Rep. Jared Huffman weighs in on changes coming to Social Security under Trump administration

The Social Security Administration, the clearinghouse for one of America’s bedrock public benefits programs, is bracing for changes under the Trump administration as the White House enacts a sweeping reduction in the federal government’s workforce and real estate footprint.

Most significantly for recipients, starting April 14, many Social Security transactions, including for retirement or survivor benefits, that require people to verify their identity will no longer be handled by phone. Instead, the government will require people to visit local — and sometimes far flung — field offices, or carry out their transaction online by creating a my Social Security account.

The Trump administration is also planning to slash Social Security staffing by 14%, or about 7,000 employees, and has identified more than two dozen offices tied to the agency that could be closed.

The following is an edited excerpt from a Thursday interview with Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, a sharp Trump critic, about some of the changes in store for Social Security under the new administration.

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Press Democrat: The Trump administration has proposed a 14% reduction to the Social Security Administration workforce, identified more than two dozen offices for closures and rolled out new identification policies that require seniors to visit field offices or access information online instead of over the phone.

In your view, how will these changes impact seniors and other Social Security recipients?

Huffman: People should be worried about the future of Social Security right now, and that’s not something I say lightly.

There have been efforts to go after it in the past. Frankly, Republicans have never stopped attacking it since the 1930s.

But there have been some serious efforts in recent years that have really backfired. People from George W. Bush to some of the colleagues I served with, have touched the hot stove and realized just how popular and essential this earned benefit program is. And they backed away.

But this new group in the White House is much more serious about a direct attack. And they are doing that in a two-step way: they’re first going to hollow out the Social Security Administration, with staffing cuts and office closures, and then point to all the problems they’ve created as a justification for something like privatization.

PD: Medicaid in particular looks to be threatened explicitly in the House Concurrent Resolution 14 that demands $880 billion in cuts from the House Energy and Commerce committee over the next decade.

Is there any place in Congress’ ongoing budget wrangling, or elsewhere, that poses a similarly direct threat to Social Security?

Huffman: No, the threat is basically what Elon Musk is doing, and Trump is doing, to slash staff and close offices. Their new directive that you can’t prove your identity online anymore, or over the phone, you have to actually have to come into an office and show identification — at the same time they’re closing offices? Give me a break. That’s a recipe for disaster.

We’ve recently had this big victory, where the Windfall Elimination Penalty was finally repealed, and all these folks who have earned Social Security benefits, but spent some part of their career as a teacher or firefighter — they now have refunds owed to them, and will start getting their full Social Security benefits.

But, if the agency screws up the processing of that, which they will, in some cases, you’re going to have a bureaucratic nightmare to get the money that’s owed to you. And frankly if you had any other problem with Social Security, you’re gonna have a bureaucratic nightmare.

Even before all of this, my staff spends a lot of time with constituents navigating and fixing problems with Social Security. As someone who actually helps people through the existing bureaucracy, I can only imagine how much worse it’s going to be, when you’re firing 7,000 employees, 13% of the agency’s workforce, shutting down offices and taking away online tools for identity verification.

PD: Why would “touching the hot stove” not burn this administration, as it has others?

Huffman: I have my cynical theory, and that is they believe they have created such an alternative information universe, with right-wing media and social media, that they can spin their way through this. And, they have so compromised the democratic process, through voter suppression and other strategies, that they can avoid consequences at the polls.

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.