From a press release:
U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) announced the Committee will hold a nomination hearing on Wednesday, October 29, 2025, at 10:00 AM ET to consider Arjun Mody to be Deputy Commissioner of Social Security …
Mody has been the Senate Republican Conference staff director. He’s also been a lobbyist and served on the Trump transition team,
From Newsweek:
President Donald Trump warned Tuesday that if the Democrats don't approve funding, there are dangers to the future of Social Security and Medicare.
Trump said at a press conference that when he asked Democrats for feedback on the funding bills, one said, "It means death."
"There's nothing about death," Trump said. "Theirs is death because they're going to lose Medicaid, they're going to lose Social Security, they're going to lose Medicare, all of those things are going to be gone becausethe whole country would be bankrupt, and you're not going to have any kind of medical insurance." …
This is Donald Trump’s Administration in a nutshell — governing through threats and intimidation while denying any responsibility for the consequences. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are just “Democrat”programs that he and his party won’t mind destroying? This is lunacy.
From Government Executive:
The Social Security Administration is denying its employees working amid the ongoing government shutdown access to days off and other workplace flexibilities, even as some struggle to afford their commute to work, union officials say.
Guidance from the Office of Personnel Management governing federal employees’ pay and benefits during appropriations lapses, last updated Sept. 28, stipulates that while scheduled leave is cancelled at the start of a government shutdown, agencies should grant excepted employees, who are forced to work without pay until funding is restored, access to episodic telework or be temporarily placed in a furlough status if they need time off. …
But Jessica LaPointe, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 220, which represents employees at SSA’s field offices and teleservice centers, said the agency appears to be categorically denying requests for telework or time off, instead placing workers in absent without leave status. Employees placed in AWOL status will be denied backpay for the time they miss and carries the potential for discipline or termination. …
Guidance from the Office of Personnel Management governing federal employees’ pay and benefits during appropriations lapses, last updated Sept. 28, stipulates that while scheduled leave is cancelled at the start of a government shutdown, agencies should grant excepted employees, who are forced to work without pay until funding is restored, access to episodic telework or be temporarily placed in a furlough status if they need time off.
“An excepted employee may be excused from duty for intermittent periods during a shutdown furlough,” OPM wrote. “While excused from performing excepted duties, the employee will be placed in furlough status unless the employee elects to use paid leave . . . However, if an excepted employee needs to be absent from work for brief periods, agencies are encouraged to explore the use of workplace flexibilities such as alternative work schedules and telework to accommodate the employee’s need to be absent. If use of workplace flexibilities is not appropriate for the situation, excepted employees must be furloughed for any brief absence or allowed to request paid leave.”
But Jessica LaPointe, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 220, which represents employees at SSA’s field offices and teleservice centers, said the agency appears to be categorically denying requests for telework or time off, instead placing workers in absent without leave status. Employees placed in AWOL status will be denied backpay for the time they miss and carries the potential for discipline or termination.
“This is notice that you have been placed on Absence without Leave (AWOL) for 8 hours . . . when you failed to report for duty,” stated a memorandum that one employee received, obtained by Government Executive. “You have been placed on AWOL because you were not on duty as scheduled and you were not on approved leave to cover the period of your absence. Although AWOL itself is not a disciplinary action, it may be used as the basis for disciplinary action . . . As I have reminded you, it is important that you come to work when scheduled, remain on the job, and perform the essential functions of your job.”
In a statement, an SSA spokesperson contested AFGE’s allegations as “inaccurate.”
“SSA is following long-standing guidelines for how requests for episodic telework, annual leave and sick leave are handled,” they wrote. “There is also a process for employees to follow if they request to be placed on furlough status, which is unchanged. SSA offices remain open and continue to serve the public.”
But that doesn’t track with what is happening across the agency, LaPointe said. The union has seen an increase in denial rates for episodic telework since the shutdown began, and she said management has added new requirements to requests from employees to be placed in a leave or furlough status. …
From Newsweek:
Several Social Security offices have been closed today amid the larger government shutdown. ...
In California, the Madera Social Security office is unable to provide in-person service until 1 p.m. local time.
Meanwhile, in Montana, the Havre office is only able to provide telephone assistance until further notice due to the shutdown.
New York is facing several disruptions, with the East Bronx location unable to provide in-person services until 10 a.m., and Canarsie and Corning locations only providing phone assistance until further notice.
The Pennsylvania office in Wilkes-Barre is only offering phone assistance on Monday, while Bloomsburg and Reading offices have generally reverted to phone service instead of any in-person options until further notice.
