From Morningstar:
... The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents a total of 820,000 federal government workers, recently called on Congress to restore about $3 billion in funding to the SSA that was lost to budget cuts, and to boost the workforce by as much as 40% from current levels. ...
The SSA's administrative budget has fallen from 1.2% of benefit outlays in 2017 to 0.86% currently, which represents an annual loss of $3 billion in operating revenue, the union said. In comparison, private insurance companies are funded at roughly 20% of their benefit outlays, meaning that the SSA is deeply underfunded, the union said.
Meanwhile, SSA staffing has declined 14% during President Donald Trump's second term - from 57,384 in January 2025 down to 49,439 in June 2026 - a net loss of 7,945 employees, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. ...
Anecdotally, I'm only aware of a handful of new hires lately. There were a couple of summer interns scattered around the field offices who were only there a few weeks each before being terminated again, and a few DDS employees have been transitioned over to now technically work for SSA. Still waiting on them to beef up literally any phone or technical staff because those retirements are a constant erosion. They don't send around "In Memoriums" anymore but some coworkers have also just straight up passed away, and there's no acknowledgement of those people or their service. Pretty grim.
ReplyDeleteThe US taxpayer has a debt of over 40 trillion dollars. Everybody and their uncle will be passing out the tin can. The request is reasonable but not realistic. The obvious game plan by this administration is to starve the beast and privatize the agency. The TrumpAccounts will be used to justify privatization since the younger generation will be “ rolling” in money. One problem, we are in AI bubble that’s about to pop. 🎈
ReplyDeleteThe national debt shouldn’t really be of concern as long as we don’t continue to elect illiterate old orange men of below average intelligence to destroy the nation’s credibility and economic viability.
DeleteSSA programs are also tremendously more complex than private insurance programs SSA runs on that disproportionately small budget. Yet about half of Americans confronted with all this information are so incurably stupid that they would conclude privatization of SSA would be more efficient. What a golden age we live in.
ReplyDelete