Staff cuts have have damaged Social Security, former commissioner says

The Social Security field office in Whitehall, Ohio. (Photo by Marty Schladen, Ohio Capital Journal.)

President Donald Trump has cut more than 7,000 staffers from the Social Security Administration, sapping its ability to connect Americans in Ohio and elsewhere with their benefits, the Democratic commissioner who led the agency in 2024 said last Monday.

Under Trump, the administration isn’t reporting important metrics to members of Congress — and their offices are being flooded with complaints from constituents, Martin O’Malley, the former commissioner, said.

Asked about O’Malley’s statements, the offices of Ohio’s U.S. senators, Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno, both Republicans, didn’t respond.

The Social Security Administration, however, claimed it was delivering more timely, efficient service than the agency had under Trump’s predecessor, former President Joe Biden. However, the agency didn’t respond to questions about agency staffing or how long it’s taking for applicants to receive benefits after they initially apply.

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When Trump took office in January, he appointed the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to look for ways to cut the federal workforce. On Feb. 27, the Social Security Administration announced “significant workforce reductions.” 

“Through these massive reorganizations, offices that perform functions not mandated by statute may be prioritized for reduction-in-force actions that could include abolishment of organizations and positions, directed reassignments, and reductions in staffing,” the agency told its employees. 

What resulted were layoffs, resignations, and retirements totaling 7,150.

At 13%, it was by far the largest staffing cut in the agency’s history, the Center for American Progress reported in June.

“The last time the SSA had this few employees was 1967, when the agency served 480 beneficiaries for every staff member,” the report said. “In 2025, the agency would be attempting to serve 1,480 beneficiaries for every staff member.”

Computers have enabled each Social Security worker to serve more clients than she or he could 58 years ago, but in a virtual press conference, O’Malley said that after the cuts, the agency isn’t keeping up.

“Every member of Congress will tell you that — regardless of party — their phones have been exploding with additional numbers of people who have been calling their congressional representatives because they can’t get through to Social Security for the benefits that they’ve already earned,” he said.

“Because of the speed and the depth of the cruelty of the staff cuts to Social Security — an agency that was already struggling to serve record numbers of new beneficiaries because of baby boomers — the staff was cut to a 50-year low. The continued, never-fail, every-monthly string of payments by Social Security is very much in jeopardy.”

The offices of Ohio’s U.S. senators, Moreno and Husted, didn’t respond when asked if they had been deluged with constituent complaints about getting their benefits, and what they were doing in response if they were.

For its part, the Social Security Administration said O’Malley’s claims aren’t true. It didn’t address staffing cuts, but said that service had actually improved.

“SSA’s dedicated workforce is delivering a significantly improved customer experience for the American people, despite unfounded claims being made by former SSA officials,” a spokesperson said in an email.

“Under Commissioner (Frank J.) Bisignano’s leadership, there has been a transformation at SSA that all Americans can be proud of: the average speed of answer for the National 800 Number has dropped from 30 minutes last year to 8 minutes in July 2025; average field office wait times have decreased by 30%; and the SSA website now enables Americans with 24/7 access and management of their benefits after the elimination of 29 hours of previously scheduled weekly downtime.”

But O’Malley, the former Democratic governor of Maryland, claimed that under its current management, the Social Security Administration is no longer reporting some metrics to Congress and manipulating others to gaslight the public.

“It’s not so much what they’re cherry picking and posting, it’s what they’re not sharing,” he said when asked what numbers the public can follow to monitor performance. “I’d like to direct you to things to look at, but they don’t share those things. The place has become like the hermit kingdom — only the happy story gets told.”

For example, he said, claimant representatives around the country are telling him “that they’re now seeing a six-month to 18-month waiting period between when an allowance is granted — say in the case of a disability — to when that person received their first benefit check.” 

The Social Security Administration didn’t respond directly when asked how long the average waiting period is to receive benefits.

O’Malley added that members of Congress haven’t been receiving the same weekly performance reports from the agency they had gotten in the past.

He said that it also isn’t reporting its “performance center backlog” — the only metric his administration wasn’t able to substantially improve when he was running the agency under former President Joe Biden.

The processing centers serve as a backstop to Social Security field offices, handling their overflow and complex cases. With so many fewer workers throughout the Social Security Administration, the centers are sure to be seeing many more cases while having less capacity to deal with them, O’Malley said.

“The processing center is like an escape valve and if and when a member of Congress gets them to show what the processing center backlog is, you will see that it’s adversely affecting millions of people,” he said. “In fact, dare I say, it’s probably at an all-time, record high.”

The Social Security Administration spokesperson said the agency is keeping Congress up to date.

“SSA regularly engages with Congress and shares timely performance data, which is prepared by SSA’s dedicated career workforce using long-standing agency methodology,” the spokesperson said. “Additionally, we publish our performance metrics on our website for public awareness to provide a snapshot of the real experiences of the people we serve and highlight the optimal ways our customers can get service.”

For his part, O’Malley described one way he thinks the new administration is manipulating some of the metrics it does report.

At the start of 2024, the 8 million who called the agency’s 1-800 number each month had to wait 42.5 minutes on average to get through. After a vendor and technology change, the agency got the average wait down to 12.8 minutes before beneficiaries could get an answer, O’Malley said.

The Social Security Administration on Monday reported that it had gotten those wait times down even further, to eight minutes. But O’Malley said it appears to have simply changed the definition of “answer.”

“‘Answer’ would appear to be anytime a person calls and hangs up after hearing a recording, or calls and gets run around the barn three times by a chatbot and has their call dumped,” he said. “That’s what they call ‘answered.’ That’s what they call ‘served.’ None of it bears any reality to what people are experiencing.” 

A call Wednesday to the Social Security Administration’s Georgesville Road field office in Columbus appeared to produce such a result. A caller was asked by a chatbot why he was calling. When he said he wanted to check his eligibility, the chatbot hung up.

O’Malley also said the Social Security Administration under Trump is ducking basic questions about who’s working there and what they’re doing.

For their part, the offices of Ohio’s U.S. senators didn’t respond to a question asking about staffing levels. O’Malley said that’s because the administration has put itself in a bind.

“Out of one side of their mouths they applaud themselves for getting rid of 7,000 people and yet, they won’t share the data in terms of what that means for workloads,” he said.

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