Despite Trump’s promises not to touch Social Security, Elon Musk’s DOGE has asked for serious cuts to the agency. Critics have accused the billionaire and his team of attempting to cripple America’s retirement system. Now, a new report states that, per DOGE’s orders, the Social Security Administration has plans to fire “potentially thousands” of staffers as soon as next week, in an effort to further downsize the agency and align it with Trump’s “efficiency” mandate.
The Washington Post reports that Musk’s “government efficiency” team has demanded an extensive reduction of workforce throughout the agency. The newspaper describes the effort thusly:
The cuts have been ordered by leaders of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team, the U.S. DOGE Service, which reviewed the agency’s plans to shrink its workforce last week, according to four agency officials familiar with the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans. DOGE determined that the 7,000 jobs eliminated since February under acting commissioner Leland Dudek through early retirements, buyouts, resignations and firings were not enough, the officials said. The DOGE team, which has amassed unprecedented power throughout the federal government, has demanded significantly deeper cuts to ensure that Social Security meets President Donald Trump’s goal to shrink federal agencies, officials said.
According to the newspaper, the cuts being demanded by DOGE are across the board. It writes:
The DOGE team did not provide a specific number of jobs that must be eliminated, officials said, but asked for staff reductions to broad areas of operation, including communications, personnel, legislative and congressional affairs, retirement and disability policy, and other “support components.”
Among other things, DOGE has asked for severe cuts to the administration’s IT team, the report states. That team is presumably already under a severe amount of strain due to the agency’s recent decision to downsize its phone operations—a highly controversial move that has forced an influx of traffic to the SSA website. The strain of that traffic has reportedly caused the website to crash multiple times. A senior department official told the Post that as many as 800 people could be laid off from the IT team, which currently has about 4,000 members.
DOGE has already announced lease terminations for dozens of SSA field offices across the country. This policy threatens retirees’ ability to get in-person help when signing up for retirement benefits. Under DOGE, the SSA has also cut phone operations, and, now, will also apparently cut web operations. At the same time, DOGE has claimed that it will re-write the SSA’s “entire codebase” in a matter of months, a move that critics worry could lead to serious digital dysfunction. Social Security activists say it’s pretty clear that DOGE’s ultimate goal is to hobble the agency’s operations and destroy its ability to function.
When reached for comment by Gizmodo, a White House spokesperson told us this: “With a resounding mandate from the American people, President Trump is moving quickly to fulfill his promise of making the federal government more efficient. He has promised to protect Social Security, and every recipient will continue to receive their benefits.” While failing to dispute anything specific in the Post report, the government further stated that there are currently no finalized RIF (reduction in workforce) plans and that the SSA was merely evaluating the next steps.
If the Trump administration manages to cripple America’s Social Security system while also yanking trillions of dollars out of Americans’ 401ks via an ill-advised, stock-market-killing trade war, it will have effectively nullified the entire concept of “retirement” for the foreseeable future.