In South Carolina, the Spartanburg office will only be providing phone service on Monday, and the Dallas Fair Park office in Texas will be offering the same service instead of in-person capabilities.
In West Virginia, the Logan SSA office is only available by telephone.
In Wyoming, beneficiaries relying on the Cody office will need to use phone services until further notice. ...
Some of these have to do with local conditions which might occur anytime. Some of these have to do with the reduction in staffing at Social Security. Some of these have to do with the government shutdown. When people aren't being paid, they're not as enthusiastic about showing up for work when they're not feeling so well.
From the Washington Post:
Charles Borges, then chief data officer for the vast Social Security Administration, was alarmed last when he learned that members of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service had copied a mainframe database containing the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans, including names, birthdays, addresses and more.
The discovery prompted Borges to file a whistleblower complaint in August, telling Congress and the Office of Special Counsel that the cloud server where the database was uploaded had little oversight and was vulnerable to attacks by bad actors.
The result: He said the Trump administration’s reaction to his complaint caused him to feel isolated and subject to a hostile work environment, prompting him to resign and give up a decades-long government career and dream job. …
Borges is not the only Social Security official to raise concerns about the safety of data under the U.S. DOGE Service, which was launched by billionaire Elon Musk to cut costs across the government.
Former acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek — who was elevated to that role by the Trump administration after showing loyalty to DOGE — said in an interview that Borges’s worries, as documented in his whistleblower report, are both “appropriate” and “accurate.” Dudek, who said he is on paid administrative leave pending a full separation from Social Security, said the type of cloud server that DOGE used is not sufficiently protected for such personal information and has been a well-known problem for years.
“That absolutely has been the problem with that environment since I’ve been with the agency, that it is too little secured,” Dudek said. Borges, he continued, is “absolutely right.” …
From the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:
The Social Security retirement and Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) trust funds are approaching insolvency, with both trust funds expected to be depleted in just seven years. Without action, retirees face an automatic 24 percent benefit cut in 2032, while Medicare hospital payments would be cut by 12 percent. Restoring solvency to these trust funds will require slowing benefit growth, lowering health care costs, increasing revenue, or some combination.
The Social Security and Medicare trust funds are financed primarily by a 15.3 percent payroll tax on wages, split evenly between worker and employer, with the 12.4 percent Social Security tax applied only to the first $176,100 of annual wages in 2025. Proposals to boost revenue often involve increasing the tax rate or the tax cap.
This Trust Fund Solutions Initiative white paper suggests a new alternative – replacing the employer side of the payroll tax with a flat Employer Compensation Tax (ECT) on all employer compensation costs.1 While workers would continue to pay payroll taxes, employers would instead pay an ECT on all wages (with no tax cap) and all fringe benefits such as employer-sponsored insurance and stock options.
Karen E. Smith at the Urban Institute modeled this proposal using the DYNASIM model.2 Using that analysis, replacing the employer payroll tax with an ECT would:
- Raise $2.5 trillion over a decade and 0.7 percent of GDP over 75 years.
- Close two-thirds of Social Security’s shortfall and half of Medicare’s gap.3
- Alternatively, close one-third of Social Security’s shortfall, one-eighth of Medicare’s shortfall, and fund a 1 percentage point cut in payroll taxes – improving solvency while reducing taxes for the bottom 60 percent of workers.
- Extend Social Security solvency by two decades to 2055 and modestly extend Medicare solvency – with further extension if combined with other reforms.
- Increase progressivity, generating revenue mainly from the highest earners.
- Support stronger economic growth than alternative revenue options.
- Improve horizontal equity, efficiency, and simplicity; slow health care cost growth; and avoid viability and revenue stability concerns of alternatives. …
From Fedscoop:
A nonprofit legal group is calling on the Social Security Administration to release records on recent internal changes and “customer service breakdowns,” alleging it has caused widespread service disruptions for millions of Americans under the Trump administration.
In a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Maryland on Monday, Democracy Forward said SSA did not respond to multiple records requests for details on the agency’s workforce reductions, cuts to phone services and the elimination of customer service metrics on the agency website that took place this year.
These changes, according to Democracy Forward, prompted longer wait times, payment delays and “confusion for beneficiaries in vulnerable situations,” the lawsuit stated. The group said it filed various Freedom of Information Act requests over the summer regarding these incidents, but SSA did not hand over determinations or release the records. …
