Why Social Security is in the worst crisis since its founding in 1935

Why Social Security is in the worst crisis since its founding in 1935, and what you can do about it, Robert Reich

Financial services executive Frank Bisignano, Trump’s pick to become permanent commissioner of Social Security, faced lawmakers this morning in a Senate confirmation hearing. He “guaranteed” senators that he would not seek to privatize the program.

Yet almost every law maker on Capitol Hill knows Social Security — the federal agency delivers $1.5 trillion a year in earned benefits to 73 million retired workers. One in 5 people in the United States each month along with their survivors, and poor and disabled Americans, are now engulfed in the worst crisis of its history.

Why the crisis?

Not because it’s running out of money. As I’ve said, just raise the cap slightly on income subject to Social Security taxes and it’s in good shape forever.

Not because of fraud, as Musk keeps alleging. He’s dead wrong. Social Security has a payment accuracy rate of 99.7 percent. None of Musk’s businesses comes close to matching that degree of accuracy.

And not because of high administrative costs. Its administrative costs are only 0.5 percent, the lowest by far of any large program in the public or private sector.

The crisis is entirely due to Trump and Musk.

The Social Security Administration is now run by Leland Dudek. He was elevated by Musk to acting commissioner after he fed data to Musk’s team behind his bosses’ backs.

Dudek has issued rapid-fire policy changes that have created chaos for front-line staff.

Under pressure from the secretive Musk team, Dudek has already pushed out more than 12 percent of the staff of 57,000, including dozens of officials with years of expertise in running Social Security’s complex benefit and information technology systems.

Musk has announced plans to fire nearly half the Social Security workforce, and has already begun shutting down field offices.

Dudek has conceded that the agency’s phone service “sucks” and acknowledged that Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is really in charge — pushing a single-minded mission to find benefits fraud despite vast evidence that there’s little to none.

The turmoil at Social Security is leaving many retirees and disabled claimants with less access or shut out of the system altogether.

The Social Security website crashed four times in 10 days this month, blocking millions from logging in to their online accounts because the servers were overloaded.

In the field, office managers are resorting to answering phones at the front desk as receptionists. This is due to so many employees having been pushed out. The agency no longer has a system to monitor customers’ experience with these services. The office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk.

And the phones keep ringing.

Trump swore he would never touch Social Security. But by handing the axe to Musk — who deceptively calls the program a “Ponzi scheme” and is moving at breakneck speed to gut it — Trump could be responsible for killing it.

Trump and Musk are:

Lying about Social Security, including false claims of massive fraud—providing a pretext for actions that could undermine eligible beneficiaries’ access to benefits.

Engaging in deep cuts to staffing, new restrictions on phone-based services for the public, and “agency-wide . . . restructuring” and “massive reorganizations” of SSA that are neither well thought-out nor wise—all of which threaten SSA’s ability to serve seniors and people with disabilities effectively while providing a potential excuse for privatizing key services.

Jeopardizing the reliability of SSA’s systems by sharply reducing staff with technical expertise of systems. After years of underfunding, the Social Security Administration needs more staff — not fewer — to give the nation’s retirees and people with disabilities the service they deserve.

Threatening the security of people’s personal information by giving untrained DOGE political appointees unprecedented access to sensitive SSA data. Musk has granted his untrained employees access to the most sensitive personal data of every American.

What’s happening to Social Security demonstrates how quickly one of the nation’s best and most popular public programs can be destroyed by Trump and Musk.

Please call your senators and representatives today and tell them you want to save Social Security by adding back staff that Musk has fired, enlarging the staff, and keeping Musk’s hands off Social Security.

The Capitol switchboard operator is at (202) 224-3121. An operator will connect you directly with the House and Senate offices you request.