WASHINGTON — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wants details about the Social Security Administration’s pending retirement claims and how many staff are left to sort through the growing backlog.
In a letter to Social Security commissioner Frank Bisignano, Warren noted a recent report that claims processing has slowed 25% as a result of misguided efforts by President Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” to root out fraud.
“Instead of acknowledging the need for additional staffing, SSA leadership directed employees who review these claims – already overworked in the wake of DOGE’s mass reductions in force – to ‘sprint’ to increase their pace by 10 percent,” Warren wrote.
HuffPost exclusively reported last week that an SSA official asked employees to work 10% faster to get through a backlog of more than 575,000 pending retirement claims.
The push for faster claims processing raised questions about the agency’s decision earlier this year to get rid of thousands of its nearly 60,000 employees as part of Trump’s effort to slash the federal bureaucracy. The agency signaled in February it would shed 7,000 workers. In April, the agency said in a press release it had only gotten rid of 3,350.
The union that represents some 42,000 Social Security workers told HuffPost it didn’t have any information beyond what was in the agency’s press release, and couldn’t say how many more employees might have taken voluntary separation or deferred resignation offers in the last month.
In her letter, Warren asked how many operations employees have been let go, how many remain with Social Security, and if they’re up to the task of eliminating the backlog.
In a meeting with employees this week at Social Security’s headquarters in Baltimore, Bisignano said he had no intention of doing a “reduction in force,” or mass layoff of federal employees.
“I didn’t come here with that as my agenda item,” Bisignano said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by HuffPost. “I got to determine what the right staffing level is, but nobody asked me to come do this job and RIF people. I run the agency.”
At another point, Bisignano said, “My dream is not to have to let people go.”
Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who Trump put in charge of DOGE, repeatedly and falsely claimed, based on a mistaken understanding of agency data, that Social Security keeps millions of fraudulent beneficiaries on its rolls even though records indicate they’re more than 120 years old. And Musk claimed the agency was bombarded by telephone calls from scammers trying to steal people’s benefits, a concern that prompted the agency to say it would disallow phone claims, only to backtrack amid a backlash from members of Congress.
Democrats have made Musk’s meddling at Social Security, which is one of the government’s most popular programs, a prime focus of their rhetorical attacks on the Trump administration.
In her letter, Warren urged Bisignano to consider taking steps to staff up.
“Staff shortages mean longer waits, more mistakes, and more instances in which hard-working Americans wait for weeks or months to get the benefits to which they are entitled,” Warren wrote. “As a practical matter, this is a benefits cut.”
