Social Security Identifies Hundreds of Millions of Dollars in Savings
Actions Support the Administration’s Priorities
The Social Security Administration (SSA) continues to make good on President Trump’s promise to protect American taxpayers from unnecessary spending while continuing to ensure it delivers on its mission.
“For too long, SSA has operated on autopilot,” said Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of Social Security. “We have spent billions annually doing the same things the same way, leading to bureaucratic stagnation, inefficiency, and a lack of meaningful service improvements. It is time to change just that.”
The agency has thus far identified over $800 million in cost savings or cost avoidance for fiscal year (FY) 2025 in areas of payroll, information technology, contracts and grants, and space savings (i.e., real property), and other savings through new, common-sense approaches to printing, travel, and purchase card policies.
- List of Savings
- Payroll: Froze SSA and Disability Determination Services (DDS) hiring and drastically reduced overtime - $550 million.
- Information Technology Systems (ITS) Budget: An ITS budget reduction of $150 million by cancelling non-essential contracts and identifying reductions in other ITS contracts.
- Non-ITS Budget: 70 percent Reduction in Travel - $10 million.
- Contracts and Grants:
- Contracts Terminated - $15 million.
- Grants Terminated - $15 million.
- Real Property:
- Planned non-public facing usable square footage (USF) reductions:
- Achieved Savings to date - 270,000 USF - $102 million.
- Anticipated Additional Savings thru EOY FY 2025 - 30,000 USF - $1.5 million.
- Soft-Term Lease Terminations – Over 60 lease terminations with assistance from the General Services Administration (GSA) - $4.0 million in annual rent savings once terminations are complete. Most sites are co-located; others are non-public facing, consolidations, or preplanned closings.
- Guards: Plan to implement protective security officer staffing model and policy for field offices - estimated $30 million beginning in FY 2025.
- Printing and Postage: Made SSA-1099 and SSA-1042 notices available online, and 5.4 million customers opted out of paper notices - $3 million cost avoidance.
- Centralized Print Printing: Contracted with vendors to centrally print and mail notices rather than having frontline staff print and mail them locally - $28 million in workyear savings.
- Travel and Purchase Card Policy: Revised card policy to save millions in purchase card obligations.
Social Security remains committed to identifying more ways to save taxpayers money and implementing more solutions that free up frontline employees to help more customers.
36 comments:
The postage and guard savings will more than pay the 4.5 trillion in Republican tax cuts! This new SSA acting commissioner has turned me around on the importance of DOGE raiding my personal information and possibly delaying my benefits.
"Payroll: Froze SSA and Disability Determination Services (DDS) hiring and drastically reduced overtime - $550 million."
Bahahaha! How much time is saved on someone's disability claim?
DOGE math includes a lot of imaginary numbers.
The DOGE calculations make sense since it’s reported that at least one minion never graduated from high school. I guess SSA got the short straw.
Moving money around…
Lee Dudek, the acting commissioner for the Social Security Administration, is facing questions about his appointment to the role from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts who serves on the Senate's Finance Committee.
In a March 2 letter to Dudek, Warren highlights a LinkedIn post from before his appointment as acting commissioner, in which he wrote that he had "bullied agency executives" to help the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, billionaire Elon Musk's cost-cutting effort. Dudek added that he shared executive contact information and "moved contractor money around" to add resources to his anti-fraud team, according to Warren's letter.
“or preplanned closings.……”
Way to take credit for something previously identified.
Love hearing the same nonsense upchucked over and over. DOGE isn't looking at your personal information or any of the other hundreds of millions that SSA has. Why do you think they have time do that and what's so special about your record?
And just wait till DOGE contracts all Social Security work out to H&R Block! That will save the taxpayer billions...until they wind up paying for any service they require...
The hiring freeze + reduced overtime will directly and adversely impact the public. So much for not touching Social Security.
ACOSS Leland, I know you said we were going to be focusing on the frontline workers and the frontline service. We know DDS is getting crushed. Any opportunity for those you plan on firing in HQ or RO to be set up in federal DPU’s and trained as examiners? That would lend a tremendous benefit to the overall Dib time and relieve the fields and struggling states. That’s where we need a ton of help. OQR was doing collateral duty in this capacity. Train a bunch more of those employees, let them keep their grade and move them to this frontline work as surge ready.
If I were ACOSS, I would just get rid of DDSs altogether and we would save a lot more, plus it would delay benefits for lots of folks. That is efficiency. I would run SSA like a profitable insurance company like United health care.
