OCTOBER 10, 2025

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Kuttner on TAP

More Sneak Attacks on Social Security

It's hard to kill America's most loved program outright—so Trump is strangling it by stealth.

In his campaign for president, Trump promised to protect Social Security and Medicare. On paper, Social Security, which has its own revenue sources via payroll taxes and trust funds, is protected from both the budget cuts of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill and from the impact of the government shutdown. But Trump keeps trying to weaken or destroy Social Security by stealth.

The two latest examples: On Monday, the Treasury announced the appointment of Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, who is far from competent at running his own agency, to also serve as “CEO” of the IRS, a nonexistent position. Before joining the administration, Bisignano had had a number of senior posts in private finance where he was known for ruthless consolidations that cut jobs.

After being appointed Social Security commissioner by Trump, Bisignano said, according to an article in the Federal News Network: “I don’t think the commissioner of Social Security is like a globally known title. It is to you, right? But, like, it wasn’t to me. I’m like, ‘Well, what am I gonna do?’ So I’m Googling ‘Social Security.’ That’s one of my great skills, I’m one of the great Googlers on the East Coast.... I’m like, ‘What the heck’s the commissioner of Social Security?’”

Also this past week came leaks from the administration that age will no longer be taken into account in determining whether someone is eligible for disability. This could disqualify some 750,000 applicants over the next decade, according to. Jack Smalligan of the Urban Institute, a former Office of Management and Budget official through five administrations.

Even before personnel cuts and the plan for more onerous terms for getting disability benefits, wait times for accessing disability benefits were far too long. According to the Economic Policy Institute, as of February 2025, the process averaged 236 days for decisions issued in the initial stage and 277 days for cases that were appealed. Over a million people are waiting on an appeal, with tens of thousands dying while awaiting a decision.

New Trump assaults aimed at the destruction of valued public agencies happen so rapidly that it’s sometimes hard to remember what occurred just a few months ago. Let’s recall that back in the spring, DOGE under Elon Musk was hell-bent on destroying Social Security via layoffs, coerced retirements, and closure of offices.

Musk and his stooges targeted Social Security for a 12 percent cut in staff, through a combination of layoffs and incentivized early retirements. Employees who voluntarily resigned by April 19 were offered financial incentives ranging from $15,000 to $25,000.

Learn how We the 99% can transform everything!

DOGE also targeted the shutdown of local and regional offices. The Social Security Administration has not disclosed how much of this was actually carried out. Much of the worst has been averted both by public pressure and court rulings. But damage has been done. At a hearing in June, Bisignano testified that Social Security has lost about 3,700 employees since January out of a total of about 57,000, squeezing existing staff and damaging morale.

In August, Axios estimated that Social Security offices have lost an average of 20 percent of staff since last year. According to Nancy Altman, president of the group Social Security Works, the staff shortages have undermined morale and in turn shifted many staff from field offices to answering the 1-800 number, which is creating backlogs in processing claims and other problems in the offices.

In the past, Social Security has been among the most responsive of public-facing agencies. Last year, I had some business to do with Social Security and the telephone personnel could not have been more helpful. It took only a few minutes to get a knowledgeable person on the phone. And unlike the underpaid and overworked people staffing commercial call centers, she was not trying to sell me anything. She valued the agency’s mission and the larger Social Security program. She was a human advertisement for the worth of the public sector.

No wonder Trump is hell-bent on trying to destroy Social Security. It also took only a few days to schedule a live meeting at my local Social Security office, and if I was willing to wait an hour or two, same day walk-in appointments were available.

While Musk was prevented from doing his worst, all of this has deteriorated. Today, the responsiveness is hit-or-miss. A friend, whose husband died recently, reports that the earliest appointment she was offered to sort out her Social Security benefits—and a phone meeting, not a live one—is in mid-December. On the other hand, I stopped by my local Social Security office to get a sense of the traffic, and they still have walk-in appointments if you are willing to wait a few hours.

While Bisignano has claimed that telephone wait times are typically just a few minutes or less, a staff investigation by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) found that the typical wait time was 102 minutes, and that more than half the calls ended when the caller just gave up. One in three had wait times exceeding two hours.

Last July, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent let the cat out of the bag. Speaking at a conference sponsored by Breitbart, he described a new program of small savings accounts for babies signed into law in June as “a backdoor for privatizing Social Security.”

Whether the program is targeted via the front door or the back, people should be clear about who Social Security’s friends and enemies are.

– ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Bluesky