Former Maryland Governor and former Social Security Commissioner Martin O\u2019Malley warned that the Trump-Musk administration\u2019s sweeping cuts to the Social Security Administration\u2019s workforce will lead to major disruptions in benefits for millions of Americans. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has ordered a 50% reduction in Social Security\u2019s workforce. The agency, already at its lowest staffing levels in 50 years, announced that it will soon implement large-scale layoffs. \u201cThese cuts will inflict a lot of pain on seniors and people with disabilities,\u201d O\u2019Malley said in a news conference on Friday. \u201cSocial Security is being driven to a total system collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said five of SSA\u2019s eight regional commissioners have resigned following the push for deeper reductions. Responding to a question from BlackPressUSA, O\u2019Malley said it\u2019s up to Congress to stop the bleeding. He said, despite handling a record number of beneficiaries, Social Security operates with just 1.2% overhead, far below private insurers like Liberty Mutual, which operates at 23%. O\u2019Malley said productivity had improved by 6% year over year, but the restructuring will erase that progress. \u201cThe Republican House has already reduced staffing at Social Security to a 50-year low. Now co-Presidents Musk and Trump want to cut customer service in half,\u201d he said. O\u2019Malley called the administration\u2019s decision to offer full-year salary buyouts to retirement-eligible employees and $25,000 bonuses to others the biggest waste of Social Security dollars in U.S. history. \u201cThe actions being taken by the Trump-Musk administration to gut customer service and drive employees out of this greatly understaffed agency will break Social Security as we have known it for 90 years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also raised concerns about data security, noting that sharing Social Security information is a fireable offense. While Trump has said Social Security \u201cwon\u2019t be touched,\u201d Musk has defended the cuts by claiming they are necessary to stop \u201cextreme levels of fraud.\u201d However, Musk has not provided proof for this claim. Rich Couture, spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees SSA General Committee, said any layoffs will hurt the public and undermine Social Security. \u201cSeniors and people on disability should start putting away what money they can now,\u201d O\u2019Malley said. \u201cBenefit check interruptions are coming soon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Maryland Governor and former Social Security Commissioner Martin O\u2019Malley warned that the Trump-Musk administration\u2019s sweeping cuts to the Social Security Administration\u2019s workforce will lead to major disruptions in benefits for millions of Americans. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has ordered a 50% reduction in Social Security\u2019s workforce. The agency, already at its lowest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[67,64,1254],"class_list":["post-2116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-donald-trump","tag-elon-musk","tag-social-security-commissioner-martin-omalley","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2117,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116\/revisions\/2117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}