Don’t trust Social Security hysteria: Trump – Latest News
On my first day as performing commissioner of the Social Security Administration, I promised our workforce we might do two issues: Focus relentlessly on the people we serve, and restore the public’s trust in our company, a essential linchpin in American life.
I’m proud to report we’re preserving that promise. More than that, we’re delivering actual outcomes.
President Trump requested us to be daring, not bureaucratic; to be sooner, not frozen in course of; to care more about service and stewardship than slogans.
Under his management, SSA is doing simply that.
In these first 100 days, we paid over $14.8 billion in long-delayed retroactive advantages to 2.2 million Americans underneath the Social Security Fairness Act.
We’ve recognized over $1 billion in financial savings by means of common-sense enhancements to journey, printing, contracts, IT, and payroll.
We have shifted hundreds of staff into direct public-service roles and ended outdated telework preparations that undermined accountability and responsiveness.
Throughout this customer-focused transformation, we now have handled our staff with dignity and respect.
We’ve given them choices to do what works best for them, whether or not which means volunteering for a public-service position or selecting to separate from the company on beneficiant phrases.
Some within the media have erroneously reported that our optimization effort contains terminating 12% or more of our workforce.
Not true: In reality, the quantity of SSA staff involuntarily faraway from federal service up to now this fiscal yr quantities to one-tenth of one % of our whole staff, according to the prior yr, underneath the earlier administration.
The American people can not afford one other 4 years of long wait occasions for Social Security help.
We should ship aid for our seniors and people with disabilities ready on a declare resolution; for younger households needing a Social Security quantity for a little one; for each taxpayer who rightly expects authorities to do more with much less.
We are rebuilding trust, not by means of headlines or hashtags, however by means of exhausting work and trustworthy service.
One of probably the most shifting moments of my tenure got here during a go to to a subject workplace in Wisconsin. A father got here in, drained, quiet, holding the hand of his son with a incapacity.
He didn’t count on a lot. He had been ready months for help.
That day, our employees, leaner, sooner, refocused — bought him the reply he needed. As he stood to go away, he appeared up and easily stated, “Thank you for seeing us.”
He didn’t imply the appointment. He meant being seen by his authorities.
That’s what these 100 days have been about.
Get opinions and commentary from our columnists
Subscribe to our each day Post Opinion e-newsletter!
Thanks for signing up!
We’ve rolled out a trendy phone platform to tons of of subject workplaces. It’s already improved service on our national 800 quantity through the use of AI-enabled self-service instruments to scale back wait occasions and improve call handling.
We’ve applied new identity-proofing instruments that defend towards fraud with out locking out the weak, and we restarted the Treasury Offset Program to recuperate billions in taxpayer funds.
All this with out completely closing any native SSA subject workplaces — very important lifelines for seniors, people with disabilities, and rural communities.
SSA’s in-person providers should not going away.
For those that choose to do business with us online, we’re delivering there, too. Our secure online portal, my Social Security, continues to carry out with near-perfect uptime.
To increase transparency, we now publish real-time and historic knowledge on the standing of essential systems (examine it anytime at standing.ssa.gov).
Through the Payroll Information Exchange, we are actually receiving automated wage knowledge from employers — an innovation long promised, lastly delivered — that can cut back overpayments, improve cost accuracy, and save practically $3 billion over the subsequent decade.
And by means of our Health IT partnerships, we’re chopping down the time it takes to make incapacity selections by securely accessing medical information from suppliers throughout the nation.
This is what good authorities appears like: centered, humble, and pressing.
Some complain we’re shifting too fast. I say the American people have waited long enough.
In the spirit of the president’s call for outcomes over rhetoric, we now have reshaped SSA to not serve a celebration or a press cycle, however to serve the people.
All of them. Fairly. Quickly. Honorably.
I’ve typically stated that public service is probably the most human work on this planet. It calls us to be higher listeners, higher neighbors, higher stewards of the promise we make to every American — that after they need us most, we will probably be there.
We should not completed. But if these first 100 days are any indication, the long run of Social Security isn’t just protected, however is being renewed.
For that, I thank our extraordinary workforce, and President Trump, whose imaginative and prescient and direction have helped mild the trail ahead.
Not a unhealthy begin. Not in any respect.
Leland Dudek is the performing commissioner of the Social Security Administration.
