- Former heads of Social Security are concerned about Americans' checks.
- The agency is facing potential disruptions due to staff reductions and tech issues.
- Staffing has already been in decline at a time when more and more baby boomers are retiring.
Former leaders at the Social Security Administration agree on one big thing right now, despite working for presidential administrations on opposite sides of the political aisle: Checks to 69 million beneficiaries could be at risk under the Trump Administration.
Former commissioners Martin O'Malley and Michael Astrue are raising the alarm about the White House's DOGE-inspired workforce cuts hitting SSA at a time when baby boomers are reaching peak retirement age and staffing at the agency has already been in decline. Complex technology stacks also mean that experienced staff are crucial to keeping the checks flowing and any issues addressed in a timely manner.
Already, the Social Security administration has offered some workers early voluntary retirements, with more reductions potentially to come. The agency has said that its staffing target is 50,000 — an ultimate reduction of around 7,000 workers, alongside an organizational restructure. Five Social Security workers previously told BI that they were already concerned that cuts could mean an even worse experience for the public and would-be recipients.
Mark Warshawsky, who served as Social Security's deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy in the first Trump administration, is also worried. He said instead of staffing cuts, the White House could save billions of dollars by rolling back regulatory changes made by the Biden administration that expanded benefits, but there's no sign the agency's DOGE staffers are trying to do that.
"To be frank, I've been disappointed in terms of what DOGE has been doing at Social Security," he told Business Insider, adding that staff cuts don't seem to address the regulatory or technology issues at SSA.
Meanwhile, key Trump advisor Elon Musk has called Social Security "the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time." Meanwhile, workers linked to DOGE have been tasked with trying to hunt down benefits fraud to dead recipients, something that, per a BI analysis, is not very prevalent. SSA and representatives for DOGE did not reply to a request for comment.
"Any American receiving Social Security benefits will continue to receive them," Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
When O'Malley was appointed by former President Joe Biden in 2023, "it was not because the agency was doing well," O'Malley said. "They were struggling every day with a new record high in customers."
Astrue, who was the Social Security commissioner from 2007 to 2013 under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said that the current state of Social Security has compelled him to talk about the agency and its operation for the first time in five or so years: "I don't operate very much in this world anymore, but I've kind of been summoned back lately," he said. "And so I'm here kind of trying to do the Lord's work a little bit."
How brain drain could imperil Social Security benefits
Both O'Malley and Astrue are concerned about benefit interruptions, although they have differing views on when that'll happen. O'Malley thinks that there could be a benefit interruption within 90 days.
He chalks that up to experienced workers opting to leave, potentially imperiling the agency's knowledge base for coding and technological issues. The agency's base foundation tech layer is written in COBOL, or Common Business Oriented Language, O'Malley said. Laura Haltzel, a former Social Security associate commissioner who recently left the agency, described it as a "Frankenstein's monster version of how a system would run as laws are passed and pieces are added ad hoc over the years."
"These technology folks not only understand how to code COBOL, they understand the architecture — how that web of systems is held together, is pieced together, is maintained with great care so that we're able to get the right amount to the right person at the right time," O'Malley said. "And they're driving all of those knowledgeable people out of the agency fast."
Warshawsky, the former deputy commissioner, said the SSA could really benefit from efforts to modernize its software. Staff at the agency use multiple computer systems that can't talk to each other, he said. But in recent court filings, most DOGE staff were revealed to be looking into the possibility of benefits fraud.
The agency's tech problem, he said, "won't be solved in a day. Maybe not even a year. But it has to be solved."
Astrue is also concerned about disruptions — although he's not as certain they'll happen so quickly. "I agree with Martin on a surprising number of things, given that starting from first principles we believe, I think, in very different things," Astrue said.
"I think there's some real risk of a disruption," Astrue said, adding that his timeline is longer than O'Malley's. "I have — maybe it's a sentimental faith — in the Social Security employees."
And there may already be some technological snafus: One SSA worker told BI that systems for processing claims have been crashing more recently and that things like appointment systems keep crashing.
That's on top of issues the agency had already been dealing with, as the processing time for supplemental income and disability benefits has over doubled since 2016, hitting around seven and a half months. Staffing in fiscal year 2024 was hovering near 50-year lows, even as SSA looks at slashing its workforce more.
"The people who maintain these systems and fix issues are just not there," the worker said. "It's like all the systems issues that happened at Twitter when Musk took over are happening at SSA…except instead of people being minorly inconvenienced, people's livelihoods are at stake."
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