Elizabeth Warren Probes Staffing Shortage And Backlog At Social Security
Source: Huff Post
May 23, 2025, 07:00 AM EDT
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.
Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-social-security-frank-bisignano_n_682f7c6ae4b05418243cccee
Link to Senator Warren PRESS RELEASE - Warren Presses Social Security Head on Broken Staffing Promises
Link to LETTER (PDF) - https://www.warren.senate.gov/download/warren-letter-to-ssa-re-bisignano-commitments&download=1
And for the "not another sternly worded letter" crowd - here is the type of thing that is put in them, and in this case, what is in her letter (in part) -
1. How many benefit claims were processed daily prior to January 21, 2025?
2. How many benefit claims are processed daily now?
3. How many benefit claims have been processed each week since January 21, 2025?
4. How many benefit claims have been processed since you have been confirmed?
5. What was the backlog of retirement claims on January 21, 2025?
6. What analysis have you completed to determine the capacity of employees of the operations
department?
a. If yes, what did you determine?
b. How many operations employees were there prior to January 21, 2025?
c. How many operations employees are there now? Please do not include employees who
have elected to take deferred resignation or retirement.
d. Do operations employees have the capacity to increase their output by 10%?
7. Will you commit to reversing any agency policies—such as layoffs or office closures—that
result in delays in processing benefits?
= new reply since forum marked as read
