The last few weeks have been the most destabilizing for Social Security in its 90-year history.
America’s historic retirement security program has survived world wars, pandemics, and recessions. But without a rapid course correction, it may not survive Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
In mid-February, Musk demanded access to private Social Security data. When the Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) declined, President Donald Trump immediately replaced her. He leapfrogged over 120 more senior employees to install a DOGE sympathizer, Leland Dudek.
Dudek is reportedly planning to lay off at least 15 percent of SSA’s already understaffed, overworked workforce. SSA staff were sent a message on February 27 telling them the organization will soon undergo an “agency-wide organizational restructuring” and incentivizing them to resign rather than get fired.
Trump and Musk have also instructed the government to terminate the leases on SSA’s over 1,200 field offices, which are critical for the agency’s public-facing work. Social Security field offices, like our post offices, are in every community. They’re there to help us when it’s our turn to access our benefits.
They’ve also ordered all workers to return to the office. But where are those workers supposed to go if their offices are closed? That only makes sense if the ultimate plan is not just to fire the currently reported 7,000 workers from SSA, but everyone!
Many of SSA’s most senior employees, including five of eight regional commissioners, have left. This is causing an enormous brain drain. Together, they represent a huge loss of critical institutional knowledge. Collectively, those employees had almost 1,000 years of institutional knowledge and skills.
SSA was already severely underfunded and understaffed before all of this. The DOGE bloodbath could lead to its collapse.
Most at immediate risk are those applying for disability benefits. Already, large numbers of disabled workers find themselves homeless, and a staggering 30,000 Americans die every year while waiting to receive their earned benefits. Now that number is likely to rise significantly.
Retirement benefits are less complicated to administer, but they’re not safe either. People who are accidentally over- or under-paid will have a far harder time correcting the error. And the planned layoffs are so destabilizing that seniors may even see a disruption in their monthly payments.
Furthermore, Americans will have a terrible time reaching SSA if they have questions, need to change their bank accounts, or have other issues. Moreover, grieving families may have trouble getting the survivor benefits their loved ones have earned for them. Relying on a website or worse, an AI chatbot, won’t cut it.
Nobody voted for this. During the presidential election, Donald Trump blanketed swing states with campaign flyers pledging that he wouldn’t touch Social Security. Make no mistake: Trump has broken that promise.
In his March 4 address before Congress, Trump lied about this extremely efficiently run program. Worse, he’s given Elon Musk, who recently slandered Social Security by calling it a criminal “Ponzi scheme,” the power to destroy it.
SSA’s budget comes out of the Social Security trust funds, not general government revenue. That means that when Americans pay into Social Security with every paycheck, they’re also paying for high-quality customer service.
That’s exactly what we would get — if Congress allowed SSA to spend just a few percentage points more of its $2.7 trillion surplus to hire and adequately train staff, open new field offices, and get wait times down. Instead, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are planning to utterly demolish Social Security’s customer service to pay for billionaire tax cuts.
It isn’t too late to stop this disaster. Everyone should call their members of Congress. Tell them that cuts to the Social Security Administration are cuts to Social Security. Tell them that you value your local Social Security field office.
Tell them to represent the people they serve by making Elon Musk and Donald Trump keep their hands off our earned benefits.
This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
