ArcaMax

Before I begin today's column, which questions some of President Donald Trump's planned staff reductions at the Social Security Administration, let me confess that at the end of the column, I point out that I might be dead wrong! So, let's begin.

Imagine that you owned a successful business that was gaining 10,000 new customers each day, with all the market projections saying that trend would continue for many more years. Would you be hiring new staff and opening new outlets to keep up with the demand? Or would you be cutting back on employees, reducing office hours and closing facilities?

If you were in the private sector, I guarantee you would be doing the former. But in the wacky world of government funding and operations, the latter is the norm.

Take as an example my former employer: the Social Security Administration. In each of the last 10 years, around 10,000 people a day have been retiring and signing up for Social Security benefits. That is expected to continue for another dozen years or more. In other words, SSA workloads are booming!

What has been our government leader's response to that? Budget cutbacks and staffing cuts. During Trump's first term, he ordered a 15% across-the-board cut in government staffing, including the SSA. And now, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency are mandating another huge reduction in staff.

If you think that these cuts are merely reversing all the growth in government that happened during years when Democrats were in power, well, you are simply wrong. Let's use the SSA as an example. Throughout the 2000s, no matter which political party was in power, the agency's operating budget dropped by about 20% while workloads continued to increase dramatically.

And if you also think that the SSA, just like any other government agency, has a bloated administrative budget that could stand some trimming, well, think again. Out of every dollar collected in Social Security taxes, less than one penny goes toward running the agency that maintains earnings records for almost every worker in this country and pays monthly benefits to about 69 million Americans. I think it would be darn near impossible to find one single successful business in the private sector that works with a 1% overhead.

When I started working for the SSA in the early 1970s, I was one of about 82,000 relatively happy and proud employees working for one of the best-run agencies in all of government. The SSA consistently won awards for public service and administrative responsibility. I liked the phrase one of my co-workers always used: "The SSA is an honorable institution engaged in a noble public purpose."

Local Social Security offices were well-run, clean and efficient. I worked in several of those offices in small towns and medium-sized cities across the country. They were pleasant places to work and pleasant places to visit. I enjoyed the time I had to sit down with the people who came in who were filing for any of the various kinds of Social Security benefits. I was able to take the time to not only explain all the (often complicated) Social Security rules that applied to them but also to simply chat and ask them how their day was going. I always kept in the back of my mind that even though this was just an everyday job for me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the customer. I tried -- and maybe more importantly, I was given the opportunity -- to make sure it was as pleasant as possible.

Unfortunately, now it's a different world and a different SSA. Those 82,000 employees I worked with in the '70s and '80s have been trimmed down to about 60,000. The Trump/Musk cuts are planned to reduce SSA staffing to 50,000. Of course, the catchphrase for staff reductions is "work smarter, not harder." Well, catchphrases can only go so far.

With reduced staff and resources, it's all about numbers, efficiency and time management. Walking in off the street to visit a pleasant local Social Security office to maybe ask some Social Security questions and possibly file for benefits while having a little chat with a happy employee has become a pipe dream. Now you must call the SSA's toll-free number and wait on hold for a long time (some readers have told me for two hours or more) to make an appointment. Then, you will probably wait weeks or even a month or more for that appointment. And sadly, the SSA rep you finally get to talk to has neither the training nor the time that I had and probably does not have the esprit de corps that I had either.

(Let me quickly note here that you, as a potential SSA customer, can "work smarter, not harder" by using the agency's website to conduct much of your Social Security business.)

Other SSA workloads are also suffering. For example, the disability story is a pretty bleak tale. It takes the SSA six to eight months to process a claim for disability benefits. About 65% of those first-time claims are denied, meaning hundreds of thousands of people appeal their claims to a Social Security judge. The average wait time for that hearing is about 15 months. Those numbers keep getting worse as the SSA's budget and workforce are continually reduced.

Having said all that, let me now reverse course. Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe these are just the musings of an old codger (I'm 75) pining for the "good old days" that just aren't anymore. Maybe Trump and Musk are not out to do permanent damage to the SSA. Maybe, as a recent agency press release pointed out, they are merely shifting resources from administrative positions to field office positions. Maybe a leaner and more targeted workforce is the way to go. Who knows -- maybe artificial intelligence bots will do a better job of consoling an old woman who just lost her husband of 50 years while helping her file for widow's benefits than I ever did.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see. But gosh, I sure do miss those good old days!

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If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has two books with all the answers. One is called "Social Security -- Simple and Smart: 10 Easy-to-Understand Fact Sheets That Will Answer All Your Questions About Social Security." The other is "Social Security: 100 Myths and 100 Facts." You can find the books at Amazon.com or other book outlets. Or you can send him an email at thomas.margenau@comcast.net. To find out more about Tom Margenau and to read past columns and see features from other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM

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