When Eleanor H., 66, called the Social Security Administration last month to seek details about her pension benefits, she did not expect that she comforted the representative who replied. The woman started sobbing.
“I asked her what was going on, and she said that she and her colleagues were informed by e-mail to accept a taxable payout of $ 20,000 or risk,” said Eleanor, who lives in New Jersey (she asked to use her first name from privacy problems).
The representative still answered all the questions from Eleanor. “Because of her tears, she said:” What am I going to do? “”
The Social Security Administration, which sends pension, survivor and disabled payments to 73 million people, is mentioned every month the “third rail” of politics – largely inviolable in view of the widespread popularity and role as one of the remaining safety nets of the country.
But in recent weeks, the Trump government, led by the crew of Cost cutters of Elon Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency of Doge, has brought its chainsaw to the activities of the agency. The agency has announced plans to reduce up to 12 percent of its workforce, at a time when the staff is at a lowest layer of 50 years. It has also offered early retirement and other incentives, including payments up to $ 25,000, to the entire staff.
Many current and former social security officers fear that the cutbacks can create gaping gaps in the infrastructure of the agency, destabilizing the program, keeping millions of people out of poverty and large percentages of pensioners trust the majority of their income.
The actions have ensured that employees of social security and former commissioners and managers of both parties sound alarm bells and say that it would be difficult to repair the damage, which could threaten access to benefits.
“Everything they have done so far is the ability of the agency to serve the public,” said Martin O'Malley, the most recent former social security commissioner among President Joseph R. Biden Jr. He said he feared that Mr. Musk's team had taken the most of the necessary actions to create a total collapse of the system, whether it was under use in the waiting times of customer service, system interruptions or a Timely benefits.
In a statement to the New York Times, the Social Security Administration said that “identifying efficiency and reducing costs, with a renewed focus on mission -critical work”, including streamlining superfluous management layers, and is “dedicated to ensure that Americans get the help they need.”
Social security benefits cannot be changed without legislation accepted by the congress. But the delivery of that salary and enable new people to register or make changes – is based on a complex series of systems that are driven with the help of programming languages developed in the 1970s.
The people who can most exploit the old systems of the agency may not be surprising, almost eligible or eligible for pensions. At least 30 percent of the technical staff in the office of the Chief Information Officer fits in those categories, estimated former managers.
“We look at a relegation of the system as a whole because we have a whole expertise that runs out,” said Shelley Washington, executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1923, a unit of the Federal Workers' Union. “They first shoot and focus later.”
He said that the delivery of checks for people who are already registered in the system should not be influenced for the time being – but it becomes increasingly uncertain who will be there to quickly solve problems when they occur.
Michael Astrue, a former desk commissioner appointed by President George W. Bush, said it seemed that Mr. Musk imported the strategy that he used when he bought Twitter, “where you go to a place that is located, level and think that you are going to improvise on Thursday on Thursday. “It's extremely destructive.”
Jason Fichtner, who held various positions at the agency, including deputy commissioner and chief economist, still put the butter in the briefing. “It is more like a drunken who serves a scrap ball,” he said.
The White House issued a statement on Tuesday and repeated that President Trump would not reduce social security, Medicare or Medicaid.
Little contesting that aging technology needs a restart. The system has not undergone a major overhaul because the congress has not assigned any money for it. It is also a huge enterprise, and a lack of continuity in leadership makes it difficult to implement, said the current and former technological staff and managers. It would take an estimated five to seven years and costs more than $ 2 billion, according to a former technology director, who did not want to be called because the analysis was not completed.
Although experts who were familiar with the activities of the agency acknowledged that there was room to improve efficiency, they said it had already been run Leallyy. The agency functions with a budget of less than 1 percent of its annual benefit payments, which offer pension, surviving and disability payments.
“This is extremely low,” Mr. O'Malley said and noted that it is much lower than the administrative costs of private insurers.
