{"id":45831,"date":"2025-12-31T12:13:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T20:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=45831"},"modified":"2025-12-31T12:13:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T20:13:12","slug":"social-security-administration-in-turmoil-as-new-reporting-details-damage-done-by-trump-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/12\/31\/social-security-administration-in-turmoil-as-new-reporting-details-damage-done-by-trump-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Security Administration \u2018In Turmoil\u2019 as New Reporting Details Damage Done by Trump Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Social<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Commissioner of the Social Security Administration Frank Bisignano looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks in the White House in Washington, DC on August 14, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0(Photo by Mandel Ngan\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In-depth reporting from the Washington Post found the Social Security Administration is dealing with \u201crecord backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers.\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Brad Reed<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dec 30, 2025 (CommonDreams.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An in-depth report<\/a> published by the Washington Post<\/a><\/em> on Tuesday offers new details about the damage being done to the Social Security<\/a> Administration during President Donald Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Post<\/em>, citing both internal documents and interviews with insiders, reported that the Social Security Administration<\/a> (SSA) is \u201cin turmoil\u201d one year into Trump\u2019s second term, resulting in a customer service system that has \u201cdeteriorated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RECOMMENDED…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Protest<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Senators Demand Trump Admin Come Clean on Plan to \u2018Quietly Kill\u2019 Social Security Offices<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Senate<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nearly Half of Americans Say Their Financial Security Is Getting Worse Under Trump<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The chaos at the SSA started in February when the Trump administration<\/a> announced<\/a> plans to lay off 7,000 SSA employees, or roughly 12% of the total workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This set off a cascade of events that the Post<\/em> writes has left the agency with \u201crecord backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers,\u201d as the remaining SSA workforce has \u201cstruggled to respond to up to 6 million pending cases in its processing centers and 12 million transactions in its field offices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most immediate consequence of the staffing cuts was that call wait times for Social Security beneficiaries surged to an average of roughly two-and-a-half hours, which forced the agency to pull workers<\/a> employed in other divisions in the department off their jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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However, the Post<\/em>\u2018s sources said these employees \u201cwere thrown in with minimal training… and found themselves unable to answer much beyond basic questions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One longtime SSA employee told the Post<\/em> that management at the agency \u201coffered minimal training and basically threw [transferred employees] in to sink or swim.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the administration has succeeded in getting call hold times down from their peaks, shuffling so many employees out of their original positions has damaged the SSA in other areas, the Post<\/em> revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jordan Harwell, a Montana field office employee who is president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 4012, said that workers in his office no longer have the same time they used to have to process pay stubs, disability claims, and appointment requests because they are constantly manning the phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An anonymous employee in an Indiana field office told the Post<\/em> that she has similarly had to let other work pile up as the administration has emphasized answering phones over everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among other things, reported the Post<\/em>, she now has less time to handle \u201ccalls from people asking about decisions in their cases, claims filed online, and anyone who tries to submit forms to Social Security\u2014like proof of marriage\u2014through snail mail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also hampering the SSA\u2019s work have been new regulations put in place by Tesla<\/a> CEO Elon Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency<\/a> that bar beneficiaries from making changes to their direct deposit information over the phone, instead requiring them to either appear in person at a field office or go online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Indiana SSA worker told the Post<\/em> of a recent case involving a 75-year-old man who recently suffered a major stroke that left him unable to drive to the local field office to verify information needed to change his banking information. The man also said he did not have access to a computer to help him change the information online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had to sit there on the phone and tell this guy, \u2018You have to find someone to come in… or, do you have a relative with a computer who can help you or something like that?\u2019\u201d the employee said. \u201cHe was just like, \u2018No, no, no.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social Security was a regular target for Musk during his tenure working for the Trump administration, and he repeatedly made baseless\u00a0claims<\/a>\u00a0that the entire program was riddled with fraud, even\u00a0referring<\/a>\u00a0to it as \u201cthe biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brad Reed<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Bio ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commissioner of the Social Security Administration Frank Bisignano looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks in the White House in Washington, DC on August 14, 2025. \u00a0(Photo by Mandel Ngan\/AFP via Getty Images) In-depth reporting from the Washington Post found the Social Security Administration is dealing with \u201crecord backlogs… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45831"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45832,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45831\/revisions\/45832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}