The NPR Politics Podcast - DOGE's Potential Impact On Social Security & The VA

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

The Trump administration's efforts to reshape the federal government have now set their sights on how the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs could be reformed. But their proposed changes could leave millions of Americans who rely on services from those agencies vulnerable. This episode: political correspondents Susan Davis & Ashley Lopez, and veterans correspondent Quil Lawrence.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, I'm Claudia. And I'm Wyatt. And we're on our way to the In a Pickle Festival in New Braunfels, Texas. This podcast was recorded at 1 o' 5 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but soon we will find out why this festival is such a big deal. Okay, here's the show.

[♪ music playing, audience laughing, and audience laughing together. I think I would enjoy a pickle festival, assuming it's not a euphemism for anything. Yeah, and New Bruffles is a cool town. It's really close to me here in Austin. It's like a German town in the middle of central Texas. All right. Hey there, it's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Susan Davis.

I cover politics. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Quill Lawrence. I cover veterans and the VA. And today on the show, more on the Trump administration's continuing efforts to reshape the federal government. We're going to focus today on two agencies in particular,

the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Ashley, I want to start with you because you've been reporting on some of the proposed changes to the Social Security Administration. What are they? Yeah. So, I mean, it's been a slew of things that have been proposed recently, but I think the bigger changes that are expected to come, like in many agencies in the federal government, there's fairly big layoffs coming. So the Social Security administration at the start

of the Trump administration had about 57,000 employees and they're looking to get rid of about 7,000 of those jobs. I talked to some union folks who think by the end of the year they may lose more people than that because of their return to office policies as well as just like the general pressure that federal workers are feeling right now and they think those things will lead to a sort of unpredictable number of people leaving the agency which I should already say is like at a 50 year staffing low and so and then there's like another big change which is sort of a structural thing that advocates say could actually have a big impact on the agency and services and that is that the Trump administration plans to drastically cut back a layer of management. They announced that they're

cutting six out of the agency's ten regional offices which provide a lot of support to the 1,200 field offices that are across the country and some of which of those are also being closed. What do you think these cuts would mean to services because the social security administration helps millions of people? Yeah, I mean the the social security administration serves roughly 73 million Americans. It's a lot of people and already the agency has had a hard time keeping up with that workload so any cuts in staffing are expected to increase wait times for help both in person and over the phone. And the agency also announced this new policy that could force some folks to travel in

person for help. So this could become a very frustrating situation for many Americans who have already, you know, have had to have a lot of patience in order to get services. And you know, the paperwork requirements alone for disability services are pretty immense. It can already take years for people to get those services. And folks are worried this will just take longer moving forward when a wait time is already really long. And you know, as far as the regional offices, which I mentioned, these offices provide support

to local field offices that most Americans interact with, whether it's like IT, HR, or even problem solving and training, that's where these local folks turn to. So advocates told me they're worried that this is going to make it harder for people to get problems fixed and in general just make the jobs of those people and those public facing roles like much harder. I mean, it seems like such a contradiction that these cuts are being made under the guise of making the administration more efficient.

But what you're describing sounds like a critical function of government becoming a lot less efficient. Yeah. And I mean, there are a lot of people, past commissioners and advocates who say like, there are places to create efficiency. Like any agency could get better. Like just sort of announcing from one day to the next big changes without agency input is sort of a recipe for disaster, folks told me. And, you know, there are former Social Security Administration commissioners like Martin O'Malley

under the Biden administration was like, if you want to create a situation that will basically bring the agency to a halt, like the conditions are there now. And so they're really concerned. Quill, let's talk about the VA. It's a huge federal agency. Can you give us the sense of the scope of it and the type of cuts the Trump administration is looking at? Yeah, I mean, it's the second largest government department

after the Pentagon. And that's because it's a system of hundreds of hospitals and clinics across the country and almost every state. They have 480,000 staff, but they've already cut 2,400 probationary employees in that first round and they've probably lost the same number, so up to about 5,000 now because of a hiring freeze on many job titles. We obtained an internal memo from VA saying that they want to cut 83,000 more, which would cut it back to the levels before this law called the PACT Act was passed.

That was a huge bipartisan law that brought all of these veterans into VA care who hadn't qualified for it before. Everything from people exposed to toxins during Vietnam, Agent Orange, to people exposed to toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, literally millions of vets joined the medical roles. And so they've plused up on the medical staff since then to take care of this major influx.

And it's kind of hard to see how they can cut that deep without affecting that care. Do you have a sense of that 80,000 number? Does it sound to you that it would cut very deep into, I'm thinking, healthcare providers, nurses, therapists, doctors, or is it more on the bureaucratic side? 300,000 of these are healthcare jobs. And they've exempted those from the hiring freeze. So at the same time, they're saying, we're going to lop off a mass of your staff.

We are still really wanting to hire. And in fact, we're short of these health care jobs. Doctors and nurses are hard to find. And the people who do administration, whose jobs, who are bureaucrats, those are the folks who are reading the veterans' claims to find out if they qualify for VA healthcare or what sort of a disability check they should get each month for having lost two limbs to a bomb in Afghanistan, et cetera.

