According to a frightening report from The Guardian, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is rapidly being demolished from the inside out due to the actions of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The Guardian’s Michael Sainato notes, “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.'”
The Social Security Administration is one of the most important in the country, administering $1.6 trillion in benefits that are disbursed to 69 million Americans each and every year.
One SSA employee who requested anonymity complained, “They have these ‘concepts of plans’ that they’re hoping are sticking but in reality, are really hurting American people. No one knows what’s going on. They’re just coming up with ideas at the top of their head.”
Another staffer was even more apoplectic: “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. 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.”
As a result of DOGE’s actions, the report continues, the agency’s website has crashed several times, resulting in problems that directly impact recipients, some of whom are unable to contact the SSA for days or weeks on end.
Rich Couture of the American Federation of Government Employees’ Social Security Administration general committee warns that things will only get worse at the SSA as more employees are let go.
“It has never been explained with any degree of clarity how they came up with that figure. What’s being served by that by a loss of 7,000 jobs? How does any of that supposedly makes this operation more efficient? How does it improve service? How does it improve productivity? Our position is that losing 7,000 people doesn’t do any of those things. I don’t think they’re going to stop at 7,000 people lost. If they lose 10,000 or 12,000, they’re running up their high score. They’re able to brag about it.”
How long will it be before the SSA is so understaffed and overworked that tens of millions of Americans are denied their benefits for months on end? Could that have been the plan all along?
