Washington’s senators raise alarm over Trump administration’s changes to Social Security Administration
WASHINGTON – Washington state’s two Democratic senators accused the Trump administration on Wednesday of endangering the Social Security Administration’s ability to provide benefits to retired Americans.
In a news conference at the Capitol, Sen. Maria Cantwell highlighted the agency’s plan to terminate about 7,000 employees to comply with an executive order President Donald Trump signed that aims to make sweeping cuts to the federal workforce.
“Social Security is a contract between citizens and their government, so they can retire with dignity,” Cantwell said, before suggesting that the Trump administration is violating that contract by cutting workers, closing offices and reducing services.
Following a public outcry, on Wednesday the SSA reversed a plan to eliminate phone services and require Social Security recipients to go online or visit an in-person office to get help with their benefits. The agency announced that plan soon after the U.S. DOGE Service, a team led by billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk, published a list of dozens of Social Security offices it seeks to close.
Earlier on Wednesday, Sen. Patty Murray convened a virtual news conference with SSA employees and Washingtonians who rely on Social Security. She alleged that the changes driven by DOGE aren’t a serious effort to reduce the nation’s deficit, which exceeds $1.1 trillion and will add to the $36.2 trillion national debt.
“Cutting Social Security staff and closing offices isn’t going to reduce the deficit or make the government more efficient,” Murray said. “Instead, it is making it harder for millions of Americans to apply for the benefits they have earned, and delayed processing. And it’s simply another way of cutting Social Security benefits.”
In his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Trump’s nominee to lead the SSA, Frank Bisignano, told Cantwell that he has “no objective” of reducing benefits and said the president had told him “to ensure that we preserve and protect Social Security.” Republicans have dismissed Democrats’ claim that Trump and his GOP allies in Congress intend to cut spending on Social Security to finance tax cuts for large corporations and the richest Americans.
Musk, however, has given Democrats ammunition by making statements about Social Security in interviews.
On Feb. 28, Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan, “Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” And in an interview with Fox Business host and former Trump aide Larry Kudlow on March 10, he suggested that as much as $700 billion in waste could be cut from entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.
“Most of the federal spending is entitlements,” Musk said. “That’s the big one to eliminate.”
A 2024 report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office estimated that the entire federal government may lose between $233 billion and $521 billion each year, not only to incorrect Social Security payments.
Social Security represented 21% of the federal budget in 2024, or about $1.5 trillion, according to federal data. The taxes Americans pay to fund Social Security aren’t sufficient to sustain the program indefinitely, and its trust fund will only be able to pay 100% of scheduled benefits until 2033, according to the agency’s latest projections.
Federal budget analysts generally agree that any serious effort to reduce the United States’ deficit – or at least the country’s ratio of debt to its gross domestic product – would require reforms to Social Security, but the program’s popularity makes it a political third rail that most lawmakers are reluctant to touch.