So if you cut the people reading those claims, we'll have problems like we did in the past where it's taking a couple of years for someone to get an answer on their disability claim. SONIA DARA GILMORE One of the things I find so surprising about this level of deep cut at the VA is that, you know, everything's partisan in Washington, as you well know, but generally speaking, health benefits for veterans often brings about much more support in Capitol Hill and in both parties than opposition. Are you kind of surprised that a Republican-controlled

Washington is willing to cut this deep into the VA? Yeah. I mean, veterans are political dynamite. You can't, especially around election time, everyone cares about veterans. There's a debate about whether that stops after the votes are counted. But there are veteran constituencies in every state. They have organizations that put out talking points there, so they're politically organized. Veterans groups will tell you if you want to cut budgets, well, I'm sorry, they already paid for these benefits in advance by going to war and bleeding on the battlefield. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk more about the political

implications of these proposals. And we're back and actually when it comes to social security there's a bit of a political cliche that it's a third rail of American politics and that nobody wants to touch it because the blowback would be so great. And one of the things I have found striking if you still believe that cliche is true is that there's some folks in the Trump administration who have been stepping in it lately. And I would point to the recent comments by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who said this on the All In podcast. Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who's 94, she wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't. She thinks something got messed up and she'll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling and complaining.

I think that's a cut we're going to hear a lot in the midterm elections. But talk about that, Ashley, in that the idea that this isn't just something that Americans can go by and not need, millions of people literally need social security to survive. Yeah, I mean, even according to the AARP, something like 40% of elderly Americans like this is their main source of income. So if you remove a month, like even just one check, like that means they can't buy groceries that month. That means they can't afford their prescriptions. I mean, there would be a huge impact on millions of people. I mean, you know, as you mentioned, like it is surprising to hear anyone in any sort of political context say something like that. But you know, even Trump himself said he wouldn't dare cut social security in particular, like he

was vehement about this throughout the campaign. And early on, he did spare the agency from a lot of his administration's early efforts to shrink the federal workforce. Like at the VA, the hiring freeze did not apply to the Social Security Administration and deferred resignation. That program did not apply to the SSA. So this was something that, you know,

even early on the Trump administration was aware would be a weird move, but it's obvious things started to change once the Department of Government Efficiency or DOJ, you know, Elon Musk's group, set their sights on the Social Security Administration. Musk in particular started like accusing the agency, without any evidence I should say, of having massive amounts of fraud. So I think they're trying to change the political reality of the Social Security Administration by sort of undermining it with claims of fraud.

But we'll see. I think it's an open question of whether that will work. I also think this is interesting because these cuts in these proposals are coming from the president, from the White House, from Doge, the executive branch, however you want to put it. But generally speaking, in the past, these reforms have come from Congress. And I'm curious to see if this becomes a pressure point for Republicans who control Congress for letting these cuts happen. Because I think about this, you know, if you've got a veteran who's getting their benefits cut, or if you have a senior who's not getting their Social Security check, and there's paperwork problems, they call their member of Congress, right? Like the

Doge is potentially creating a whole wave of problems for the people that will ultimately have to deal with it. I'd say over at VA, we've been trying to figure out whether the dog is wagging the tail or vice versa here. And I've seen in some congressional hearings where VA officials go and they're under oath and they get a little bit granular. I mean, they can't answer or at least I can say in these hearings, they didn't answer how many staff they've had cuts from their own small departments, like for

example the home loan office. And if they don't know, it would seem to imply that it's not coming from their office, but it's coming from DOGE. But then we have people denying that and saying, no, this is VA's plan and VA will have a plan out by the end of the summer about how they're going to do these cuts. But it does seem like the cut idea is coming from the Doge side. Do you get the sense that these cuts like they're going to happen no matter what? Or do you think there's still a possibility that there could be such a political pushback to it that even

Doge might have to say, okay, we're going to pull back on these two things, which I think, you know, politics has gotten very partisan, but veterans, seniors, the disabled, orphaned children still tend to be the types of Americans that the vast majority of people in elected politics want to help. I mean, I think it's an open question. I know that the Trump administration, it's important for them to at least look like they are keeping their promises. But on the agency side, even the nominated commissioner, Frank Bisignano said during his hearing that, you know, he's going to see how things go. Like this isn that, you know, he's going to see

how things go. Like this isn't, you know, the Trump administration's plans or something he has to follow, but you know, the repercussions of them is something he's going to keep an eye on. So there could be adjustments made in the future if there are serious problems with the way the agency is running. But we'll see. I don't see how they could scale back from a huge proposed plan, but if it backfires. I don't see how they could scale back from a huge proposed plan. But if it backfires, I don't know how they could keep moving forward either. Rick Haverkate I mean, every step so far, looking over at VA has had some whiplash. Even those original cuts of probationary employees, each round

of 1200, 1400 cuts they made, they cut people from the veterans crisis hotline, the suicide hotline that staffed 24-7. And then they immediately put them back because apparently they thought these people maybe were essential, but also because there was an immediate political backlash. So trying to cut jobs and facilities at VA hasn't worked in the past because again, everyone has one. It's just like trying to close a military base that those exist in congresspeople's districts and they provide a lot of jobs.

And the other thing is that, I mean, these healthcare jobs, which they don't want to cut, they're not easy to fill, but the instability that we've seen in these first few months is making clinicians think twice. These doctors and nurses don't have to look too hard to find a job in the private sector instead. So I don't know, they might end up making cuts to jobs that they didn't want to cut because people will be thinking twice about coming to work for VA as a doctor or a nurse.

All right, I think we'll leave it there. Thank you both for your reporting. I'm Susan Davis, I cover politics. I think we'll leave it there. Thank you both for your reporting. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Ashley Lopez. I also cover politics. And I'm Quint Lawrence. I cover veterans and the VA.

And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.