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Abrupt changes in staffing and some procedures at the Social Security Administration, coupled with false and misleading claims about widespread fraud, have prompted heated criticism from Democrats, with some statements leaving the wrong impression that benefits are being cut. Experts share a concern that disorderly actions by the Trump administration could cause administrative errors and disruptions, but there has been no proposed change to benefits mandated by law.
Democrats have cited several concerning actions taken by the Trump administration with regard to the Social Security Administration. In late February, the SSA announced it would cut 7,000 jobs (out of 57,000) as part of “massive reorganizations” that included reducing the number of regional offices from 10 to four. Meanwhile, White House adviser Elon Musk, who is leading the Department of Government Efficiency, and President Donald Trump have made exaggerated claims about people over 100 years old fraudulently getting Social Security benefits, suggesting there are significant savings to be had by going after waste, fraud and abuse in the system. And this month, changes in identify verification procedures that end some phone-based services could create burdens for some beneficiaries.
“They’re setting the groundwork to ‘eliminate’ Americans’ hard-earned benefits like Social Security and Medicare all to fund tax breaks for their ultra-wealthy backers,” the Democratic National Committee claimed in a March 17 statement that came after news of the identity verification changes.
A link on the word “eliminate” went to a story about an interview of Musk making unfounded claims about fraud and saying that eliminating “waste” from “entitlement spending,” including Social Security and Medicare, could yield $500 billion to $700 billion a year.
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, in a March 21 rally in Colorado, referred to Musk in saying: “We will not accept the richest guy in the world running all over Washington making cuts to the Social Security Administration.” But he then went further, charging that the administration is “prepared to destroy Social Security,” along with Medicaid, Medicare and the Department of Veterans Affairs “in order to make themselves even richer.”
Several Democrats have speculated that the goal of the administration is to privatize some aspect of Social Security, or the entire agency. Rep. John Larson of Connecticut told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on March 20: “The plan, unlike previous plans to privatize Social Security, is to scuttle the agencies themselves.” Larson said the Republicans wanted to “make it appear that it’s not working and not answering people’s concerns” and then privatize it.
Senate Democrats have made similar claims. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden wrote in a March 23 letter to Frank Bisignano, the nominee to head the SSA, that they were “deeply concerned that DOGE and the Trump Administration are setting up the SSA for failure—a failure that could cut off Social Security benefits for millions of Americans—and that will then be used to justify a ‘private sector fix.'”
In a March 25 statement, Sen. Chuck Schumer said: “DOGE has claimed these efforts are to get rid of fraud and abuse but it is clear after a few months that their actions are little more than smoke and mirrors designed to rip away benefits from hardworking Americans.”
Most of these comments are speculative, and as other news organizations have reported, and as experts told us, there is reason to be concerned about rushed changes and false fraud claims leading to problems with Social Security. But despite those concerns, the administration hasn’t put forth any plan to privatize the SSA, nor any plan to change the amount of benefits now promised to retirees, as many of these claims suggest.
Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, told us that concern is “warranted” that some of the administrative changes could affect people’s ability to apply for benefits, especially for disability benefits, which already face very long delays, sometimes years, before eligibility is approved. But that’s different from rules set in law that determine eligibility and the size of someone’s benefits. The administrative changes that are happening “won’t affect the statutory eligibility of people,” she said. That would have to go through Congress.
“A lot of the writing on the left on this is intentionally conflating these two issues to engage in fearmongering,” Boccia said. She said it was “dishonest” to imply there had been cuts to benefits.
At the same time, experts say there may be good reason to fear the actions taken by the Trump administration could harm the operations of the Social Security program.
“I genuinely have never been this concerned about the ability of that agency to function,” said Pamela Herd, a professor of social policy and faculty associate at the Institute for Social Research’s Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, in an interview. “Yes, I think people are right to be worried about it.”
Herd cited the agency’s tasks of managing retiree and disability benefits (for more than 68 million Americans), issuing Social Security numbers to newborns, and keeping track of workers’ earnings, calling it an “enormous” amount of work. “And we’ve seen a fairly careless, and I think that’s generous, treatment of that agency over the past six weeks,” she said.
