HuffPost: Elizabeth Warren Probes Staffing Shortage And Backlog At Social Security

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wants details about the Social Security Administration’s pending retirement claims and how many staff are left to sort through the growing backlog.

In a letter to Social Security commissioner Frank Bisignano, Warren noted a recent report that claims processing has slowed 25% as a result of misguided efforts by President Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” to root out fraud.

“Instead of acknowledging the need for additional staffing, SSA leadership directed employees who review these claims – already overworked in the wake of DOGE’s mass reductions in force – to ‘sprint’ to increase their pace by 10 percent,” Warren wrote.

HuffPost exclusively reported last week that an SSA official asked employees to work 10% faster to get through a backlog of more than 575,000 pending retirement claims.

The push for faster claims processing raised questions about the agency’s decision earlier this year to get rid of thousands of its nearly 60,000 employees as part of Trump’s effort to slash the federal bureaucracy. The agency signaled in February it would shed 7,000 workers. In April, the agency said in a press release it had only gotten rid of 3,350.

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