Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley is sounding the alarm that benefit payments could be delayed for millions of Americans as soon as next month.
O’Malley, who ran the Social Security Administration from 2023 to 2024 under President Joe Biden, warned that deep staffing cuts and internal chaos since President Donald Trump took office will soon start to impact those expecting checks from the government.
“I truly believe there’s going to be some interruption of benefits for some period of time, and I believe that will probably happen in the very near future,” O’Malley said, according to Long Island Press.
“I’ve never hoped I was wrong so much in my life.”
O’Malley made the remarks at a Social Security town hall at Long Island University on Monday alongside Democratic lawmakers Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi, who both represent constituencies in Nassau County, New York.
More than 70 million Americans rely on Social Security, including retirees, disabled individuals, and surviving family members. For many, the benefits are often their primary source of income, and even short delays could leave vulnerable people in dire financial jeopardy.
Since Trump took office in January and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency began its work attempting to gut the federal government, the number of employees at the SSA has dropped from 57,000 to 50,000, including half of the IT staff, resulting in increased wait times for services and multiple system crashes, the three speakers told town hall.
“Why would you cut 7,000 employees to save 0.06 per cent of the budget from one of the most important agencies?” Suozzi asked, emphasizing that staffing costs are a tiny percentage of the agency’s budget. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
This is not the first time O’Malley, a former governor of Maryland and mayor of Baltimore, has cautioned Americans about the risks of cuts to such a vital service. In early March, he made a similar warning on CNBC: “Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits.”
That came after acting SSA Commissioner Lee Dudek defended the cuts, saying they were necessary to deal with bureaucratic inefficiencies.
“For too long, SSA has operated on autopilot,” he said in a March 3 press release. “It is time to change just that.”
Social Security is traditionally seen as untouchable in American politics, given the number of people who rely on it and their tendency to be highly engaged voters.
Nevertheless, under President Trump, that protection appears to have been diminished, with Elon Musk, who oversees DOGE, calling it “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience.
