Doge orders lay off employees in the Social Security Bureau, and plans to include IT teams in the report as the website continues to disrupt:
Despite Trump's pledge not to touch social security, Elon Musk's morality requires serious cuts to the agency. Critics accuse billionaires and their team of trying to undercut the U.S. retirement system. Now, a new report states that the Social Security Agency plans to fire “possibly thousands of employees” immediately next week under the Governor's order to further reduce the agency's size and align it with Trump's “efficiency” mandate.
The Washington Post reported that Musk's “government efficiency” team has asked for a large reduction in the workforce throughout the agency. The newspaper thus described the effort:
According to four agency officials familiar with the conversation, the cuts were ordered by cost-cut leaders of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting U.S. threshold services, which reviewed the agency’s plans to shrink its workforce last week. Doge has determined that 7,000 jobs have not been enough since February, with acting commissioner Leland Dudek retiring, acquiring, resigning and shooting early. Officials say unprecedented power has accumulated throughout the federal government, and the team has called for deeper layoffs to ensure that Social Security meets President Donald Trump’s goal of narrowing federal agencies.
According to the newspaper, the reductions requested by the Governor were comprehensive. It reads:
Officials said the Governor’s team did not provide specific jobs that had to be cancelled, but required staff to reduce a wide range of operations, including communication, personnel, legislative and congressional affairs, retirement and disability policies, and other “support components.”
The report notes that among other things, Doge requires serious cuts to the government's IT team. The team is probably under severe pressure as the agency recently decided to reduce the size of phone operations, a highly controversial move that forced SSA websites to flood traffic. The pressure of this traffic has reportedly caused the website to crash several times. A senior department official told the Post that as many as 800 people may be fired from the IT team, which currently has about 4,000 members.
Doge has announced the termination of leases for dozens of SSA field offices across the country. This policy threatens the ability of retirees to get personal help when registering for retirement benefits. Under Doge, SSA has also cut phone operations, and now it will obviously cut web operations. Meanwhile, Doge claims it will rewrite SSA's “whole codebase” within a few months, a move that could lead to severe digital dysfunction. It is clear that Doge's ultimate goal is to undermine the operations of an agency and to undermine its operational capabilities, social security activists say.
When Gizmodo commented, a White House spokesman told us this: “With the enormous mandate of the American people, President Trump is taking quick action to fulfill his promises to make the federal government more effective. He has promised to protect social security and every recipient will continue to receive benefits.” The government did not raise any specific objections in the postal report, but there is currently no finalized RIF (reducing workforce) program, and the SSA is only evaluating the next step.
If the Trump administration manages to pass an unwise, slaying trade war to get Americans out of the US 401ks social security system, it will effectively eliminate the entire concept of a foreseeable future “retirement”.
