Doge’s attack on social security causing a “complete and total chaos”, says staff | US Social Security

Office closings, staff granting and service discounts and policy changes to Social Security Administration (SSA) caused a “complete and total chaos” and threaten to send the agency to a “death spiral”, according to workers from the agency.

The SSA manages the largest government program in the United States, administering social insurance programs, including retirement, disability and survivor services.

An average of nearly 69 million Americans per month will receive a social security service in 2025, totaling approximately 1.6 more services paid during the year and representing 22% of the federal budget. Although expensive and disputed by an aging population, Social Security remains extremely popular with Americans. But the agency was nicknamed “Ponzi Scheme” by Elon Musk, the billionaire whose so-called “Department of Effectiveness of the Government” (DOGE) currently reduces its staff and budgets.

“They have these” plans concepts “they hope will actually remain, but in reality, really harm Americans,” said a long -standing employee of the SSA and a military veteran who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “No one knows what’s going on. They only want ideas at the top of their heads.”

The SSA website crashed several times this month. Wired Doge’s staff wanted to migrate all social security data and rewrite the code in months, which could result in the system and other breakdowns.

The agency plans to eliminate jobs from 7,000 workers from the agency through voluntary buyouts, resignations or layoffs, although the union representing SSa employees provide even more layoffs beyond the reduction of staff to 50,000 workers.

The acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, recognized the staff that Doge makes the decisions at the agency. Musk, Donald Trump and others said that measures were taken to combat generalized fraud at the agency.

Dudek was appointed interim commissioner after apparently shared information secretly with Doge’s staff. He threatened to close the agency in response to a court order prohibiting DOGE from accessing the data.

“It has just been a lot of madness, a lot of madness. Until they get rid of Doge and the person in power at the moment, and the Republicans actually get a spine and defend something for once in their lives, things will just be full chaos. The worker added.” They could not understand the coding, so all that they said, not. Common sense is something that they lack. They don’t know what they are doing. “

Rich Couture, spokesperson for the General Committee of the American Federation of Social Security Administration employees, the union representing around 42,000 social security workers, said that the public objectives of Doge for the cuts were made no sense.

Why are they cutting 7,000 jobs, asked for sewing. “It was never explained with a certain degree of clarity how they found this figure. What is served by this by a loss of 7,000 jobs? How does it make this operation more effective? How does it improve the service? How does it improve productivity? Our position is that the loss of 7,000 people do not make these things, “he said.

“I don’t think they will stop at 7,000 people lost. If they lose 10,000 or 12,000, they acquire their high score. They are able to boast of it. “

The agency’s services have been closed and reorganized, workers forced to take risky reallocations or layoffs, and all workers were ordered to return to the office five days a week.

Couture noted that the return to the order of functions one day occurred before a buyout offer was to expire, in violation of the union contract agreements, and that the offices were not prepared or equipped to manage it, because many workers did not have an office or equipment to work.

Public telephone services have also been cut and the field and regional offices are planned for closing in the United States.

“There is no safe office in this country,” added Couture. “It is a concerted attack on the legitimacy of social security itself. The promise that this country has made to the public with regard to income safety is being broken. ”

The cuts occur while the staff are already at 50, despite the fact that the agency serves a record number of beneficiaries as the American population over 65 years old increases.

The Office of the Inspector General of SSA reported in August 2024 that a record backlog of payment shares having an impact on social security beneficiaries was due to the lack of staff, an increase in workloads and a decrease in the agency’s financing, the conduct of inappropriate payments because the staff was not available to update the files.

Couture noted that the agency’s general operating costs, as a share of paid services, have decreased by 20% in the past ten years and is now less than 1%. He challenged any allegation of ineffectiveness or waste to the agency, claiming that the agency is already a model of efficiency and as effective as possible under its tax and personnel constraints.

He said that he feared that the situation created a “negative feedback loop” where, while more employees start, more work is put on others, depressing morale and inciting more to leave “until the agency is found in a spiral of death with the staff, producing office closings”.

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“You will see a large collapse in the agency’s service structure. Waiting times call for mouths, waiting times for meetings, processing times, all this will soar because there will not be enough people to do the work, which opens the door to privatization. ”

Musk called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and has always pushed false claims and plots on the program.

On the Podcast of Senator Ted Cruz last month, Musk repeated a theory of the white supremacist conspiracy according to which democrats use the rights “attract and retain” undocumented immigrants as electors.

This week, Musk shared a table of immigrants receiving social security numbers, wrongly affirming that they have received services, although the social security provision program to legal immigrants began under Trump’s first mandate as part of the program to facilitate employment. He also claimed that the dead received services, despite the acting commissioner of the SSA, he dispelled the complaint.

In 2024, social security fraud of social security was at a rate of 0.00625% and less than 1% of social security payments had been deemed incorrect.

US secretary and billionaire Howard Lutnick said in an interview on a podcast earlier this month that only a “fraudster” would like to miss a check for social security services.

“I worked there for 32 and a half years, and I have rarely seen cases of fraud,” said John Oertel, a retired employee of the SSA for more than 32 years in Redding, California.

“Because the agency is so in sub-employment that people who report their income, who are not reported in the system. Musk and his group say they look at all these people who are too paid, they must commit fraud. They do not commit fraud. They do what they are supposed to do, but because there is not few employees, none of this information is part of the system.”

Oertel also rejected Trump and Musk’s false allegations that the dead obtain social security benefits.

“They do not understand where they don’t care. These people do not receive advantages, but the figures are always technically active, because you cannot simply erase social security numbers,” he said, noting that the figures have started to be issued in the 1930s and are not deleted or reused, so they are still in the system. “President Trump, Elon Musk and whoever it is the next commissioner will be, I really think that their ultimate goal is just to destroy social security.”

A SSA spokesperson postponed press releases on the cups and reorganization of the agency.

“We have listened to our customers, our congresses, our defenders and others, and we update our policy to provide better customer service to the most vulnerable populations in the country,” said Dudek, SSA acting commissioner. “In addition to extending the date of entry into force of the two-week policy to guarantee that our employees have the training they need to help customers, health insurance, disability and SSI applications will be exempt from the test of identity in person because several opportunities exist during the decision-making process to verify the identity of a person.”

They said that as regards office closings, that “to use our space more effectively, we have provided (the General Services Administration) a list of dismissal leases”, and affirmed that the mandate of return to the office was condemned to guarantee that “maximum staff is available to support the high identity requirement in person in person”.

Regarding claims, fraud and abuse, a spokesperson said in an email: “The agency will continue to monitor and, if necessary, will provide adjustments to ensure that it pays the right amount at the right time while protecting the advantages and programs it administers.”