Cuts, Changes and Concerns at Social Security
In the interview of Musk cited by the DNC — which aired on Fox News on March 10 — Musk made unsupported claims about Democrats using Social Security and Medicare to “attract and retain illegal immigrants by essentially paying them to come here.” He also repeated an incorrect suggestion that Social Security payments could be going to millions of people listed as deceased, and he claimed that hundreds of billions of waste per year — up to $700 billion — could be cut from the programs.
“The waste report in entitlement spending, you know, which is … most of the federal spending is entitlements,” Musk said. “So that’s like the big one to eliminate, that’s the sort of half trillion maybe $600, $700 billion a year.”
In response to those comments, the White House pointed to a Government Accountability Office report that estimated the entire federal government “could lose between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.”
Reports from the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General have estimated significantly smaller amounts of Social Security improper spending — which includes mistakes, not only fraud. A July 2024 report from the IG’s Office of Audit said the rate of improper Social Security payments was 0.84% over fiscal years 2015 to 2022, which added up to $71.8 billion — or about $9 billion per year. Billions of overpayments were also recovered by the agency.
In February, the IG released a report on overpayments in the retirement and disability programs, finding that 3% of them, or nearly $102 million a year on average, were due to fraud. The report covered fiscal 2020 to 2023.
These reports indicate that while SSA could find some savings from fraud or abuse, the amount is relatively small. Social Security benefit payments in fiscal 2024 totaled $1.5 trillion, or about 22% of the federal budget that year.
“I think a lot of the statements of fraud that Elon Musk has put forth are exaggerated as well,” Boccia told us. While there are opportunities to streamline the SSA, she said, the question is whether DOGE was thinking of the long-term impact or “almost randomly slashing and cutting where they can.”
“It’s not clear to me that the DOGE team implementing these changes is talking to experts that understand how the Social Security system works,” Boccia said, and whether the changes will be effective. This “chaotic approach to cuts” could lead to mistakes and “undermine the bigger reform effort that will be necessary to ensure that vulnerable seniors don’t face automatic benefit cuts” when the Social Security trust fund is depleted.
The trust fund for retirees’ and survivors’ benefits is expected to be depleted in 2033, at which point SSA will only be able to pay 79% of benefits, according to the Social Security trustees’ latest estimate.
Spokespeople at Sanders’ and Larson’s offices pointed to more reports about changes at the SSA when we inquired about the lawmakers’ claims.
For instance, the reduction of 7,000 jobs, with an agency-wide offer of early retirement and incentivized resignations, and a reorganization were announced in February. The SSA said the changes were being made to “prioritize customer service by streamlining redundant layers of management” and “reducing non-mission critical work.” It said, “SSA is committed to ensure this plan has a positive effect on the delivery of Social Security services.” The Washington Post reported on April 4 that there are plans in the works for additional layoffs of potentially thousands of staffers. (The SSA press office hasn’t responded to our inquiry about that report and other questions about Democrats’ claims.)
The Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity was closed in late February, though Lee Dudek, the acting SSA commissioner, said that the office’s legally required tasks would be reassigned. The Office of Transformation, whose work included initiatives on the SSA website, was also closed.
There have been news reports of upcoming field office closures, but those remain unconfirmed. The Associated Press analyzed a DOGE list of federal real estate leases it wanted to cancel, finding the list included 47 SSA field offices, with 26 of them expected to be closed in 2025. But on March 27, the SSA said it hadn’t closed or announced the closure of any field offices, adding that it “works closely with local congressional delegations before closing any office permanently.” The SSA said it had provided a list of “underutilized office space,” mostly “small hearing rooms with no assigned employees,” to the General Services Administration for closure.
New ID Verification Procedures
There’s also a change to identity verification practices for some beneficiaries, starting April 14. Those applying for retirement and survivors’ benefits for the first time, and anyone wanting to set up or change their direct deposit information, will have to do so through a “my Social Security” account online or in person at a field office, rather than over the phone, which has been an option.