"I lost 30 pounds by cutting off my legs!"
Prelude to privatization:’ Social Security confirms workforce reduction targets, continues to shutter offices
With that came an announcement that the agency will consolidate its current 10 regional offices down to four, as well as reorganize headquarters. And Elon Musk’s DOGE operatives have cancelled the leases for 45 field offices across the country, as well as the Office of Hearings Operations in White Plains, N.Y.
Strange how 5.4 million people opted out mailing all in a month. Find that awfully fucking hard to believe. And what grants were terminated? Proof or it didn't happen.
DOGE SSA savings?
Allegation 243 million
Actual 560k
Are these figures even in the same ballpark?
Managers cannot use their SSA credit cards to purchase needed items and no bills are being paid. Think utilities etc.
Central Print conversion efforts started 5-6 years ago and a nice chunk of it happened under Biden's term. You have to wonder how much of this list can be credited to people other than those who have been in charge a mere 3-6 weeks.
"Froze SSA and Disability Determination Services (DDS) hiring and drastically reduced overtime - $550 million."
I wish Musk could meet the people who are destitute, or dying, waiting for their court remand favorable decision to be processed, waiting for a DDS decision on their Expedited Reinstatement request.
Cutting overtime and hiring is not something to brag about. It's something to be ashamed of, when vital and critical work is being accomplished for the American public on overtime.
It might be prudent to have all of these DOGE financial savings claims audited by an independent entity. Like SSA is statutorily required to do. Just saying!
If they have indeed saved those dollars please cut the check to the American People's Treasury. Most of these savings are slight of hand.
Musk would not care. He's a psychopath. Look at how he treats his own children.
Yes, can't wait until DOGE publishes how much in late fees we have this month.....LOL
Going to say the same thing. Hm I have this vague memory that Centralized Printing got implemented quite a bit of time ago and that Trump/Musk weren't around yet smh. What rubbish.
DOGE does 2 things in its reporting- (1) reports gross savings instead of net savings (or more accurately, losses) and (2) doesn't bother to provide any rationale for how their cuts reflect a reduction in fraud, waste, or inefficiency.
The 1099 is a joke. The amount of replacements we have had to send to people has cost extra money for printing, postage, and admin time. People who “opted” to get it online but have not logged into MySSA in years.
All of these cuts will drive up wait times for everything AGAIN — after all of the hard-won progress of last year. Many more Americans will die now awaiting their disability determination. These guys are driving the agency to systems collapse. It’s all systems, adjudications, and claims processing.
What a load of garbage. Travel and Purchase Card Policy: Revised card policy to save millions in purchase card obligations. Changing the policy does not eliminate the need to make purchases or hold hearings. You are just making the process LESS EFFICIENT by requiring Credit card limits to be modified every time you need to make an expenditure.
Mr. O'Malley, thank you for your service to SSA. We need you sir to keep preaching to the masses about the devastating impacts of these cuts. We have no one in Congress to support us. Bless the Democrats, they just can't seem to established consistent messaging around Social Security.
We were also sending mail through central print. Guard service will have to paid from another agency. I don’t see a saving here.
It depends on the area. Definitely there has been central print for many years with certain doc categories, but some legacy apps are now upgrading their old local print docs.
Cutting off DDS funding and overtime when the DDS backlog is the primary driver of disability claim delays is a special kind of malicious. Will never understand how people voted for this.
Thank you for not forgetting about us, it is much appreciated. They are trying to destroy one of the most important Agencies in our country's history.
We have many people come in or call they need a 1099 because they never got it. AND their address is correct. Great job by whoever the contractor was on this one.
Martin - it’s sad what’s happening. Thank you for not forgetting about us. Thank you for advocating for us before and after. Your time is not done. Run for President please, we need your vision for our country’s future.
How can SSA declare their PSCs as not core buildings? Take Mid-Atlantic Service Center in Philadelphia. That building is occupied by the processing center, a teleservice center, the nation's only remittance processing, hearing offices and vital field office support groups. How can that not be a vital building?
The plan is actually beautiful if you step back from the horror for a minute. Disperse the staff, divest of the buildings, eliminate programs, all quite effective. If there is nothing left rebuilding becomes infinitely more difficult. Its done folks, another month and SSA is done and over. Get used to it, the damage is done, its a matter of time now. Maybe 5 years maybe 10 but SSA is done.
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