GOP will pay a price in November for Social Security chaos

In March, the U-T Editorial Board wrote that severe staffing cuts at the Social Security Administration — nominally a part of the “Department of Government Efficiency” campaign to reduce spending and shed unneeded workers — looked like a back-door attempt to control the spiraling cost of entitlements by making it harder for older Americans to get benefits they’d been promised. That month, we also published an essay by Kathleen O’Neil, a 97-year-old La Mesa resident who had been getting Social Security checks for decades and was alarmed that mass firings could make it far more difficult to resolve problems with claims.

The two pieces led to sharp criticism from some readers that this reflected “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” A letter writer noted that Donald Trump had vowed to protect Social Security and called it “sad” to read of O’Neil’s losing sleep due to “the biased media” — not anything Trump or DOGE had done.

Really? More than nine months later, after the layoffs of nearly 7,000 SSA workers — 12% of its workforce — the dysfunction at the agency has reached all-time highs. A lengthy investigation by The Washington Post published on Dec. 29 found that the demoralized remaining workers “struggled to respond to up to 6 million pending cases in its processing centers and 12 million transactions in its field offices,” citing the SSA’s own reports.

The Post chronicled how problems were particularly acute for first-time benefit seekers. But it also noted that longtime Social Security recipients faced more headaches than ever in getting help resolving problems with their checks. Because online assistance was reduced under DOGE, many were forced to go to field offices and wait in long lines for help.

This is outrageous. Remember, the cuts were justified in part by the president’s repeated claims that the agency regularly issued “millions and millions” of “obviously fraudulent” benefit checks. Long before DOGE’s autumn disappearance, it went silent about SSA fraud, a tacit admission it had found little.

There is no question that Social Security’s finances are broken. Without changes — starting with an increase in how much personal income is subject to SSA taxes and an increase in the age when retirees can receive benefits — “technical insolvency” looms in 2033, resulting in automatic 23% benefit cuts.

But whether that is the administration’s motive for shrinking the agency’s payroll or just wanting to free up money for tax cuts for the wealthy, it is appalling. Come November’s election, “millions and millions” of voters are likely to show they agree.