complex process."
The GOP legislation will allow individuals and couples who are older than 65 to get additional deductions provided their incomes fall beneath a certain ceiling – $75,000 for single filers or $150,000 for married joint filers – and above those income levels the deduction gets smaller and then goes away at $175,000 for singles and $250,000 for couples.
"In other words, yes, many seniors will get a new tax break, but (a) it’s temporary, unlike the tax giveaways to the wealthy; (b) it doesn’t apply to everyone; and (c) to characterize this as eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits is ridiculous," Benen wrote.
Americans largely take many politicians – Trump especially – with a grain of salt, but Benen said they ought to be able to rely on ostensibly apolitical federal agencies for accurate information, but SSA violated the public trust by passing along GOP spin on the budget deal.
"Here we are, watching the SSA join a list of politicized agencies, being used as partisan tools in the White House's political toolbox, creating a dynamic in which Americans, going forward, won’t know whether they can trust the next message they receive from the government about the Social Security," Benen wrote.
