Elizabeth Warren Probes Staffing Shortage And Backlog At Social Security | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) desires particulars concerning the Social Security Administration’s pending retirement claims and what number of workers are left to type by means of the rising backlog.

In a letter to Social Security commissioner Frank Bisignano, Warren famous a current report that claims processing has slowed 25% because 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 solely reported final week that an SSA official requested workers to work 10% quicker to get by means of a backlog of greater than 575,000 pending retirement claims.

The push for quicker claims processing raised questions concerning the company’s determination earlier this 12 months to do away with hundreds of its practically 60,000 workers as a part of Trump’s effort to slash the federal paperwork. The company signaled in February it might shed 7,000 employees. In April, the company mentioned in a press launch it had solely gotten rid of three,350.

The union that represents some 42,000 Social Security employees informed HuffPost it didn’t have any info past what was within the company’s press launch, and couldn’t say what number of extra workers may need taken voluntary separation or deferred resignation presents within the final month.

In her letter, Warren requested what number of operations workers have been let go, what number of stay with Social Security, and in the event that they’re as much as the duty of eliminating the backlog.

In a gathering with workers this week at Social Security’s headquarters in Baltimore, Bisignano mentioned he had no intention of doing a “reduction in force,” or mass layoff of federal workers.

“I didn’t come here with that as my agenda item,” Bisignano mentioned, in keeping with a recording of the assembly 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 one other level, Bisignano mentioned, “My dream is not to have to let people go.”

Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who Trump put accountable for DOGE, repeatedly and falsely claimed, based mostly on a mistaken understanding of company knowledge, that Social Security retains thousands and thousands of fraudulent beneficiaries on its rolls despite the fact that information point out they’re greater than 120 years outdated. And Musk claimed the company was bombarded by phone calls from scammers attempting to steal folks’s advantages, a priority that prompted the company to say it might disallow cellphone claims, solely to backtrack amid a backlash from members of Congress.

Democrats have made Musk’s meddling at Social Security, which is likely one of the authorities’s hottest packages, a primary focus of their rhetorical assaults on the Trump administration.

In her letter, Warren urged Bisignano to contemplate taking steps to workers 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.”