Make confidentiality
That is what the team of Mr. Musk did not stop. Even without a permanent commissioner, the agency makes great decisions: it has already said that it would eliminate 7,000 of its 57,000 workforce, and will close six of his 10 regional offices that coordinate employees and offer support.
Of the 1,200 field offices that serve the public directly, more than 40 must be closed, according to Social Security Works, a group of interests. The group tries to keep track of the changes, but said that the data was based on an unreliable list released by Doge. (The head office of social security itself was also on a closing list and later dropped.)
Two dozen senior employees have announced their departure, including the top three of the top of the office, issued according to a memo on 28 February of Leland C. Dudek, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration. He took the reins when Michelle King, the previous acting commissioner, left abruptly after he refused to give the representatives of Doge access to private data.
Tiffany Flick, the former acting staff chief of the agency with 30 years of service with social security, recently told the events surrounding that episode, which also led to her retirement. She expressed deep concern about the safety of the confidential data and the program in general, according to her sworn testimony on 6 March in a federal court case. The data, she said, have already been misinterpreted and used to distribute wrong information.
Mike Russo, the new Chief Information Officer, “seemed entirely focused on questions from doge officials based on the general myth of supposed widespread social security fraud instead of facts,” said Mrs. Flick.
The “contempt for critical processes” and the “significant loss of expertise” have made her seriously concerned that the programs will not continue to work without disturbance.
“That can lead to benefits not being paid or delays in payments,” she said.
Angela Dergeronimo, a claim specialist and a trade union leader in New Jersey who has been at social security for 28 years, said she believed she witnessed a dismantling of the agency.
“It will influence the audience in a very tangible way,” she said, speaking in her capacity as a trade union officer, and noted that it has been around eight months before the applicants of the disabled program have to learn whether they are eligible. “I hate to say this, but more and more people will die while waiting for a medical determination about their claim from a disability.”
Taking care of customer service
Nicole Francis, a financial planner in New York, called the agency last month on behalf of a 100-year-old customer who wanted to change the bank in which her benefits were deposited. Mrs. Francis knew that a waiting time would wait, but she did not expect it to take more than two hours.
Instead of holding, she visited her client at home and helped her make the change with a new online account.
“Not all senior Americans have a trusted representative and must have the opportunity to make customer service,” she said.
Last week, in an attempt to combat fraud, the agency said that beneficiaries would no longer enable beneficiaries to change bank information by telephone – only online or personally.
Mr. Musk said that he wants to reduce waste, fraud and abuse at the agency, but he and President Trump continue to repeat his false claims that millions of dead people collect benefits.
In fact, the Social Security Office of the Inspector General, which is accused of exposing fraud and inefficiencies, has a report in 2023 that explains why these people have not recorded deaths, but also do not collect any checks.
“Both Musk and Trump have been roughly viewed,” said Kathleen Romig, director of social security and disabled policy at the center of budget and policy priorities, and a former consultant of agencies. (Mr. Trump has also fired the acting inspector general.)
Last week Mr. Musk, who has called social security a Ponzi schedule, claimed that programs such as it are used to attract illegal immigrants. The agency has said that it collects more than $ 20 billion in payroll taxes from unauthorized employees every year, most of whom never collect benefits.
“Mixing these accusations of fraud with these partisan attacks, I think, confuses the audience a bit,” said Jack Smoligan, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and a former deputy -associate director at the Office of Management and Budget.
The aggressive cost treatment of the administration started making pensioners such as Eleanor H., who reached the fatal representative of social security.
She said that she is unable to survive in retirement without her social security control, but was so concerned about the actions of the administration she called to see how much she would receive if she applied for early benefits, a few months before her full retirement age. Healthy pensioners are often advised to claim early, because waiting for longer ditches in a higher advantage.
The representative assured Eleanor that she thought her pension benefits would be safe.
“They will be busy coming for us,” she told her.
Susan C. Beachy And Jack Begg contributed research.
