The new acting administrator of the Social Security Administration (SSA) is now announcing that he's carrying out "significant workforce reductions" at the critical agency that oversees trillions of dollars in payments to tens of millions of beneficiaries.
According to a Thursday article in the American Prospect, Leland Dudek, who took over as acting administrator after Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) forced out the initial acting administrator earlier this month, has ordered all SSA managers present him with plans to reduce their respective headcounts by up to 50%. The email Dudek sent Thursday evening announcing "agency-wide organizational restructuring" does not indicate any plans to deviate from that goal. The SSA currently employs roughly 60,000 people, who process benefits for more than 71 million Americans as of 2023.
Dudek's email gives all SSA employees a deadline of March 14 to decide whether to retire early, resign or seek what Propsect executive editor David Dayen referred to as "voluntary reassignments." Workers aged 50 and up who have been with the agency for at least 20 years are reportedly being offered an "early out" voluntary retirement, which is a quicker timeline than that generally offered to employees of other federal agencies.
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MSNBC host Chris Hayes responded to the news of Dudek's email by tweeting: "Just to be clear, these count as 'cuts to Social Security!' If you cut the way the program is administered, you're cutting it!" And Social Security Works executive director Alex Lawson told the Prospect that the mass firings of Social Security workers amount to "Wall Street and the billionaires destroying Social Security so they can give themselves trillions in tax handouts."
"The ongoing bloodbath at the Social Security Administration has only one goal: the total annihilation of Social Security," Lawson said.
The Prospect reported that if the mass layoffs are carried out, it could result in "large delays in benefit adjudication and claims processing" for beneficiaries. The Social Security Fairness Act — which former President Joe Biden signed into law just weeks before he left office — could increase benefits for more than three million Americans. However, some of its provisions may require manual processing of benefits, which could take significantly longer if the SSA doesn't have enough staff.
Dudek replaced Michelle King as acting administrator in February after she refused to hand over sensitive Social Security information to DOGE representatives. The Washington Post reported that Dudek, who previously worked in SSA's fraud prevention office, leapfrogged several senior SSA officials to helm the agency. Dudek had previously praised DOGE's efforts on social media, according to the Post's sources.
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Click here to read Dayen's full report in the American Prospect.