Social Security has a perfect record of giving millions of Americans their monthly benefit checks since the agency was founded in the 1930s. But due to recent actions by Elon Musk's DOGE, the 72.5 million Americans who enjoy Social Security benefits may not see their check in the mailbox on time this year, if at all, former Social Security Administrator Martin O'Malley warned in an interview with CNBC.
"Ultimately, you're going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits," he said. "I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days." People should start saving now in anticipation of this, he warned.
The SSA announced last week that it will cut 7,000 employees from its workforce to align with Trump's executive orders, even as the agency's current staffing is at a 50-year low. While Social Security checks consistently arrive on time, staffing shortages have extended wait times for people applying to receive those benefits in the first place.
In addition to potential delays in checks, those wait times may become even longer.
"The American public needs to understand that one of their major social safety nets is in dire jeopardy," Jill Hornick, a union official at the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1395, told CNBC.
"It'll take a while for the effects to be felt, but they're coming," she said, predicting the impending changes at SSA will be "far worse" than the planned cuts to Medicaid.
Despite Musk criticizing Social Security's COBOL software as outdated and leading to significant errors, O'Malley said that DOGE officials' moves to fire agency staffers is what actually led to recent system outages. As DOGE presses for more changes, he said, those outages may happen more frequently and for longer.
DOGE, while not an official government agency, has left a series of government departments in disarray, according to critics, and hampered the ability of the government to maintain its basic functions. Trump and his allies have said that Social Security and other agencies that receive mandatory funding are off the table in his budget-cutting agenda, but those promises have not always been kept; in 2019, he tried to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from his 2020 FY budget but ran into a congressional blockade.
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