Notable Quotable: Mark O’Malley on Social Security

Today’s Notable Quotable is part of an interview with Mark O’Malley, former head of US Social Security Administration and former Governor of Maryland, featured on the Rachel Maddow show on March 21, 2025.

“Social Security is a lifeline to millions of Americans. 40% of all seniors living alone depend entirely upon Social security to keep them out of poverty, this earned benefit, they work their whole lives to earn. The cavalier disregard, utter ignorance of how so many Americans live on a day-to-day basis is stunning, is appalling, and is a cruel-heartedness in the center of our government that we've never seen before as Americans.

“This happens at a time when these discussions are not in a vacuum, these discussions are happening as they are announcing plans to shut field offices all over the country, they are announcing policy changes that simultaneously will force millions of people who don't currently have to go into physical field office to have to go. They're firing thousands of employees.

“All Americans should be appalled at this. We need to all tune in, we need to raise our voices, we need to call our members of Congress and stop this steal before it's completed. I mean, and that steal would be of our social security administration and the benefits we worked our whole lives to earn. They put this man in charge of Social Security not because he had ever supervised even a division of Social Security. I'm not sure he ever supervised more than seven people. But it's clear they are doing everything they can as quickly as they can to break this agency from within, to kneecap its ability to serve its customers so that they can sour the public on this agency that people have come to trust and depend upon. They have to wreck it so that they can rob it.

“What exactly they want to do with the 2.7 trillion there? I do not know, but I do know this from having led these really courageous, hardworking men and women across the nation who serve Americans every single day and treat them with dignity and respect, notwithstanding the workload, everything that they are doing is to break this agency's ability to serve the public, and people should be rightly outraged. They have worked their whole lives for these benefits. They have worked over generations to make sure that they could be there for their own kids and grandkids, and what's going on right now at Social Security is absolutely appalling.

“I do believe they’ve probably already taken 90% of the actions necessary to crater this agency, to push it into a position of total system collapse, and people should be outraged. They should be turning out in droves. All of us need to be speaking up. This should be the Bunker Hill upon which the Democratic Party is willing to die, because this cuts into the heart of who we are as a people.”

—Mark O’Malley, former head of US Social Security Administration and former Governor of Maryland