19 posts from Thursday, August 14, 2025

Since 1978, the Kennedy Center Honors have been among the most prestigious awards in the performing arts. This year, the board has selected a truly exceptional class of honorees. Country music star, actor, and producer, George Strait. Second is actor, singer, Michael Crawford. Three-time Oscar nominee, Golden Globe Award winner, an action movie icon, and a friend of mine, Sylvester Stallone. Fourth will be one of the most revered singers of the American disco era, Gloria Gaynor. And finally, we'll be honoring one of the greatest rock bands of all time, Kiss. I want to congratulate all the nominees. They're unbelievable people. And we're going to have a tremendous day in December. Thank you very much.

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Last month, I signed one big beautiful bill and allowed no tax on Social Security for our great seniors, okay? So how's that? Not bad, right? No tax on Social Security for our seniors, and to protect our benefits, we've already kicked nearly 275,000 illegal aliens off of the Social Security system. These are people, many of them have already left the country, and yet we were sending them checks all the time, and 275,000, and that number is now even larger than that, Frank. It's an unbelievable job. And what that's doing is making the system strong. It's making it strong. Biden never kicked anybody off. Everybody joined. And we're carrying out historic deportations to remove many more illegals committing Social Security fraud. It's the Social Security fraud that was second place at levels that nobody's ever seen. We cleared 12.4 million names listed in the Social Security database, over 120 years of age. Think of that. So we had 12.4 million names where they were over 120 years old. Is that right? That's a hell of a statement. I have a feeling, Dan, that's not really going to -- that really didn't happen, did it? So you have 12.4 million names listed in the Social Security database that were over 120 years of age, meaning you were breaking records, because I've never heard of anybody at 125. There were nearly 135,000 people listed who were over 160 years old, and in some cases getting payments. So somebody's getting those payments, and we're after that.

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>> Almost 60 million American seniors rely on Social Security for peace of mind and a life of dignity in retirement. These Americans paid into the system and they deserve leaders in Washington who are gonna protect the benefits they've had and protect Social Security. Under Biden, Social Security went down like nobody's ever seen, it deteriorated. There's never been anything like it. The four years of Biden were very, very destructive, it couldn't have gone on much longer, Social Security was gonna be destroyed, it was being destroyed. The average call, wait time reached an all-time high of more than 42 minutes, field office wait times were at 32 minutes which is unheard of and the disability claims backlog was the longest ever in recorded history. In other words, it was run just like the country was run, it was run really badly but I'm pleased to report that under our leadership and Frank in particular, the changes he's made and what he's done is sort of a miracle, sort of like what happened with the country as a whole. Field office wait times are now down 30% since last year and it looks like it's going to a total record number and the record was set in a long time ago when the world was a lot different place, we're gonna beat that record. Call wait times are down 73% while serving twice as many customers per day. The disability claims backlog is down 26% and seniors now have 24/7 online access to their accounts which they never had before whereas under Biden, the website was down 29 hours a week for maintenance purposes. Disability was essentially not open very much, they were always maintaining it but they didn't know what the hell they were doing. They had a person running that that had no idea what they were doing. Among my very first acts was to order all government employees to return to the office or be removed from the job which means our social security offices are now open for full business hours five days a week. So unlike being shut down all the time, we're open at record levels also. We're making it really great for the people that want and demand social security and they paid into the system, they deserve it.

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I'd like to start off by thanking the president for his tireless effort in running the country and what he's done across the country, meeting every commitment. And you know, I see it directly in the big beautiful bill, the opportunity that is brought to seniors, but his effort on every commitment delivering against it and delivering on world peace tirelessly. I'd like to also thank him for my opportunity. You know, he's teasing me, I'm teasing him about the economics of the job. But the reality is to serve 300 million Americans, which is what Social Security serves is a tremendous honor. And him putting that faith in me and building what I believe, what I believe and I think I have a right to say it, is the best leadership team ever assembled in the White House and in the Cabinet. So that's my great honor. So I come here and get the opportunity to serve the American public in a manner that I never imagined in my life. And what we found was the opportunity to fix a foundation. The reality is people talking about 72 beneficiaries, I talk about over 300 million Americans with a Social Security number that we must protect through the system. And when you look at what we talk about in eliminating Social Security numbers that were live in the system, they could carry fraud through the whole system. So the first thing was root out fraud, waste and abuse. But while doing it, the best way to be more efficient is provide more accurate payments and better service. And you're heard the numbers. I think the most staggering number is that we had a website that was down 29 hours. This will be a digital first agency. And we are building my SSA accounts. That's the digital account. And we have a bold goal of 200 million Americans to have a digital SSA account by the end of next year. It will happen. Just like we had a bold goal of single digit wait time on the calls when they were at 40 minutes. And we did that. This is my 100th day. We did that within 90 days, right? Get the web up and running, bring technology to our field offices, use digital presence to answer, and serve the American public. That's the job. When we do all that, then we'll really know the answer to if we have a hole, right? I was presented my second week on the job with $18 billion in errors by the Inspector General. It was public in less than a month. We solved $9 billion of it. So that's the type of swift action we can take, right? You see the things like the big beautiful bill for the seniors. You see better digital services. You see field office wait times down. If you make an appointment to have a field office, it now happens in six minutes. Unpresented. We are serving more people and delivering more than was ever delivered before in a manner with the highest possible quality, and we've just begun. You should expect this to be a great digital first agency. My commitment to make this happen is as deep as the President's commitment to make the world a great place, and you see the fabulous job happening here across America and what he's doing in the world. You should expect Social Security, just like the President. I thank him for making America great again. It's happening. Social Security will be great again. You have my commitment. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you very much.

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