- President Donald Trump’s efforts to slash federal staffing across agencies is also resulting in the loss of technical expertise need to help maintain critical systems, including those used to pay Social Security benefits. That means payments could be at risk if there’s a glitch and the right people aren’t there to fix it.
Social Security employees with key expertise are reportedly heading for the exits amid President Donald Trump’s drive to slash the federal workforce, raising the risk that any technical glitches could interrupt benefits.
That’s as the administration looks to shrink the Social Security Administration by thousands, including via voluntary separation offers.
One Baltimore-based staffer who works on payment systems told the Washington Post that nearly a quarter of his team is gone or will soon be gone because of resignations and retirements.
Those with top software skills are leaving the Social Security Administration to get high-paying jobs in the private sector, he added.
As a result, several software updates and modernization processes that were supposed to be completed soon will likely miss their deadlines, and many of the experts who fix glitches that can stop payments are now exiting, the report said.
“That has to get cleaned up on a case-by-case basis, and the experts in how to do that are leaving,” the Baltimore employee told the Post. “We will have cases that get stuck, and they’re not going to be able to get fixed. People could be out of benefits for months.”
Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley previously warned of a “system collapse” that could halt payments, saying changes that the Department of Government Efficiency is making to the agency have already caused IT system outages.
On Friday, Wired reported that DOGE is forming a team to migrate the Social Security Administration’s computer systems off the archaic COBOL programming language in a matter of months.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration also plans to phase out payments via paper checks, but that will affect nearly half a million Social Security recipients.
According to an analysis of Social Security Administration data by Axios, 0.7% of 68.2 million total recipients were still getting paper checks as of March. While that is a minuscule share, it still translates to nearly 456,000 Americans.
The SSA gave instructions on how to switch to direct deposit or sign up to receive benefits through a debit card. But anyone who’s not computer savvy may need to call, and phone lines have been flooded with people lately, with wait times running for hours.
To be sure, exceptions will be made for people without banking or electronic payment access as well as certain emergency payments or law enforcement activities and other special cases.
“With a resounding mandate from the American people, President Trump is moving quickly to fulfill his promise of making the federal government more efficient. He has promised to protect Social Security, and every recipient will continue to receive their benefits,” White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fortune in a statement.
While Trump has maintained that he won’t touch benefits, critics of DOGE have said its changes are part of a “backdoor” effort to cut payments and gut the agency.
In fact, other Social Security employees told the Post that phone lines are so backed up that one field office has told people to send questions via fax.
Another said online claims, which field staff must complete, are piling up, and that complicated benefits cases are falling by the wayside, the report said.
“There is just no time to breathe or get anything else done,” an employee told the Post. “We used to be efficient.”
