With Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency leading the charge, the Trump administration is intensifying attacks on the Social Security Administration and jeopardizing the vital benefits 1 in 5 Americans rely on. Under President Donald Trump-appointed leadership, the SSA recently announced its intent to eliminate 7,000 jobs, slicing the agency’s already skeletal staff down to the marrow. The SSA’s shrinking workforce already has been covering an increasing number of beneficiaries for years. With no capacity to spare, the consequences could quickly turn dire.
As the baby boomer generation ages, a record number of Americans are hitting retirement each year, making this exactly the moment when seniors most need Social Security’s systems to function in order to access the benefits they have earned. But as former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley recently warned, the administration’s actions could break those systems and interrupt benefit payments.
These attacks on the Social Security Administration coincide with other ominous signals about the program’s future.
If Social Security benefits stop — or even experience delays — the impact will be immediate and catastrophic. In a recent survey, 42% of Americans age 65 and up reported they wouldn’t be able to afford necessities like food, clothes or housing without their monthly Social Security retirement benefits. Over 11 million disabled Americans under age 65 also receive benefits through Social Security — payments that are subject to strict rules limiting recipients’ ability to earn wages or accrue savings. For these disabled Americans, too, even a few days’ delay could mean not putting food on the table.
Even if the Social Security Administration can keep payments flowing to existing beneficiaries despite these cuts, the rollbacks will still harm people seeking benefits. Already, Social Security staff are inundated to the point of being unable to process retirement claims, compounded by an aging IT system experiencing an increasing number of outages. And more than 1 million Americans are waiting on an initial determination for a disability claim. Often they are forced to run up credit card debt or sell their home as they wait for an answer with little to no income and often no health insurance. Staffing cuts and overtime restrictions will slow processing further and worsen the backlog.
The Trump administration’s cuts will also chip away at the customer service that claimants need. On Wednesday, the agency suddenly stopped allowing claimants to change their direct deposit arrangements by phone. According to the Washington Post, the SSA and Musk’s DOGE team had considered ending phone service entirely, but abandoned the idea after the Post reported on the proposal.
Yet even the smaller change has big consequences: Claimants will be forced to visit a field office in person or use the internet simply to update their bank information. This presents real accessibility challenges: Senior Americans, who make up the majority of claimants, are least likely to have broadband internet access at home, while DOGE posts have stoked fears of upcoming field office closures. As for the services still available by phone, wait times have skyrocketed to hours.
These attacks on the Social Security Administration coincide with other ominous signals about the program’s future. Trump’s joint address to Congress falsely alleged “shocking levels of incompetence and probably fraud” lurking within Social Security. He threatened to “find out where that money is going,” and suggested it’s “not going to be pretty.” Meanwhile, Musk called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” — a frequent talking point of the program’s right-wing critics like Project 2025 author Stephen Moore. House Republicans have floated the idea of cutting Social Security benefits for some disabled children, and groups like the Republican Study Committee have sought for years to cut benefits by raising the retirement age. The current attacks on the Social Security Administration may only be the beginning.
Each month, over 70 million Americans check their mailbox or bank account for their Social Security benefits. For many, these checks can mean the difference between making rent and losing their home, between buying groceries and going hungry. By hamstringing the agency that provides these critical benefits, the Trump administration is putting the well-being of millions on the line.