President Donald Trump's 2026 budget leaves funding for the Social Security Administration flat, at $12.7 billion, breaking his promise to protect the program, Social Security Works said Friday.
Keeping funding for SSA flat "is a de-facto cut since SSA’s fixed costs, such as field office rents, go up every year by over $600 million," said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, in a statement.
"Furthermore, it forces SSA to spend more money on so-called 'program integrity' — clawing back money from Americans who have been overpaid through no fault of their own — which creates extreme hardship, including homelessness," Altman said.
"The truth is that Social Security is extremely understaffed, which is increasing backlogs and wait times," Altman said.
Trump's budget "will make those backlogs and delays worse," she added. "It will make mistakes — including the Orwellian nightmare of being inadvertently declared dead when you are not — harder to fix."
Proposing to fund the SSA "at 2024 levels is, in fact, a cut because costs rise every year," added Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. "This is the last thing SSA needs since Trump unleashed Elon Musk and DOGE on the agency."
Said Richtman: "In a fake hunt for ‘fraud’ and ‘inefficiency’ at one of the most efficient federal agencies, the Trump administration has slashed the SSA workforce to record low levels and made it harder for seniors to access their earned benefits. Wait times for customers have swelled since Trump took office and the SSA website has crashed several times. With 10,000 Baby Boomers turning 65 every day, this is an agency in need of more resources, not less."
The Trump administration’s "same indifference to seniors also is apparent in the $674 million the White House proposes to cut from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency responsible for administering federal health programs," Richtman said.
Meanwhile, the Senate invoked cloture on Thursday and will move to a vote on the nomination of Frank Bisignano to be commissioner of the Social Security Administration for the term expiring Jan. 19, 2031.
Bisignano is the chief executive officer of the fintech and payments company Fiserv Inc.
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