- Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attacks on Social Security aren’t about efficiency. The word “efficiency” may be in the name of his initiative to reduce the size of the federal government, but a more accurate description of what President Trump’s advisor is doing to Social Security is sabotage.
- DOGE announced plans to cut Social Security staff by 7,000 workers—12% of the workforce. The Trump administration also plans to shutter or shrink dozens of Social Security Administration offices around the country.
- Administrative costs are less than 1% of Social Security spending. Since almost all Social Security spending goes towards benefits, which are set by statute, gutting the agency won’t save money for participants.
- The only way that slashing the number of workers will save large sums money is by making it hard for people to access benefits they’ve earned. Such backdoor benefit cuts, and making a popular government program look bad, are the real goals behind DOGE attacks on Social Security.
What does the Social Security Administration (SSA) do?
Social Security staff perform critically important functions. In addition to managing Social Security’s retirement program, officially known as Old Age and Survivors Insurance, career civil servants at SSA manage Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income that provide benefits to people with disabilities and low-income seniors. SSA personnel also enroll people in Medicare on behalf of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and assist other agencies in administering a diverse array of programs, ranging from the Department of Agriculture’s food assistance program (SNAP) to Homeland Security’s E-Verify program. Social Security itself lifts more Americans out of poverty than any other government program, and the means-tested benefits SSA administers or assists with provide critical—if meager—assistance to millions of individuals and families living below or near the poverty line.
Social Security personnel protect a trove of personally identifiable information. Sensitive information stored in SSA databases includes not only Social Security numbers, but also detailed earnings, tax, banking, and medical records. Until DOGE entered SSA headquarters, this information was carefully protected, with limited access granted to specially trained employees only for specific purposes.
What is DOGE and what is it doing to federal agencies?
On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order establishing DOGE. DOGE is the reorganized and renamed version of an existing unit within the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) tasked with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” Officially, it’s headed by a veteran of the U.S. Digital Service, the predecessor to DOGE. Unofficially, it’s run by billionaire Elon Musk, a special advisor to President Trump—a reality acknowledged by the judge who issued a temporary restraining order against DOGE actions at SSA.
Trump has given Musk free rein, allowing DOGE to implement drastic cutbacks at multiple agencies. Among other actions, DOGE has gutted the Department of Education and effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). These and other efforts have been met with court challenges.
Though DOGE is an arm of the White House budget office, it has infiltrated independent off-budget agencies. Many agencies targeted by DOGE, including USAID, USIP, and CFPB, are independent agencies intentionally set up to be insulated from White House control. In addition, two independent agencies targeted by DOGE, SSA and the United States Postal Service (USPS), are off-budget programs with dedicated funding. Though OMB has no jurisdiction over these agencies, the heads of SSA and USPS were forced out after resisting DOGE incursions.
DOGE has demanded access to highly sensitive data. At many agencies, including SSA, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Departments of Treasury, Education, and Labor, DOGE programmers have accessed personally identifiable information such as Social Security numbers. In the case of SSA and many others, judges have ruled in favor of plaintiffs who would be harmed by data breaches. Nevertheless, DOGE continues to demand access to sensitive data at multiple agencies, including most recently gaining the ability to read and even possibly alter payroll data for hundreds of thousands of federal workers at the Department of the Interior.
What is DOGE doing at SSA?
A team of DOGE programmers installed themselves behind closed doors at SSA headquarters. The DOGE team at SSA, one of the largest, embarked on what a former chief of staff described as a “hostile takeover,” with an armed guard posted outside their office. When the inexperienced and improperly vetted DOGE team demanded unrestricted access to Social Security databases, the acting commissioner resigned in protest and was replaced by Leland Dudek, a mid-level manager who boasted on social media about circumventing SSA management to help DOGE. At least one DOGE associate accessed this data remotely from the Office of Personnel Management, the site of the most serious data breach in U.S. government history. A judge later issued a temporary restraining order limiting access to SSA data by DOGE associates.
SSA, under a new DOGE-friendly Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek, announced plans to reduce staffing by 7,000 employees through incentives and layoffs. This 12% reduction is a target—many more SSA employees could leave or be forced out. Cutbacks have affected all agency personnel, including critical and difficult-to-replace programmers and cybersecurity experts. Morale was already low at the agency before DOGE staff started bullying employees, threatening layoffs, and offering buyouts. Meanwhile, the DOGE-friendly acting commissioner has instituted hiring and overtime freezes and even threatened to shut down operations.
SSA was already stretched to the breaking point after years of underfunding. Even before the DOGE cuts, staffing at the agency was at a 50-year low. Meanwhile, more people are receiving Social Security benefits than ever before thanks to the aging Baby Boomer generation. Despite years of flat funding that failed to keep up with an escalating workload, House Republicans were gunning for cuts to Social Security’s administrative budget even before DOGE’s slash-and-burn efforts.
