The acting head of the Social Security Administration told a meeting of senior staff and legal-aid lawyers that Elon Musk’s federal cost-cutting task force “will make mistakes” as it pushes the agency to cut thousands of jobs and dramatically slash spending.
Acting SSA commissioner Leland Dudek was recorded at a Tuesday meeting referring to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team as “outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs,” according to a report in The Washington Post.
DOGE has caused unleashed chaos across federal departments in recent weeks, pushing indiscriminate mass layoffs that have erroneously swept up workers responsible for nuclear safety and the response to the ongoing avian flu outbreak—in those cases, officials were left scrambling to rehire essential staff.
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At the SSA meeting, Dudek told those in attendance that DOGE’s error-prone ways are likely to impact the agency that oversees $1.5 trillion in retirement, disability and survivor benefits. The agency’s programs are used by 73 million retired and disabled Americans.
“DOGE people are learning and they will make mistakes, but we have to let them see what is going on at SSA,” he said, according to the notes obtained by the Post. “I am relying on longtime career people to inform my work, but I am receiving decisions that are made without my input.”
Dudek was only appointed to his position late last month after admitting in a LinkedIn post that he conspired with DOGE and secretly fed Musk’s group with intelligence on the agency.
“I confess. I bullied agency executives, shared executive contact information, and circumvented the chain of command to connect DOGE with the people who get stuff done,” he wrote.
He will hold the position until President Donald Trump’s permanent nominee to run SSA is confirmed.
The Post noted that his remarks about letting DOGE into SSA, despite his admission there will be mistakes, drew skepticism from the legal advocates who attended the meeting.
Dudek has already announced a planned 7,000 job cuts at SSA and ordered regional hubs, field offices, and some programs shuttered.
Five of the eight SSA regional heads elected to retire last month, Government Executive reported.
Martin O’Malley, a former SSA commissioner, told CNBC earlier this month that the DOGE-led cuts to SSA could lead to a “system collapse and an interruption of benefits,” which he said was an acute threat “within the next 30 to 90 days.”
“People should start saving now,” he warned.
Trump’s ultimate plans for Social Security—which he pledged “we’re not touching”—remain up in the air.
He and Musk have both falsely claimed that millions of people older than 100, including some older than 160, are collecting Social Security.
Trump said, in an address to Congress on Tuesday, that his administration has found “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors.”
In fact, only 89,000 people older than 99 received SSA retirement benefits in December.
According to the meeting notes obtained by the Post, Dudek confessed that the Trump administration’s efforts are unprecedented to his knowledge: “Things are currently operating in a way I have never seen in government before.”
