“I don’t want the system to collapse,” Dudek said.

March 12, 2025 11:43 AM

Terrifying reporting from ProPublica about the SSA describes a meeting held by acting head of the Social Security Administration Leland Dudek in which he seems to admit that the "DOGE kids" may very well actually break the social security payments process and tries to disavow all responsibility because he is clearly alarmed by what he is being asked to do.

Apparently, the social security IT system is crashing nearly daily since DOGE stuck their fingers in.

This is an extraordinary and shocking piece of reporting.

posted by Frowner (57 comments total)

FUCK
posted by bz at 11:50 AM on March 12 [9 favorites]

Dudek, who had been scheduled to speak for only 15 minutes, according to a copy of the agenda, instead spoke for around an hour, talking about everything from his upbringing by a disabled mother who’d depended on Social Security, to a 1989 book titled “Bureaucracy” that mentions Trump. He continued to vacillate between sharing advocates’ concerns for vulnerable Social Security recipients and sticking up for some of what DOGE has been trying to do at his agency.

a special hell awaits this man
posted by ginger.beef at 11:55 AM on March 12 [28 favorites]

What’s the date when we’ll know if these things will delay payments? Like if things are broken right now, what date would those payments arrive, but now will be missed?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:58 AM on March 12 [3 favorites]

„Just following orders.“
posted by Slothrup at 11:59 AM on March 12 [19 favorites]

I posted this partly because it's ProPublica so it's a good, readable piece, partly because it is very shocking and revealing, and partly because IMO the only way to stop this from actually proceeding to collapse is noise about it and noise now. I've contacted my senators and I'm sending this around to everyone I think might help publicize it.

My worries are (many) twofold here - first, that once the system is really broken no one will know how to fix it and at best it will take weeks or months to kludge something else together, and second and worse, that once the checks stop going out Elon Musk will just....refuse to fix the system because hey, once it's broken, he has cut social security forever without Congress.
posted by Frowner at 12:01 PM on March 12 [33 favorites]

And under a policy that DOGE has applied at many agencies, front-line Social Security staff have been restricted from using their government purchase cards for any sum above $1.

Friend of mine works for one of the major credit card companies and told me that the company volunteered staff to work with directly with DOGE. I was wondering what they were looking for and this confirms it. FEMA apparently also has this $1 limit, right in time for summer tornado season. I expect SNAP debit cards to be throttled off at some point in time as well.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:04 PM on March 12 [18 favorites]

And that's because all of this is new territory. We have had administrations that talked about government being too big and too obtrusive, but government did not get smaller during these periods, as is easy to check. But here we have things being dismantled, but with no heed whatsoever to the consequences. If you'd told me about these actions years ago, or if you'd told me that we would have RFK, Jr. as head of HHS, Tulsi Gabbard as DNI, and a Fox News host as Secretary of Defense, I would have assumed that the US had lost some sort of catastrophic war and these were the actions of a hostile occupation government. But here we are.
posted by lalochezia at 12:08 PM on March 12 [49 favorites]

He seems like one of the few leaders giving a frank description of what's happening. The "You suck for being honest and not falling on your sword" attitude is just going to get us people unwilling to speak out.
posted by hermanubis at 12:08 PM on March 12 [10 favorites]

To find out what DOGE is doing with your information (and also to give them something to do), Rep. Jamie Raskin has suggested people file FOIA requests.
posted by justkevin at 12:09 PM on March 12 [15 favorites]

You’d think SS checks not going out would be a pitchforks-and-torches moment, but in any case the twisted rationalizations from that side will be a thing to see.
posted by gottabefunky at 12:15 PM on March 12 [24 favorites]

> I would have assumed that the US had lost some sort of catastrophic war and these were the actions of a hostile occupation government

We did; these are. It just wasn't a shooting war.
posted by nicwolff at 12:15 PM on March 12 [122 favorites]

I've been telling people for a decade that the New Cold War was based in did and misinformation. America has officially lost.
posted by foxtongue at 12:20 PM on March 12 [9 favorites]

He seems like one of the few leaders giving a frank description of what's happening.