Update, April 11: The SSA has canceled its plan to end identity verification over the phone for those applying for retirement and survivor benefits, according to multiple news reports. There are conflicting reports on whether direct deposit changes can still be made over the phone. We will update this story once we have more information from the SSA. See our Ask FactCheck on this issue for more information.
The SSA has said the ID verification changes are part of an effort to combat fraud. But advocates for beneficiaries have argued it could hurt those who can’t use the online system and have trouble traveling to a field office, which for rural beneficiaries could be far away.
Herd, at the University of Michigan, told us that a lot of people struggle with the online system and there’s evidence that it doesn’t prevent fraud.
The SSA’s Office of Audit reported in 2019 that $33.5 million in benefits for nearly 21,000 beneficiaries was diverted over about a five-year period because of unauthorized changes made to their direct deposit information through the online “my Social Security” system.
The ID verification changes, for those who can’t use the online system, will mean having to go to field offices, which “are already overwhelmed,” Herd said.
Dudek told reporters in March that the SSA “is losing over $100 million a year in direct deposit fraud,” which would be a fraud rate of about 0.007% of benefits paid, as the Washington Post similarly reported in fact-checking a claim about fraud by Vice President JD Vance. All but about 500,000 monthly benefit payments now go through direct deposit, and an executive order from Trump calls for the elimination of paper checks throughout the federal government by Sept. 30.
The Washington Post debunked Vance’s false claim that “40 percent of the people who are calling [Social Security] are actually committing fraud.” The Post wrote that the SSA had instead said: “Approximately 40 percent of Social Security direct deposit fraud is associated with someone calling SSA to change direct deposit bank information.”
Herd said that a lot of the changes at the SSA, which have happened in a short period of time, “are further weakening an agency that was already operating on a kind of barebones administrative budget.” She pointed to SSA data showing the agency’s overhead is 0.5% of the combined trust fund cost.
The SSA could “effectively fail to deliver on promises” made to deliver benefits through administrative changes, she said. “The promise of Social Security benefits is only as good as the ability to deliver them.”
But, again, the Trump administration hasn’t proposed cutting legally required benefits, as some claims by Democrats imply.
Press reports have noted that the SSA website has been crashing, and beneficiaries have faced long wait times on customer service phone lines.
Boccia told us that fearmongering on the part of Democrats was contributing to the large call volumes. She noted a “political incentive to exaggerate the effect of the changes” at the SSA to increase support for Democrats.
Privatization
As for speculation by some Democratic lawmakers that the administrative changes at SSA are part of an effort to “privatize Social Security,” Boccia said she has seen no evidence for that at all. She said the claims were “not based in reality.”
Bisignano, the nominee for SSA commissioner who is the CEO of Fiserv, a financial technology services company, was asked about this at a March 25 confirmation hearing. “I’ve never thought about privatizing. It’s not a word that anybody’s ever talked to me about. And I don’t see this institution as anything other than a government agency that gets run for the benefit of the American public,” he said.
He later said, “I don’t believe anybody’s thinking about that,” when asked again about privatization.
And during questioning from Warren about beneficiaries potentially having trouble getting benefits they were entitled to, Bisignano said, “I will commit to have the right staffing to get the job done.”
Larson’s office pointed us to a March 23 article by MarketWatch in which some experts voiced concern about a path to privatization. Staffing cuts and other changes at the SSA “could erode customer service, impact benefits and — eventually, experts say — diminish consumer confidence to the point the federal government chooses to hand the program off to the private sector,” MarketWatch reported, quoting, among others, Jason Fichtner, who was an acting deputy commissioner at the SSA under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. However, the article said other experts didn’t agree with the privatization speculation.
Herd told us it was “not unreasonable that some folks in Congress are sort of questioning the end game here about Social Security.”
We can’t predict the future, but there has been no plan put forth by the administration to privatize some aspect of Social Security, or the entire agency.
The president, meanwhile, has repeatedly said that he’s only interested in getting rid of fraud. “Social Security won’t be touched, other than if there’s fraud or something we’re going to find. It’s going to be strengthened,” Trump said in a February interview on Fox News.
Update, April 11: We added information on a claim about fraud made by Vice President JD Vance.
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