How Social Security cuts could put millions of older Americans at risk

from PBS

Laura Barron-Lopez:

The acting agency head told employees this week that it's Musk and DOGE that are calling the shots at SSA.

The Washington Post reported that Leland Dudek told senior staff at SSA that Musk's team of — quote — "outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs are making decisions and that they will make mistakes."

And, this morning, the agency told its workers they can no longer use their government computers to look at, among other things, news Web sites, even blocking access to some of them. The restriction was said to help protect sensitive information. But news sites and obituaries are often relied on to confirm death information and prevent fraud.

For a closer look at the effect of potential cuts to Social Security, I'm joined by Martin O'Malley, who was the commissioner of SSA during the Biden administration and previously served as the governor of Maryland.

Governor O'Malley, thank you so much for joining the "News Hour."

 

The Social Security Administration is looking to cut 12 percent of its work force, some 7,000 people. How will people receiving Social Security benefits potentially feel the effect of those cuts? How will this impact the agency?

Martin O’Malley, Former Commissioner, Social Security Administration:

Ever since December, people have been putting in — those eligible to retire have started to leave the agency.

The agency had already had been driven down to a 50-year low in staffing, even as Baby Boomers of my generation swelled their customer ranks to a new record high every single day. So, people are going to experience much longer wait times on the telephone. We had gotten that speed to answer down to 12.5 minutes. It's now shot back up on average to over a half-hour now.

You're going to see more people dying, waiting in line for their initial disability determinations, which we had started to get moving in a better direction. That's now going back up. And it's going to take longer when people do decide to retire to actually effectuate that claim and get them into a payment status.

Ultimately, all of this cratering out of the agency, all of this gutting of the agency's customer service staffing is going to have, I think, very widespread consequences for all 72 million people receiving Social Security, because they have never had to operate these old systems with such few staff, and they are being gutted every single day.

I think they're going to drive more than 7,000 people out of the agency.

 

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