this is a misreading of the actual words from the article, and does not reflect the content of much of what was quoted from Dudek

I would not characterize him as a gleeful villain, he does seem.. conflicted. But like every good story I've ever read where someone ends up damned to hell, this guy is willfully going along with things despite the signs he himself seems to be picking up.
posted by ginger.beef at 12:26 PM on March 12 [16 favorites]

>It just wasn't a shooting war

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/04/leader-of-the-pro-trump-project-2025-suggests-there-will-be-a-new-american-revolution-00166583
posted by torokunai2 at 12:26 PM on March 12 [5 favorites]

I mean, the issue with Dudek is that here's a guy who is a Trump appointee who is manifestly terrified that the payments system is going to break on his watch. He's a symptom. IMO as many people as possible need to know that the guy appointed [temporarily] by Trump thinks the system is going to collapse because of DOGE. This is important and time-sensitive because probably once Trump appoints the permanent guy, the permanent guy will be a little cannier about media. This guy is just some unwise schmoe who didn't know what he was getting into until it was too late.

FTR, I got right through to one senator's office when I called DC, so the phones can't be too slammed. I hate to be all activist because I know that is not really in the spirit of the Blue, but noise and noise now, before some alt-right idiot deletes all the code or whatever.
posted by Frowner at 12:35 PM on March 12 [35 favorites]

Ideally since the House Republicans held together yesterday to send the CR (to fund government through Sept) to the Senate, the Dems could filibuster the CR until DOGE is cancelled.

The Republicans adjourned the House though so they're forcing the Dems to shut down the government over this, plus everything else that they put into the CR.

Politics (with the electorate and/or media environment we have) suuuuuucks.
posted by torokunai2 at 12:36 PM on March 12 [3 favorites]

If you'd told me about these actions years ago, or if you'd told me that we would have RFK, Jr. as head of HHS, Tulsi Gabbard as DNI, and a Fox News host as Secretary of Defense…

For my taste, Linda McMahon installed at the Department of Education to supervise its dismantling is peak Trump kakistocracy.
posted by Lemkin at 12:47 PM on March 12 [19 favorites]

Ideally since the House Republicans held together yesterday to send the CR (to fund government through Sept) to the Senate, the Dems could filibuster the CR until DOGE is cancelled.

Call your Dem Senators and beg them to filibuster and delay until the CR has protection for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, especially Bennett, Gallego, Hassan, Hickenlooper, Kaine, Kelly, Ossoff, Peters, Rosen, Shaheen, Shumer, Slotkin, Warner, and Welch, who Chop Wood, Carry Water says are wavering.
posted by joannemerriam at 12:47 PM on March 12 [18 favorites]

I wish more Democrats had the courage to stand up to this and then make it LOUD AND CLEAR that it was necessary to PROTECT GRANDMA'S SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICAID.

But we have so few Democrats with the courage, and even fewer with the fire.

My own senators want me dead, so if you have ones a little less evil - please.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:49 PM on March 12 [18 favorites]

I've been telling people for a decade that the New Cold War was based in did and misinformation. America has officially lost.

For years now I've been quoting/paraphrasing someone (now lost to time and search engine enshittification) who back in the late-90s/early-00s said something along the lines of "The U.S. didn't win the Cold War, it just lost more slowly."
posted by Pedantzilla at 12:49 PM on March 12 [15 favorites]

I mean, the issue with Dudek is that here's a guy who is a Trump appointee who is manifestly terrified that the payments system is going to break on his watch.

IMO, the conflict is because he's not terrified that the system is going to collapse, he's terrified that the ramifications of the collapse is that he personally is going to suffer consequences. He supports both DOGE and Trump according to the article.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:10 PM on March 12 [19 favorites]

You're right, he'll be thrown under the bus the moment the system fails.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:13 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]

What’s the date when we’ll know if these things will delay payments? Like if things are broken right now, what date would those payments arrive, but now will be missed?

