As the Trump administration vows to cut fraud and waste in the Social Security system, Teresa Casey, a Trump voter, says she is finding out what that means for beneficiaries like her.
The former convenience store clerk is now on disability, administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA). But a few months ago, the checks stopped coming.
“Someone made a huge mistake,” she says.
Why We Wrote This
Many Americans say government needs to become more efficient. Will feelings shift when the streamlining affects programs they rely on? Administrative changes to Social Security are bringing this question to the fore.
So when she stopped by the low-slung SSA building on the outskirts of Columbus, Georgia, last week to clear it up, her life balance seemed at stake. Ms. Casey is one of a growing number caught in the middle of America’s national debate over current federal efforts to streamline government – and whether gains in efficiency might come at a cost to people like Ms. Casey who rely on federal services.
“This isn’t about politics now,” says Ms. Casey, who voted for Mr. Trump last November. “This is my life.”
Come September, this SSA office lease will be terminated, one of 26 planned Social Security office closings across the United States this year, according to The Associated Press. This coincides with new efforts to combat fraud at the agency, which will force people to come in person or use an online portal to verify their identity, rather than being able to call in.
Walk-ins at the Columbus office were banned as early as Jan. 1, before Mr. Trump took office. But the new cuts are expected to add pressure on an agency already struggling to keep to its mission of handling monthly payments to 74 million Americans and issuing Social Security numbers for the 10,000 new U.S. citizens born every day.
The cuts are likely to affect people like Ms. Casey in particular. While Social Security retirement benefits are largely automated, disability recipients must frequently reapply for benefits. Last week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested that only “fraudsters” would complain about a missed check.
“If you think she is cheating, come spend some time at her house,” says James Knox, Ms. Casey’s ex-husband, who took time off his job at an art supply plant to drive his former wife to the office. Severe health challenges have left her unable to drive or work, he adds.
Ms. Casey says she had never voted until Donald Trump ran for office. She voted for him three times. Now, she says, that loyalty is being tested by a sense that her life is tied to the administration’s actions.
Trying to tame the national debt
The Trump administration’s effort to curb the Social Security Administration and its activities is part of a broader reshaping of government, with one stated goal being to tame the rising national debt, currently at over $36 trillion. The idea of reducing government waste is generally supported by Americans, whose favorable views of the federal government and its workers have waned in recent years.
No matter the veracity of the Trump administration’s fraud allegations, changes in how Social Security recipients are served could challenge those views on what the government should and can do.
“I’m afraid a lot of people are about to find out all the ways that they’ve taken the federal government for granted,” says Jacob Malcom, who resigned his Washington position as the U.S. Department of Interior’s deputy assistant secretary for policy and environmental management in protest of the cuts made by the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “That includes anyone who relies on Social Security.”
The cancellation of a 1,600-square-foot lease here in Columbus – home to Fort Benning, blues singer Ma Rainey, and Coca-Cola’s inventor – is just one part of broader federal closings and worker reductions across the country.
Closing doors and increased criticism of civil servants
While both Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton took on government waste, Americans have grown increasingly critical of civil servants. Sixty-one percent of Americans in 2018 had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in career civil servants. Toward the end of the pandemic, a 2022 poll showed that those feeling that confidence had dropped to 52%, according to the Pew Research Center.
Mitchell Scacchi of the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation suggests in a recent online post that low-level bureaucrats are now seen as an “unconstitutional fourth branch of government” whose in-house judgments cost Americans hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity each year.
“This administration is committed to cutting waste, fraud, and abuse,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a recent briefing. (Critics say the Trump administration is exaggerating how much Social Security fraud exists, which government auditors have found to be about 1% of payouts.)
The Trump administration has repeatedly stated that legal recipients of Social Security services and benefits have nothing to worry about. But, as Ms. Casey attests, stark cuts – including a proposed 10% chunk of the SSA’s workforce – have a different feel than chopping funding to agencies like the U.S. Institute of Peace.
According to research by the National Institute on Retirement Security, almost 9 in 10 Americans say that Social Security “should remain a priority” for the nation regardless of budget deficits.
When demand outpaces supply
But the agency has already lost some of its ability to do the work. Between 2010 and 2023, it lost 17% of its customer service budget, while the number of beneficiaries rose by 22%, according to Pamela Herd, a social policy professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“Social Security is a clear promise to Americans that if they pay into the system, they will get benefits from that system,” says Professor Herd. “At this pace, I don’t know how they can fulfill that promise.”
Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor
DOGE’s fast-moving effort is likely contributing to problems like the kind reported by Ms. Casey, she says.
“Yes, we need to improve, change, evolve, but that doesn’t change the basic fact that we can’t have a functioning government if we don’t have a civil service,” says Dr. Malcom, the former Interior official. “But if what you want is to accelerate the decline of the U.S. government, then this is a fantastic way to do it.”
Back in Columbus, retired businessman Jerry Don Manning arrived at the SSA office in a truck with a license plate that read “TEX MAN.”
Mr. Manning says he is “100% supportive” of President Trump’s efforts to root out fraud and reduce the debt. He believes that “they’re smart enough to make the right cuts” to a federal workforce that has become incompetent and inefficient, particularly after the pandemic.
At the same time, older and disabled Americans who don’t have cars and aren’t comfortable using the internet may be in for some dramatic changes.
“I think we’ll feel a little bit of pain now but a lot of gain down the road,” he says.
Could the cuts to Social Security become a bigger problem if he applies for benefits?
He ponders the question and the implied risks.
“In my view,” he says, “that is a possibility – but not a probability.” He is willing to take that risk.
