E. Tammy Kim at The New Yorker has a great piece going inside the work life of a current Social Security claims rep. The reporter was not supposed to have this kind of access.
I'm sure you've seen some cartoons from The New Yorker but you may not be all that familiar with the magazine. I've been subscribing for more than 50 years. I can tell you that articles in The New Yorker have an national agenda setting impact well beyond what most people could imagine.
From the Washington Post:
… Chief among [DOGE’s] plans: Using their tech expertise to build apps and websites to help federal workers and Americans trying to access government services, according to two people familiar with DOGE internal workings. Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, a close friend of Musk’s who was responsible for the company’s inviting look, has been recruited to help lead the effort. Even this has invited criticism, however. Musk has repeatedly criticized Social Security, one of the government’s most popular programs, and DOGE staffers have been working inside the agency. But an effort to give the Social Security website and services a user-friendly digital overhaul was already underway at the U.S. Digital Service — until Musk pushed out the team working on it, according to Mina Hsiang, who led the USDS before the department became the U.S. DOGE Service in January.
“When you fire people who have deep understandings of the mission you want to accomplish, you’re sort of starting from zero,” she said. …
From Bloomberg:
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has sent three individuals with experience in private equity and finance to the Social Security Administration, highlighting the focus that President Donald Trump is putting on rooting out waste and fraud in the nation’s social insurance programs.
Among those tapped for the task are Antonio Gracias of Valor Equity Partners, who also served on the board of Tesla Inc. and was an early investor in SpaceX — two of Musk’s companies — as well as Scott Coulter, formerly of Lone Pine Capital, and Michael Russo, formerly of Shift4, according to people familiar with the moves who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss them. …
Social Security and other federal agencies are operating under a Continuing Resolution (CR) allowing them to spend money at the same rate as during the prior fiscal year. The current CR expires on March 15.
Republicans in the House of Representatives have released their version of a new full year CR. It gives the Social Security Administration $14.2 billion for operations, which is down by about $100 million from the prior FY. Of course, this is effectively a greater cut when inflation is considered. That bill's chances in the House are uncertain.
However, no appropriations bill can pass the Senate without Democratic votes or ending the filibuster. The price for Democratic support in the Senate is an end to the DOGE reign of terror, which many Republican Senators might also want, even though they won't say it publicly. A government shutdown looks inevitable and it could be a long one. I don't know about the President or Republicans in Congress but this is a fight to the death for Democrats.
Remember that while most Social Security employees are deemed essential and will stay on the job, eventually the pay checks stop in a very long shutdown. You can't get pay for the time period after the shutdown begins until some sort of funding bill is passed. Federal employees will have to figure out when that will occur.
Hovering over this is the claim of the President that he is under no obligation to spend appropriated funds — recission. This is almost certainly unconstitutional but that’s not stopping him at the moment. It’s not clear that he will obey the Supreme Court when they finally tell him explicitly to knock it off as I expect.
Here’s an extraordinary account of what led up to Michelle King’s firing as Acting Commissioner of Social Security and Lee Dudek’s elevation from the then Acting Chief of Staff, Tiffany Flick.
From the Citizens’ Voice in Pennsylvania:
The labor union leader for employees at the Social Security Administration Data Operations Center in Plains Twp. said she can’t understand how the vital facility ended up on a government sales list earlier this week.
The facility is the lone one in the country that does what it does, said Barri Sue Bryant, head of the local American Federation of Government Employees, who represents more than 1,000 workers there.
“We are the only one left. We are necessary,” Bryant said. “I don’t think much thought went into that list at all.”
Earlier this week, the General Services Administration identified the local Social Security facility as one of 433 “non-core assets” the government wants to sell. By the next day, the list was removed from the agency’s website, replaced by a “coming soon” message. …
Bryant said the Social Security call center — which employs more than 1,100 people — does vital work.’
Between Oct. 1 and Jan. 31, the center handled 1.23 million customer service calls to help people with their Social Security benefits, she said.
During that time, the staff responded to 140,000 emails, processed over 84,000 retirement claims and processed more than 4,000 disability claims, Bryant said. ..
From the Associated Press:
A group of labor unions are asking a federal court for an emergency order to stop Elon Musk ‘s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the sensitive Social Security data of millions of Americans.
The motion for emergency relief was filed late Friday in federal court in Maryland by the legal services group Democracy Forward against the Social Security Administration and its acting commissioner, Leland Dudek. The unions want the court to block DOGE’s access to the vast troves of personal data held by the agency.
From ABC News:
The Department of Government Efficiency is sifting through $1.6 trillion worth of Social Security payments -- records that include a person's name, birth date and how much they earn -- in an anti-fraud effort that has advocates worried the Trump administration could start denying payments to vulnerable older Americans.
Details on the effort were confirmed in a recent letter to Congress by acting Social Security Administrator Lee Dudek and by several sources familiar with the project.
In addition to combing through sensitive data, DOGE staffers also have been inquiring about the Social Security Administration'stelephone service, sources told ABC News, which a significant portion of beneficiaries use to file initial claims. DOGE's inquiries about the telephone service have raised concerns that it may be planning either to replace the telephone service with private call centers or eliminate it as an option for filing claims, sources said. …
