This piece paints a bleak picture of what’s happening to Social Security under Trump and Musk’s so-called "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE). The term itself is ironic, "efficiency" in government, at least in this context, seems to mean gutting vital services, hollowing out agencies, and setting the stage for a privatization pu…
This piece paints a bleak picture of what’s happening to Social Security under Trump and Musk’s so-called "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE). The term itself is ironic, "efficiency" in government, at least in this context, seems to mean gutting vital services, hollowing out agencies, and setting the stage for a privatization push that no one actually voted for.
The warning signs are clear:
1. Mass layoffs and office closures at SSA → This directly affects service levels. If you’ve ever had to deal with Social Security, you know that long wait times and bureaucratic headaches are already a challenge. Cutting staff and closing offices will only make this worse, especially for the elderly and disabled who rely on in-person support.
2. "Outsourcing non-essential functions" → What exactly does that mean? It sounds like they’re laying the groundwork for handing pieces of Social Security over to private industry, potentially shifting responsibilities to corporations that will prioritize profit over service. AI replacing human call center agents may be part of this plan, but as O’Malley pointed out, Social Security isn't just about numbers—it’s about helping people navigate complex, life-altering situations.
3. Deliberate dismantling of SSA to justify privatization → This is a classic playbook move: starve a public program of resources, watch it struggle, then claim that the private sector is the only solution. Wyden is right to call this out—hollowing out Social Security first, then using its decline as a justification for privatization, is a calculated strategy.
4. Potential for Social Security "interruption" → If O’Malley is right and benefit payments get delayed or disrupted, it would be the first time in SSA’s history that such a crisis happens. That would be catastrophic. Millions rely on those checks to survive.
There’s also a more profound concern here—DOGE is operating with seemingly unchecked executive power. Even if Congress allocates funds, Trump’s team is signaling that they’ll simply ignore legislative intent unless the courts intervene. This creates a dangerous precedent where the executive branch can unilaterally sabotage programs it dislikes, regardless of public or congressional opposition.
It’s a textbook case of authoritarian erosion:
1. Destroy an institution from within.
2. Make it nonfunctional.
3. Use the chaos as an excuse to replace it with a privatized, less accountable alternative.
Democrats can scream about this all they want, but without power, their options are limited. The best they can do is push for funding in budget bills (which Trump might ignore) or hope lawsuits can slow the process. The fact that this is happening while baby boomers are retiring en masse is especially cruel; this is exactly when Social Security needs more resources, not fewer.
The biggest question is: Where does this end? If Social Security is being dismantled, what’s next? Medicare? Public education? USPS? If efficiency means gutting essential programs to enrich private industry, then no public service is safe.
This isn’t just about Social Security. It’s about whether public institutions that support ordinary people will continue to exist; or whether they’ll be replaced by corporate interests that treat basic survival as a business opportunity.
When I was hired by USPS (40 + years ago), there were just under 1 million employees there. Today the number is a little over 400,000. More than half of those remaining employees deliver the mail to more than 80 million distinct delivery points (addresses) six days a week. The letter carriers. Your mailman. The simple story of the slashing of personnel is a reduction in mail volume. Banks, Insurance companies, advertisers and more began slowly and then rapidly moving to electronic distribution. But the larger issue was the subletting and subcontracting of equipment and personnel to perform the work of getting the mail ready for delivery. Functions performed at hundreds of mail processing and distribution centers were slowly contracted out to be performed more cheaply. Still today, more than 100 thousand humans work nights and weekends processing the mail to get it ready for the letter carrier to deliver the mail to the customer every day.