Social Security is at a breaking point. Former Commissioner Martin O’Malley has noted that not only has DOGE set the stage for a total collapse of the system , but this brain drain is being paid for by Social Security participants. Wait times for phone and in-person appointments have already skyrocketed, with half of callers hanging up before they have a chance to speak with anyone. The large number of people attempting to use the online portal crashed the system four times last month.
DOGE also announced plans to shutter or shrink Social Security Administration offices. This is part of a broader plan to terminate leases on thousands of federal offices around the country with the goal of reducing federal office space by half even as federal workers are being recalled back from remote work. These efforts have raised concerns that offices sold at fire-sale prices could be leased back later at a higher cost to taxpayers. SSA offices slated for closing include the Maryland headquarters, regional offices, and dozens of field offices that handle in-person appointments needed to process complex transactions.
DOGE actions increase costs even as service suffers. As former Commissioner O’Malley noted, SSA is now paying people not to work. DOGE has also reassigned high-level staff to fill staffing shortages in entry-level positions, such as answering calls to the 1-800 number. And since the Trump Administration announced office closings and lease terminations while it was recalling remote workers, SSA will likely end up leasing office space at a higher cost—perhaps from Trump insiders who bought the offices at fire-sale prices. The fact that DOGE has cut Internal Revenue Service staff tasked with rooting out tax evasion by large corporations and wealthy individuals makes clear that deficit reduction and preventing fraud are not its real goals.
Who is most affected by SSA cutbacks?
Wait times were too long even before DOGE, especially for accessing disability benefits. Disability determination is a complex process requiring copious documentation. As of February 2025, the process averaged 236 days for decisions issued in the initial stage and 277 days for cases that were appealed. Over a million people are waiting on an appeal, with tens of thousands dying while awaiting a decision. Delays will only get worse with staffing cuts.
Disabled claimants are particularly affected by field office closings. Social Security office closures exacerbate mobility and other barriers to accessing disability benefits. According to research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, office closures lead to a 13% drop in the number of people receiving disability benefits in the affected area.
What is the rationale for the DOGE takeover of SSA?
Musk and others in the Trump Administration claim impossible cost savings. Musk and others in the Trump Administration have boasted that they’ll find ways to reduce spending by $500 billion or more from Social Security and other social insurance programs—a third of spending on these programs—without, somehow, cutting benefits.
Trump and Musk float outrageous fraud claims. Trump and Musk claim that Musk’s DOGE team found millions of people who were receiving benefits tied to the Social Security numbers of people born over a century ago. The truth is that inexperienced DOGE programmers misinterpreted missing-date codes on old records and assumed, without bothering to check, that millions of people were receiving benefits in the name of dead beneficiaries. When this embarrassing error was pointed out, Trump and Musk doubled down on their claims rather than admit they were wrong.
Fraud isn’t a serious problem at Social Security. Credible independentsources estimate improper payments to be less than 1% of SSA benefit payments, much of it due to errors and reporting delays, not fraud. The only widespread misuse of Social Security numbers—by undocumented workers—is helpful to Social Security’s finances because these workers contribute to the system with little chance of ever receiving benefits based on their contributions.
Should we be worried about Social Security?
Yes and no. DOGE attacks on the Social Security Administration have been extremely destructive, and some of the damage will be very difficult to reverse. However, Social Security has never missed a payment in its 89-year history, and it would be political suicide for the Trump Administration and Republican Party to allow this to happen under their watch. However, the Trump Administration, with DOGE’s help, is making it hard for people to claim benefits in the first place, harming participants and unfairly tarnishing Social Security’s reputation.
Social Security faces a long-term shortfall that would be easy to fix if Republican lawmakers listened to voters. Republican and Democratic voters alike support addressing the shortfall through revenue increases, not benefit cuts. Options for raising revenue include eliminating the cap on taxable earnings, so billionaires like Musk no longer contribute the same amount to Social Security as doctors and lawyers. Claims that Social Security is in crisis—and attempts to manufacture a crisis—serve to distract from this popular option.
The alleged rationale for putting an unelected billionaire and his team in charge of SSA and other government functions is rooting out waste. But Social Security’s administrative costs are tiny—less than 1% of spending—and improper payments are similarly inconsequential. Meanwhile, a top priority of the Trump Administration is extending tax cuts that overwhelmingly flow to wealthy people like Musk.
If it ain’t broke, DOGE will break it. As former Commissioner Martin O’Malley warned, “When they can break it, they can say, ‘Aha! We told you! This program never worked, and we were just ripping the band aid off.’” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren told Frank Bisignano, the self-described “DOGE person” who Trump has nominated to run the agency, that the only way to significantly reduce Social Security spending without Congress instituting unpopular benefit cuts is to make it very hard for people to access them. If this makes people frustrated with the agency, that’s a plus for an administration that wants you to believe that government is broken.