When Eleanor H., 66, called the Social Security Agency last month, she didn't expect to comfort the representative who responded to seek details about her retirement benefits. The woman began to sob.
“I asked her what was wrong and she and her colleagues said they were notified via email to accept a taxable $20,000 payment or risk termination,” said Eleanor, who lives in New Jersey (she asked to use only her first name due to privacy concerns).
The person in charge still answered all Eleanor's questions. “In tears she said, 'What am I going to do?' ”
The Social Security Bureau, which sends retirements, survivors and disability payments to 73 million people each month, has long been called the “third railway” of politics.
But in recent weeks, the Trump administration, led by the crew of Elon Musk of the government's efficiency department, has incorporated the chainsaw into government activities. The agency has announced plans to cut its workforce by up to 12%, but its staffing is the lowest in 50 years. It also offers early retirement and other incentives, including payments of up to $25,000 to the entire staff.
Many current and former Social Security officials fear that cuts will open a big hole in the agency's infrastructure and destabilize the program.
The action could threaten access to welfare benefits by Social Security employees, former committee members and executives of both parties ringing the alarm bell and saying it would be difficult to repair the damage.
“We've seen a lot of people living in the country,” said Martin O'Malley, a recent Social Security Commissioner under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. He said he feared that Musk's team took most of the actions needed to create a complete system collapse, whether it surged due to customer service interruptions, system interruptions or benefits payments.
In a statement to the New York Times, the Social Security Administration said it was “determining efficiency, reducing costs and renewing focus on key mission work.”
Social Security benefits cannot be changed without laws passed in Congress. However, delivering these paychecks, and allowing new people to register or change, is based on a complex set of systems driven using programming languages developed in the 1970s.
Those who can run the oldest agencies system most skillfully are probably close to retirement or are already qualified, perhaps not surprising. At least 30% of technical staff in the Chief Information Officer's office fit into these categories, former executives estimated.
“We're looking at the deterioration of the entire system because we have the full expertise walking out the door,” said Shelley Washington, executive vice president of U.S. Government Employees, a unit of federal labor unions, in 1923. “They fire first and then aim later.”
He said that the delivery of checks for people already registered in the system should not be affected at this time, but it is becoming increasingly uncertain who is around to quickly fix the issue when they arise.
Michael Astl, former agency director appointed by President George W. Bush, said it appears that he imported the strategy Musk used when he bought Twitter. “It's very destructive.”
Jason Fichtner, who has held several positions at agencies, including the Deputy Secretary and Chief Economist, said more frankly at the briefing. “It's like operating a wrecking ball when you're drunk,” he said.
The White House issued a statement Tuesday, reiterating that President Trump will not cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits.
There is no objection that aging technology needs to be restarted. The system has not undergone a major overhaul as Congress has not allocated money to it. It is also a huge effort, and the lack of leadership continuity makes it difficult to implement, current and former technical staff and executives said. It takes an estimated five to seven years and costs over $2 billion, according to a former technology executive who didn't want to name it because the analysis wasn't completed.
Experts familiar with the agency's business acknowledged that there was room for improvement in efficiency, but they said it was already lean and executed. The agency will function on a budget of less than 1% of the annual benefit and will provide payments for retirement, survivors and disabled people.
“This is very low,” O'Malley said, much lower than the management costs of private insurance companies.
Confidentiality concerns
That hasn't stopped Musk's team. Even without a permanent commissioner, the agency is making big decisions. It has already eliminated 7,000 of its 57,000 workforce and said it would close six of its 10 regional offices.
More than 40 of the 1,200 field offices are expected to be closed, according to advocacy group Social Security Works. The group is trying to track changes, but said that the data is based on an unreliable list released by Doge. (The Social Security Headquarters itself was also on the closure list, but was subsequently deleted.
According to a memo issued February 28 by Social Security Agency's Deputy Commissioner Leand C. Dudek, 20 senior staff members, including the agency's top three cybersecurity executives, announced their departures. He took the reins when former representative Michelle King suddenly left after he refused to give Doge representatives access to private data.
Tiffany Frick, the former acting chief of staff at the agency who has been working for 30 years at Social Security, recently spoke about events around the episode. She expressed deep concern about the safety of sensitive data and the overall program, according to testimony sworn March 6 in a federal lawsuit. According to her, the data has already been misinterpreted and used to spread misinformation.
New Chief Information Officer Mike Russo “appeared to be completely focused on questions from Doge officials based on the general myth of widespread social security fraud, not factually,” Flick said.
“Ignoring critical processes” and “significant loss of expertise” are seriously concerned that the program will not continue to operate without disruption.
“As a result, it could be that the payment is not paid or that the payment is delayed,” she said.
Angela Digueronimo, a New Jersey expert and union leader, is a New Jersey union leader who has been involved in social security for 28 years and said she believes she has witnessed the agency being demolished.
“It affects the public in a very specific way,” she said in her ability as a union official, saying it would already take about eight months to learn whether applicants are eligible for the disability program. “I hate to say this, but more and more people will die while waiting for medical decisions on the claim of disability.”
Customer Service Concerns
Nicole Francis, a financial planner in New York, called the agency last month on behalf of a 100-year-old client who wanted to change the bank he deposited. Francis knew there was a chance to wait, but she didn't expect it to take more than two hours.
Instead of keeping, she visited clients at home and helped make changes with her new online account.
“Not all senior Americans have a reliable representative and there should be a phone customer service option,” she said.
Last week, in order to combat fraud, the agency said it would no longer allow beneficiaries to change their bank information over the phone.
Musk says he wants to cut waste, fraud and abuse at the agency, but he and President Trump have continued to repeat false claims that millions of deaths are gathering profits.
In fact, the Social Security Bureau of Inspectors, who were indicted for finding fraud and inefficiency, issued a report in 2023 explaining why these people have not recorded their deaths but do not collect checks.
“Musk and Trump both grossly mischaracterize death data,” said Kathleen Romigg, director of Social Security and Disability Policy on Budget and Policy Priorities and former agency advisor. (Trump also fired a proxy inspector.)
Last week, Musk, who called Social Security the Ponzi Project, argued that programs are being used to attract illegal immigrants. The agency says it collects more than $20 billion in payroll taxes per year from unauthorized workers.
“I think mixing these fraud allegations with these partisan attacks will confuse the public,” said Jack Smallgun, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and a former deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.
The administration's aggressive cost cuts have begun to worry about retirees like Eleanor H., who have reached a suffering social security officer.
She said she could not survive by resigning without a Social Security check, but she said she was very concerned about the administration's actions she called to see how much she would receive if she applied for benefits early months before her full retirement age. Healthy retirees are often advised to charge early, as they wait for longer locks with higher profits.
The representative assured Eleanor that he thought the retirement benefits were safe.
“They'll be busy coming for us,” she told her.
Susan C. Beechy and Jack Begg contributed to the research.
