Since President Donald Trump has returned to the White House, a core focus of his presidency has been to eliminate waste in the federal government, an effort spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), under the watchful eye of Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Several departments and agencies have been subjected to major funding cuts and mass layoffs. Meanwhile, the Department of Education faces the potential of being dismantled entirely.
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However, one agency that has been the subject of mixed messages from the Trump Administration is Social Security—a program which sends retirement and disability benefits to over 70 million people through the Social Security Administration (SSA). In the fiscal year of 2024, over 20% of the federal budget was spent on Social Security, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
From a messaging standpoint, Trump has maintained that he will not touch Social Security—while some cabinet members have cast doubt on whether or not those who receive Social Security benefits should be concerned. At the same time, reports of planned DOGE-driven cuts and office closures at the agency have led experts to wonder whether the SSA will have the staff required to ensure the checks are counted and delivered on time.
On March 26, Democrats held a press briefing that addressed their concerns about planned Social Security cuts, Trump’s new nominee to lead the SSA, and the security of citizens’ information through SSA.
“Their goal is clear: destroy Social Security from within. Make it so unworkable, so inefficient, that Donald Trump has the pretext to slash benefits to kill it and then privatize the program,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at the conference. “Seniors across America are not getting the help they need to get their checks.”
Here’s what you need to know about what’s happening to Social Security under the Trump Administration.
What has happened to Social Security since Trump returned to the Oval Office?
DOGE plans to reportedly cut thousands of jobs at the SSA and close offices. Plus, there is also concern the introduction of new identification policies that require people to come to field offices or access information online instead of utilizing phone calls, something that could alienate older generations or people from rural communities.
The Trump Administration has called for substantial layoffs for SSA employees, with leadership saying it will cut 7,000 of its 57,000 staff.
On March 18, the SSA announced that they would be “implementing stronger identity verification procedures,” procedures that would end verification of identity over the phone
Several advocacy groups, including AARP, formerly the American Association for Retired Persons, have come out to request that the SSA “rethink” these requirements.
“Requiring rural Americans to go into an office can mean having to take a day off of work and drive for hours merely to fill out paperwork,” AARP Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond said in a statement on March 19. “We urge the agency to reverse this decision, or for Congress to step in and stand up for older Americans everywhere.”
What has Trump and his cabinet members said about Social Security?
The Trump Administration has made it clear they plan to not cut benefits from Social Security. In a “fact check” posted to the White House website on March 11, Trump said that they will “not cut” the program.
Still, the Administration said that they believe in cutting wasteful spending within said program.
“The Social Security Administration made an estimated $72 billion in improper payments between 2015 and 2022,” the fact sheet stated. “What kind of a person doesn’t support eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending that ultimately costs taxpayers more?”
Meanwhile, Musk has been critical of Social Security, notably calling it “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan.
“The waste and fraud in entitlement spending” is the “big one to eliminate,” Musk said elsewhere, in an interview with Fox Business
Newly-instated Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has also received backlash over his comments about the program, stating that his mother-in-law “wouldn’t call and complain” if Social Security missed a check.
“A fraudster always makes the loudest noise,” he continued.
The backlash for Lutnick has come from all sides—including his own party as former Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Michael Steele noted on MSNBC that while Lutnick is seemingly in a financial position that allows him to support his family, many families are not as fortunate.
“This is the problem when elites base policy on their own experience,” says Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economics at the New School for Social Research, pointing out that for millions of seniors, missing a Social Security check would be an “emergency.”
Who is Trump’s nominee to lead the Social Security Administration?
Trump’s nominee to be the SSA Commissioner is Frank Bisignano, the CEO of payment processing company Fiserv and a self-proclaimed “DOGE person.” Bisignano was grilled at his confirmation hearing on March 25, where he was asked about proposed changes and cuts by Musk and issues at the agency.
Bisignano said he would be an “accountable leader” at SSA, and that he had “no intent” of benefit cuts occurring under his watch.
Asked during the hearing whether Social Security should be privatized, Bisignano said “I’ve never heard a word of it, and I’ve never thought about it.”
However, experts have expressed concern. Pamela Herd, professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, says she was not convinced that Bisignano’s hearing showed he will keep the SSA out of chaos.
“He wouldn’t, or didn’t really seem to commit to maintaining staffing levels,” says Herd. “Instead, he talked about solutions, like using AI. He spent a lot of time and really emphasized that he wanted to focus on reducing payment errors.”
Ghilarducci says that when she first heard that Bisignano was nominated, she was optimistic about the idea of him leading. At the hearing, though, she says he sounded “ideological.”
“He respects DOGE, maybe because they are disrupters, and he is going to lift up their role in the Social Security system, which is about demeaning the system and then eroding it, and then building up to what they believe is minimally necessary,” Ghilarducci says. “There [could be] a lot of wreckage, human wreckage along the way.”
Should people be concerned about their Social Security?
According to Herd, the short answer for whether or not people should be concerned about Social Security is a resounding “yes.” With significant staff cuts, she says it is less a question of whether or not any benefits will actually get cut, but whether the SSA will have the staff to actually “deliver the benefits that the Congress has mandated that they deliver.”
“People are waiting for hours to get through on the phone and then getting cut off before they can actually talk to a representative. The field offices, that honestly were already a bit overwhelmed [already], are now completely overwhelmed,” she says. “So there’s a real disconnect between the statement, ‘I’m not going to cut benefits,’ and in practice, what is going on in the agency.”
Herd states that while DOGE cuts are supposedly, according to Musk, about eliminating waste and fraud, the staffing and procedures that are being cut and changed at the SSA are “needed” to prevent fraud and abuse.
“You can’t manage 20% of the federal budget on a shoestring. You need actual capacity in that agency, and they’ve made a series of choices in the last six weeks alone that have significantly undermined capacity of that agency,” Herd says. “People aren’t going to be able to pay their bills if the agency can’t deliver on the benefits of people with good promise.”
Ghilarducci says that in the past few years, Republicans have mostly stayed away from issues of Social Security. With these changes to the SSA and DOGE’s focus on the agency, they’re testing the electorate, she claims.
“If they wanted a subject to start a political uprising to the whole Republican agenda… they found it,” Ghilarducci says. “They may have stepped on the land mine, because we’re already seeing protests and distrust all over the country.”
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