The Social Security Administration is Reducing Its Spending—Here’s How It Will Affect Your Benefits

Budget cuts to the Social Security Administration (SSA) shouldn’t affect your checks, but they may interrupt benefits and make it harder to contact the agency.

The SSA said it will cut or avoid spending $800 million this fiscal year, in line with President Donald Trump’s and the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) goal to significantly reduce federal spending. Some cuts identified by the SSA include freezing hiring, terminating contracts, and moving paper forms online.

Trump said he would not cut Social Security benefits themselves, but the budget cuts could make it harder to contact the administration’s offices, Social Security experts said. The SSA announced it plans to cut more than 12% of its workforce, and DOGE has already listed 47 local offices that it has closed.

“You drive by your [local] office, and it looks like it’s open. It might be open for some people in your community, but it might not essentially be open for you,” said Ed Weir, a former district manager for Social Security. “You might want to go file for disability benefits or retirement benefits or survivor benefits, but in that particular office, they lost possibly all of their Title II [Customer Success Specialists].”

As SSA and DOGE look to make sweeping changes, mistakes can happen, said Lee Dudek, acting commissioner of SSA, as reported by The Washington Post. Experts said these could create agency-wide disruptions.

“Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits,” Martin O’Malley, a former Social Security commissioner, told CNBC. “I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”

How It Will Affect Your Benefits

Budget cuts could prevent some beneficiaries from accessing their benefits in a timely manner, Weir said.

As of April 2024, an initial disability determination took eight months, and the average phone hold time was nearly 40 minutes, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute.

“They’re not reducing the amount of retirement benefits or survivor benefits or disability per se,” Weir said. “But if you can’t get them in time, then you’re losing that month or two months or three months.”

In another example, the SSA recently updated a policy so that beneficiaries’ checks can be withheld if they receive overpayments. Reduced offices and workers could mean it will be harder and take longer to fix an overpayment situation or get beneficiaries into a repayment plan, Weir said.

Increased wait times will particularly hurt those who rely on Social Security benefits for most of their income, Weir said. For those over age 65, 12% of men and 15% of women rely on Social Security benefits for 90% or more of their income, according to a recent fact sheet from SSA that uses 2015 data.

“You’ll eventually get your money, and that’s fine for those people that can float their rent and mortgage and food and electric bill for a month, two months, or three months,” Weir said.