Economy

Social Security is being starved from the inside

The Trump administration cut roughly 7,500 employees from the Social Security Administration between January 2025 and January 2026, a 13 percent reduction and the largest staffing cut in the agency’s history. More than 3,000 of those positions served people directly at field offices or on the national 800 number.

The last time SSA had this few employees was 1967, when there were 480 beneficiaries per staff member. Today there are 1,480 beneficiaries per staff member.

On the ground, some field offices have closed their doors to the public for days or weeks at a time. The agency’s internal plan for fiscal year 2026 calls for cutting field office visits by 50 percent compared to the previous year, capping public visits at 15 million.

Meanwhile, the backlog keeps growing:

If you are waiting on a disability determination or a replacement Social Security card, you are competing for attention from an agency that has fewer staff than at any point in most people’s lifetimes.

DOGE accessed your Social Security data without authorization

In early 2025, staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency arrived at SSA headquarters claiming they needed access to payment records to find fraud. What followed was not an audit. It was a data breach with political implications.

Here is what happened:

1. A DOGE employee was given access to Treasury Department payment systems covering Social Security disbursements. That access was granted without following federal IT security rules.
2. The employee could view, copy, and print data from three Bureau of Fiscal Service payment systems between January and February 2025.
3. Two SSA DOGE employees were alleged to have secretly conferred with a political advocacy group about matching Social Security data with state voter rolls to find evidence of voter fraud.
4. Federal courts moved to revoke improper DOGE data access at Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of Education.

The original justification was that payments were going to dead people. The actual result was that unvetted political operatives had access to the personal data of millions of Americans, and some of them may have been trying to use it to challenge election results.

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Tariffs are a tax on everything you buy

The tariffs imposed throughout 2025 raised retail prices on imported goods by roughly 7 percentage points above the pre-tariff trend. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that tariff effects on consumer prices peaked in the first quarter of 2026.

The Yale Budget Lab estimates that if Section 122 tariffs are made permanent, the average household will lose between $1,200 and $1,500 per year. That burden is not distributed evenly. Households in the bottom income decile face an estimated $813 annual cost; households in the top decile face $3,424. As a share of income, lower-income families pay more.

Here is what specific products look like:

These are not luxury items. They are shoes for your kids, clothes for work, and groceries for dinner. The tariffs function as a regressive sales tax that Congress never voted on. Tell Congress to stop the tariffs raising your prices.

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Congress cut $911 billion from Medicaid

On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed the reconciliation bill that reduced federal Medicaid spending by $911 billion over the next decade, a 14 percent cut. More than half of the reductions, $526 billion, target states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

The cuts come through several mechanisms:

• Work requirements for Medicaid eligibility, which historically cause eligible people to lose coverage due to paperwork and reporting burdens rather than actual noncompliance
• Freezes on provider taxes that states use to draw down federal matching funds
• Limits on state-directed payments to hospitals and nursing homes
• Reduced federal match rates for expansion populations

The largest financing changes do not take effect until October 2027, but states are already feeling the squeeze. Nearly two-thirds of states told KFF they see at least a 50-50 chance of a Medicaid budget shortfall in fiscal year 2026, before the biggest cuts even begin.

Medicaid covers children, pregnant women, seniors in nursing homes, and adults with disabilities. When federal funding shrinks, states either pick up the cost or cut enrollment. Most will cut enrollment.

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3.5 million people have already lost food assistance

The same reconciliation bill expanded SNAP work requirements and shifted costs to states. The results have been immediate. SNAP participation fell by more than 3.5 million people, nearly 9 percent, between July 2025 and February 2026. That is the steepest drop in decades.

The new rules require adults to work 20 hours per week or lose benefits after three months. For the first time, this applies to:

• Parents with children over age 6
• Adults aged 55 to 64

Nearly 11 million people live in households at risk of losing some or all of their food assistance, including more than 4 million children and over half a million adults aged 65 or older or with disabilities.

Starting October 2027, most states will also be required to pay a share of SNAP benefit costs for the first time. When that happens, even more people are expected to lose coverage.

The work requirements hit hardest in states where the tariff-driven economic slowdown is already shrinking the job market. People are being told to find work or lose food benefits at the same time that employers are pulling back hiring.

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Labor protections are being rolled back across the board

Three major rollbacks have reshaped labor protections since January 2025:

Overtime pay. The Department of Labor rescinded the Biden-era overtime rule and reset the salary threshold to $684 per week ($35,568 per year), the level from Trump’s first term. The 2024 rule would have raised that threshold to $1,128 per week ($58,656 per year), extending overtime eligibility to roughly 4 million additional workers. Those workers are now exempt from overtime protections again. Some employees who had already received raises to meet the higher threshold had those raises taken back after the rule was struck down.

Gig worker classification. In May 2025, the Department of Labor stopped enforcing the Biden-era rule that used a six-factor test to determine whether gig workers qualified as employees. In February 2026, DOL proposed a replacement rule that narrows the analysis to two factors: how much control the company has over the worker, and whether the worker has a real opportunity for profit or loss. The practical effect is that companies can more easily classify workers as independent contractors, denying them minimum wage protections, overtime pay, and unemployment insurance.

Consumer protection. On February 8, 2025, the acting CFPB director shut down the bureau’s operations, halting all rulemaking and enforcement. The reconciliation bill then cut the CFPB’s funding cap in half. A federal judge ordered the bureau to continue operating, but with gutted staff and halved funding, the agency that polices predatory lenders and credit card companies is a fraction of what it was.

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Timeline: How we got here

Date	What happened
January 2025	DOGE operatives arrive at SSA and Treasury, access payment data
February 2025	Acting CFPB director shuts down bureau operations
March 2025	Federal judge orders CFPB to continue operating
May 2025	DOL stops enforcing Biden-era gig worker and overtime rules
July 4, 2025	Trump signs reconciliation bill: $911B Medicaid cuts, SNAP work requirements, CFPB funding halved
July-December 2025	SSA loses thousands of staff; offices begin intermittent closures
January 2026	SSA staffing hits 60-year low at 7,500 fewer employees
February 2026	SNAP participation down 3.5 million; DOL proposes new gig worker rule
March 2026	SSA sets target of 50% fewer field office visits
April 2026	GAO reports on unauthorized DOGE access to payment systems

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Protect yourself right now

1. Check your Social Security statement. Log in at ssa.gov/myaccount and verify your earnings record and benefits estimate. If something is wrong, file a correction now before backlogs get worse.

2. Know your Medicaid status. If you or someone you know receives Medicaid, check your state’s enrollment status now. Work requirements and eligibility changes are rolling out on different timelines in each state. The KFF Medicaid tracker has state-by-state updates.

3. Check SNAP eligibility. If you have lost SNAP benefits or know someone who has, contact your state SNAP office to verify whether you qualify for an exemption from the new work requirements. The CBPP SNAP tracker has the latest participation data by state.

4. Know your overtime rights. The current federal overtime salary threshold is $35,568 per year. If you earn less than that and are classified as salaried, your employer likely owes you overtime for hours over 40 per week. Your state may have a higher threshold. Check the Department of Labor’s FLSA page or contact your state labor department.

5. Show up at town halls. Your representative has to answer for these votes. Social Security, Medicaid, and SNAP are the systems that catch people when they fall. Ask your elected officials what they plan to do about it, in person, on the record.