Our family is operating under the assumption that my mother has already received her last social security payment. Probably ever. We actually had a contingency plan for that before DOGE cost 60% of us our jobs. Now we ... do not.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:14 PM on March 12 [29 favorites]

Strongly recommend if you have not creating a my Social Security account and downloading your statement, which contains the full amount of SS taxes you've paid, as well as a lot of other useful information. For now the site is up and working.

Once they succeed in crashing the system and destroying its records, a hard copy may be the only record of what was stolen from us.
posted by reedbird_hill at 1:16 PM on March 12 [55 favorites]

SSA websites are sometimes offline on nights and weekends so don't panic (just yet) if you can't get in.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:20 PM on March 12 [5 favorites]

“I don’t want the system to collapse,” Dudek said.

Yeah, well your boss does.
posted by tclark at 1:25 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]

Thanks for this information. My Dem Senators are on the wavering list, so I called them.
posted by medusa at 1:32 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Left VM for Cantwell and the slightly less pathetic Murray. Cantwell's DC VM inbox was full so I had to call her Seattle office.

I'm so tired of these old, pathetic scrubs we have in office. I have shit political skills but I'm seriously thinking somebody with a pulse needs to run against them.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 1:48 PM on March 12 [7 favorites]

https://nypost.com/2025/03/12/us-news/government-shutdown-likely-friday-night-after-schumer-says-senate-dems-will-block-gop-funding-bill/
posted by torokunai2 at 1:50 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]

What’s the date when we’ll know if these things will delay payments?

MiantropicPainforest, I just checked my account (March 12, 2:00 PM) and my SSA payment is in "processing" state. So maybe we find out this week?
posted by SPrintF at 1:52 PM on March 12 [2 favorites]

Called Slotkin and left a voice mail, for what it's worth. She's been pretty much useless and voted for a bunch of Trump's appointees, and gave that horrific Reagan's-corpse-wanking Dem response to Trump's address- she seems to be trying to play old school politics-as-usual and carry the Republican's water for them, so I'm not holding out much hope that she'll suddenly understand the gravity of the situation.
posted by 40 Watt at 1:59 PM on March 12 [6 favorites]

My mom in SC has confirmed her cheque came today through direct deposit. But how long until it doesn't is also my great fear.
posted by Kitteh at 1:59 PM on March 12 [5 favorites]

>“They’re learning. Let people learn. They’re going to make mistakes.”

Funnily enough, when we have doctors cut into people's bodies with knives and rearrange their organs, we often put mechanisms in place to make sure that THEY HAVE ALREADY LEARNED and have been subjected to some kind of rigorous scrutiny beforehand to make sure they know what the fuck they're doing.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 2:01 PM on March 12 [43 favorites]

Funnily enough, when we have doctors cut into people's bodies with knives and rearrange their organs, we often put mechanisms in place to make sure that THEY HAVE ALREADY LEARNED and have been subjected to some kind of rigorous scrutiny beforehand to make sure they know what the fuck they're doing.

And once DOGE finds out about that, they'll put a stop to it quick as can be, no doubt! WHO CAN INNOVATE WITH ALL THESE RULES.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:06 PM on March 12 [15 favorites]

Also, the more traction this story gets, the more clearly everyone (who is paying any kind of attention) will understand exactly, precisely who is to blame when things go wrong - it's not some accident, it's accidentally-on-purpose and fully owned by Elon Musk. I mean, seriously, tell people, post this on Facebook, promote it to the extent that you can - here is a Trump appointee saying that Musk's little nazis are going to break Social Security.

If there's enough noise about it and enough fingers are pointed, they may be too scared to fuck around with things too much. Further, if this story gets traction online where Elon and Trump and so on will be aware that regular people have read it, it's a much bigger story than if it's just sequestered in the liberal blogosphere. Social security interests everyone. Many, many people who are fairly well off are not well off enough to do without their social security payment, and those people are going to be key.

Like, let's say you're pretty rich and you have a nice retirement. You and your spouse each receive, say, $1500 a month from social security. That's $36,000 a year. There are a lot of people who are living comfortable retired lives who would be materially inconvenienced if they didn't have that $36,000 a year. Like, even if you have an investment income of sixty or seventy thousand a year, you aren't going to want to just say, "oh sure fine, I'll give up $36,000 a year in order to smite the poors".

