How DOGE’s grand plan to remake Social Security is backfiring – The Washington Post
The agency is abandoning an initiative aimed at preventing fraud, the latest example of a failed effort by Elon Musk’s disruptive cost-cutting team.The agency is abandoning an initiative aimed at preventing fraud, the latest example of a failed effort by Elon Musk’s disruptive cost-cutting team.
May 16, 2025 at 6:52 p.m. EDT, Yesterday at 6:52 p.m. EDT, 12 min
By Hannah Natanson, Lisa Rein and Meryl Kornfield
An entrance to the Social Security Administration headquarters in Woodlawn, Maryland, seen March 20. (Wesley Lapointe / For The Washington Post)The U.S. DOGE Service arrived at the Social Security Administration this year determined to slash staff and root out what it claimed was widespread fraud and wasteful spending — a mission Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team has pursued across the government.
But as of this week, many of the major changes DOGE pushed at Social Security have been abandoned or are being reversed after proving ineffective, while others are yielding unintended consequences and badly damaging customer service and satisfaction. The problems come as the agency struggles to cope with a record surge of hundreds of thousands of retirement claims in recent months.
DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency but is not a Cabinet-level agency, had to cancela plan to cut phone service for retirement and disability claimsafter drawing outrage from lawmakers, seniors and advocates. Staff reductions and reassignments led by DOGE are slowing the pace of claims processingas field offices lose longtime staff and gain a smaller number of inexperienced replacements. DOGE-driven changes to the agency’s website are causing crashes almost every day, and phone customers complain about dropped calls and long wait times. A DOGE-imposed spending freeze is leading to shortages of basic office supplies, from printer cartridges to the phone headsets staff need to do their jobs.
Source Links: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/16/doge-social-security-musk-trump-cuts/
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