And the real problem is that delivering mail to every mail box in America - and checking every mailbox in America every day in case that mailbox might have a piece of mail going out- is a losing proposition financially. It always was. It might well be tenable in cities, where people live on top of one another, but in rural areas it is a loss leader every day. Maintaining the largest vehicle fleet in the western hemisphere is expensive. Paying half a million employees is expensive. The constitution (who cares?) provides for the establishment of the postal service. People trust the postal service more than any other government agency. But selling off the profitable sections (read: metropolitan delivery) of the USPS has been on the horizon for decades. And who will be most victimized by such privatization? The same folks who elect Republican leaders who will gladly sell them out in exchange for a campaign contribution from FEDEX, UPS And other entities who will send them an email that tells them to come and get their medication at the nearest center and pay an additional surcharge for their trouble.
When I went to work for the Postal Service, the old timers told me at the time, ‘kid, you’ll never get rich working here, but you’ll never go hungry either’. And they were right. I raised a family, sent kids to school, and paid a mortgage. I took advantage of an opportunity to contribute to a retirement fund and the organization matched (up to 5%) those contributions and allowed me to select options in managing that fund. I retired with a package that paid for continuance of my health insurance and consider myself very fortunate to have done so.
Thanks for this information. A lot of things has changed that the postal service has to deal with and the delivery at every mail box is quite a sticking point. The biggest issue for rural communities is that they can't easily benefit from scale and volume. Their services are expensive to provide, and they keep voting for the party that does not want to pay for their services. Then they get mad at the government. Speaking as someone who lives in the country and does not get made at the government. My rural carrier has gone out of his way to deliver my mail in a few different circumstances. I've had Amazon ignore my delivery instructions, with the end result that my packages have gotten destroyed by my dog. I prefer USPS.
There are so many mandates even by the government that specify USPS must be used, Congress was one of them but I don’t know now. What really made a difference for letters or documents is email, it matters.
This is not a 2025 plan it’s the same plan the former GOP has had all along, none of these ideas are new! I had an employee that went to dubya war, he told me the repugnants were the one talking big pensions for time put in and I reamed him. I said just watch they will be cutting your benefits and it’s all the time! Again no surprise to me but boy did he get screwed VA give your life and get nothing if you survive or are permanently disabled. I really despise them all.
This piece paints a bleak picture of what’s happening to Social Security under Trump and Musk’s so-called "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE). The term itself is ironic, "efficiency" in government, at least in this context, seems to mean gutting vital services, hollowing out agencies, and setting the stage for a privatization push that no one actually voted for.
The warning signs are clear:
1. Mass layoffs and office closures at SSA → This directly affects service levels. If you’ve ever had to deal with Social Security, you know that long wait times and bureaucratic headaches are already a challenge. Cutting staff and closing offices will only make this worse, especially for the elderly and disabled who rely on in-person support.
2. "Outsourcing non-essential functions" → What exactly does that mean? It sounds like they’re laying the groundwork for handing pieces of Social Security over to private industry, potentially shifting responsibilities to corporations that will prioritize profit over service. AI replacing human call center agents may be part of this plan, but as O’Malley pointed out, Social Security isn't just about numbers—it’s about helping people navigate complex, life-altering situations.
3. Deliberate dismantling of SSA to justify privatization → This is a classic playbook move: starve a public program of resources, watch it struggle, then claim that the private sector is the only solution. Wyden is right to call this out—hollowing out Social Security first, then using its decline as a justification for privatization, is a calculated strategy.
4. Potential for Social Security "interruption" → If O’Malley is right and benefit payments get delayed or disrupted, it would be the first time in SSA’s history that such a crisis happens. That would be catastrophic. Millions rely on those checks to survive.
There’s also a more profound concern here—DOGE is operating with seemingly unchecked executive power. Even if Congress allocates funds, Trump’s team is signaling that they’ll simply ignore legislative intent unless the courts intervene. This creates a dangerous precedent where the executive branch can unilaterally sabotage programs it dislikes, regardless of public or congressional opposition.
It’s a textbook case of authoritarian erosion:
1. Destroy an institution from within.
2. Make it nonfunctional.
3. Use the chaos as an excuse to replace it with a privatized, less accountable alternative.
Democrats can scream about this all they want, but without power, their options are limited. The best they can do is push for funding in budget bills (which Trump might ignore) or hope lawsuits can slow the process. The fact that this is happening while baby boomers are retiring en masse is especially cruel; this is exactly when Social Security needs more resources, not fewer.
