The Social Security Administration is in total chaos
I liked the straightforward reporting in this piece in the Guardian:
Office closures, staffing and service cuts, and policy changes at the Social Security Administration (SSA) have caused “complete, utter chaos” and are threatening to send the agency into a “death spiral”, according to workers at the agency.The SSA operates the largest government program in the US, administering social insurance programs, including retirement, disability and survivor benefits.
An average of almost 69 million Americans per month will receive a social security benefit in 2025, totaling about $1.6tn in benefits paid during the year and accounting for 22% of the federal budget. While expensive and challenged by an ageing population, social security remains overwhelmingly popular with Americans. But the agency has been dubbed a “Ponzi scheme” by Elon Musk, the billionaire whose so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is currently slashing its staff and budgets.
“They have these ‘concepts of plans’ that they’re hoping are sticking but in reality, are really hurting American people,” said a longtime SSA employee and military veteran who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “No one knows what’s going on. They’re just coming up with ideas at the top of their head.”
The SSA website has crashed several times this month. Wired reported Doge staff want to migrate all social security data and rewrite code in months, which could cause system collapse and further outages.
The agency plans to eliminate the jobs of 7,000 workers at the agency through voluntary buyouts, resignations or firings, though the union representing SSA employees anticipate even more firings beyond cutting staff to 50,000 workers.Acting commissioner Leland Dudek has acknowledged to staff that Doge are making the decisions at the agency. Musk, Donald Trump and others have claimed action is being taken to tackle widespread fraud at the agency.
Dudek was appointed acting commissioner after he reportedly secretly shared information with Doge staff. He has threatened to shut down the agency in response to a court order barring Doge from accessing the data.
“It’s just been a lot of craziness, a lot of foolishness. Until they get rid of Doge and the person in office right now, and the Republicans actually get a backbone and stand up for something for once in their lives, things are just going to be complete chaos. That’s really the best word to describe SSA right now, just complete, utter chaos,” the worker added. “They couldn’t understand the coding, so everything they said SSA was doing illegally, they weren’t. Common sense is something they lack. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
Other than that, it’s all going great.
I saw some complaints that there too many old people at the rallies yesterday. (It’s “cringe” apparently.) I guess we want the demonstrations to be more beautiful and glamorous. But the fact is that for a lot of these folks their immediate well being is on the line. They are fiddling with their economic lifeline, their health care which they need desperately and purposefully creating inflation which, for people on fixed incomes, is especially painful. And incidentally they are the most reliable voting bloc. The more of them taking to the streets the better.
They’ve been doing it their whole lives:
