Biden slams Trump administration for 'deliberate cruelty' in shrinking retiree benefits agency

The former president looked his age--he is 82--but showed no resemblance to the man who had shown up for the fateful presidential debate against President Donald Trump in the summer of 2024, which doomed his bid for a second term and cleared the way for former Vice-President Kamala Harris. Although he used a teleprompter, he spoke clearly and forcefully.

"The last thing they need from their government is deliberate cruelty," Biden said of the efforts by the Trump administration to downsize the Social Security Administration, the agency that uses federal taxes collected from employees and employers to disburse post-retirement benefits to retirees. The scheme is somewhat comparable to India's provident fund programme.

"Social Security is about more than retirement accounts," he added. "It's about honouring a fundamental trust between government and people."

The former president did not name President Donald Trump or his cabinet secretaries and advisers such as Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser, but made pointed references that left few doubts about the identity of his targets.

Musk was not named, but his description of the social security system as a Ponzi Scheme (a scam played on investors by using their monies to keep up the illusion of returns non-existent to attract more investments) was.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's dismissal of delays as not a concern for his 94-year-old mother-in-law was. Trump was not mentioned, but the deficits he ran up with his first-term tax cuts were.

Biden is predictably not popular in the Trump world, but he also has few friends in his world of Democrats. Many in his party blame him for Trump's return to the White House. They believe he overstayed and did not step aside in time for the party to come up with a solid presidential candidate shaped by the rough and tumble of the primaries process. Harris, they argue, was untested and, therefore, vulnerable.

Although Trump ran on the promise of not cutting or ending social security, which has been in the crosshairs of Republicans for a long time -- vilified as a burden on the state exchequer -- his administration's war on wasteful government expenses, spearheaded by Musk's department of government efficiency (shortened to DOGE, a cyber currency, has targeted the social security administration, slashing and estimated 7,000 workers.

Referring to these cuts the former president said that in "fewer than 100 days (of assuming charge) this new administration has ... done so much damage and so much destruction it's kind of breathtaking".