The biggest question is: Where does this end? If Social Security is being dismantled, what’s next? Medicare? Public education? USPS? If efficiency means gutting essential programs to enrich private industry, then no public service is safe.
This isn’t just about Social Security. It’s about whether public institutions that support ordinary people will continue to exist; or whether they’ll be replaced by corporate interests that treat basic survival as a business opportunity.
Trump is mulling about shutting down USPS. Public education will be getting its own reaming.
When I was hired by USPS (40 + years ago), there were just under 1 million employees there. Today the number is a little over 400,000. More than half of those remaining employees deliver the mail to more than 80 million distinct delivery points (addresses) six days a week. The letter carriers. Your mailman. The simple story of the slashing of personnel is a reduction in mail volume. Banks, Insurance companies, advertisers and more began slowly and then rapidly moving to electronic distribution. But the larger issue was the subletting and subcontracting of equipment and personnel to perform the work of getting the mail ready for delivery. Functions performed at hundreds of mail processing and distribution centers were slowly contracted out to be performed more cheaply. Still today, more than 100 thousand humans work nights and weekends processing the mail to get it ready for the letter carrier to deliver the mail to the customer every day.
And the real problem is that delivering mail to every mail box in America - and checking every mailbox in America every day in case that mailbox might have a piece of mail going out- is a losing proposition financially. It always was. It might well be tenable in cities, where people live on top of one another, but in rural areas it is a loss leader every day. Maintaining the largest vehicle fleet in the western hemisphere is expensive. Paying half a million employees is expensive. The constitution (who cares?) provides for the establishment of the postal service. People trust the postal service more than any other government agency. But selling off the profitable sections (read: metropolitan delivery) of the USPS has been on the horizon for decades. And who will be most victimized by such privatization? The same folks who elect Republican leaders who will gladly sell them out in exchange for a campaign contribution from FEDEX, UPS And other entities who will send them an email that tells them to come and get their medication at the nearest center and pay an additional surcharge for their trouble.
When I went to work for the Postal Service, the old timers told me at the time, ‘kid, you’ll never get rich working here, but you’ll never go hungry either’. And they were right. I raised a family, sent kids to school, and paid a mortgage. I took advantage of an opportunity to contribute to a retirement fund and the organization matched (up to 5%) those contributions and allowed me to select options in managing that fund. I retired with a package that paid for continuance of my health insurance and consider myself very fortunate to have done so.
Thanks for this information. A lot of things has changed that the postal service has to deal with and the delivery at every mail box is quite a sticking point. The biggest issue for rural communities is that they can't easily benefit from scale and volume. Their services are expensive to provide, and they keep voting for the party that does not want to pay for their services. Then they get mad at the government. Speaking as someone who lives in the country and does not get made at the government. My rural carrier has gone out of his way to deliver my mail in a few different circumstances. I've had Amazon ignore my delivery instructions, with the end result that my packages have gotten destroyed by my dog. I prefer USPS.
There are so many mandates even by the government that specify USPS must be used, Congress was one of them but I don’t know now. What really made a difference for letters or documents is email, it matters.
And that... as someone who is in the "outsourcing" business—TRUST ME—this is NOT what Americans want.
True. I've been quite happy with the public services we have. They have been very beneficial to the country.
Stamp collecting is the most popular hobby in the US. Shutting down USPS would tick off all of the collectors!
They will be able to buy stamps with Trump, Musk, and Melania on them.
This is not a 2025 plan it’s the same plan the former GOP has had all along, none of these ideas are new! I had an employee that went to dubya war, he told me the repugnants were the one talking big pensions for time put in and I reamed him. I said just watch they will be cutting your benefits and it’s all the time! Again no surprise to me but boy did he get screwed VA give your life and get nothing if you survive or are permanently disabled. I really despise them all.