'Massive personnel cuts': MAGA threatens to topple Social Security

05 March

In an early March interview with the conservative website The Bulwark, Martin O'Malley — former commissioner of the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) under ex-President Joe Biden — had a dire warning about the effect that the Trump Administration's mass layoffs of federal government workers could have on that agency.

O'Malley argued that thanks to the Trump Administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the work environments at the SSA has become "toxic."

The former SSA commissioner told The Bulwark, "They are driving people out there with a viciousness that I believe will collapse the agency…. We have a 50-year low in staffing while the Baby Boomer generation is swelling their ranks. That's the underlying reality here, and these guys appear hell-bent on breaking it. It seems they really want to break Social Security."

O'Malley warned that this "collapse" at the SSA will create an unprecedented "interruption of benefits."

The former Biden official isn't the only one who fears a major crisis at the SSA.

Salon's Heather Digby Parton, in an article published on March 5, argues that President Donald Trump's comments on the SSA during his 2025 State of the Union address are an ominous sign for the agency and for Social Security recipients.

Trump praised Musk's work with DOGE during the speech, claiming that the federal government layoffs are removing waste from the SSA. The Salon journalist notes that Trump "spent an inordinate amount of time listing examples of 'waste, fraud and abuse'" that were supposedly "found by the DOGE team."

"Another interminable litany of lies was a dull recitation of alleged fraud in the Social Security rolls in which he seemed to be saying that there are tens of millions of fraudulent recipients who are collecting the checks of dead people," Parton explains. "This is not true; it's been thoroughly debunked, even by the person Trump has elevated to commissioner. Trump made a great show of promising not to cut Social Security and Medicare in all of his campaigns, so there's a reason why he spent so much time degrading the system in this speech — and it isn't good."

Parton continues, "The way he described it sounded very much like the way he described the supposed cheating in the 2020 election, which indicates they are working up a narrative to excuse the attack on the system that's already underway with massive personnel cuts and the closing of offices. They're coming for Social Security."

Read Heather Digby Parton's full article for Salon at this link and The Bulwark's reporting here.

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