There are far, far more rich-ish people who are living middle/upper middle retired lives than there are extremely rich people for whom $36,000 is a rounding error. If those people start panicking and pointing, things will turn around pretty quick. Musk is too rich to care about anything, but business owners who cater to the rich-ish are not.
posted by Frowner at 2:13 PM on March 12 [38 favorites]

Meanwhile, Trump just sacked the head of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
posted by Lemkin at 2:15 PM on March 12 [5 favorites]

I'm just posting the same thing over and over at this point. The US won the cold war! This is what we were fighting for! We were fighting to fuck the working class and to fatten the ruling class and for strong borders and big prisons and the pax Americana and the white master race, and we're finally getting all of it. It's not like the plan was kept secret either. Switch sides.
posted by jy4m at 2:48 PM on March 12 [5 favorites]

Clawback cruelty : 100% withholding rate for Social Security overpayments increases March 27
posted by jeffburdges at 3:08 PM on March 12 [6 favorites]

>“They’re learning. Let people learn. They’re going to make mistakes.”

That defence was unacceptable (but barely tolerated by the rubbery news media) in Gulf War Two.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:11 PM on March 12 [2 favorites]

Switch sides.

This is a largely incoherent position but capping it off with "switch sides" is . . . confounding. What sides? From what, to what?
posted by aspersioncast at 4:31 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]

Still looking for the clawback on the congresspersons' corrupt covid PPP loans to the vicious right:

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2022/09/06/fact-check-ppp-loans-forgiven-republicans-matt-gaetz-marjorie-taylor-greene/65470173007/

oh wait that was memory holed? color me shocked....
posted by WatTylerJr at 4:35 PM on March 12 [12 favorites]

The US won the cold war! This is what we were fighting for!

America won the fight against the Soviet Union with the help of the oligarch class, because as a state-communist government, they were a bigger threat to the oligarch class than democracy. Now that Russia is an oligarchy, pluralist democracy is the larger threat to the oligarch class and Russia is an obvious ally against both democracies in general and also China, where the oligarchy is still subordinate to the state.
posted by mhoye at 7:17 PM on March 12 [5 favorites]

You’d think SS checks not going out would be a pitchforks-and-torches moment

Oh, it will be, it's just going to take actually missing a couple checks for it to sink in for some people that this is happening.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:51 PM on March 12 [5 favorites]

Missing one check will be enough. Most of us live paycheck to paycheck.
posted by kozad at 5:04 AM on March 13 [12 favorites]

Missing one check will be enough.

Oh, absolutely, this is true for many - I was accounting for the real die-hards who'd tell themselves that "okay, this is just ONE check, they're probably just working out the kinks and the next one will be on time, I just gotta be patient...."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:01 AM on March 13 [4 favorites]

So in more stupidity/horror (storror? we definitely need a word) - yesterday Musk was going to cut phone access to social security in an obvious attempt to fuck up people's benefits permanently (just like making it harder to maintain medicaid enrollment) but was shamed out of it by media coverage.

This is why I think we all need to share this stuff as much as possible and make it clear to younger people what is happening. Like, I think a lot of people have a lot on their plates and may be thinking "I am thirty, my parents are still working, I don't have brain space to worry about this" BUT unless those people plan to be able to provide somewhere around $36,000 a year per set of parents to make up for social security, they NEED to be concerned.

For me, when I think about this, well, I expect to die in the next five to ten years, because some goddamn preventable disaster is going to kill me or I'll end up homeless and die on the street, so I'm not too worried about my social security. I'm not going to live to retire. But I would prefer that my father, who god willing I will at least outlive, does not end up on the street with me.
posted by Frowner at 6:15 AM on March 13 [15 favorites]

Washington Post: Social Security scraps far-reaching cuts to phone services after Post report

Public and Congressional opinion does, to some extent, matter.

The risk is not so much that checks will not go out, as that's basically automated. But application processing and other services, especially disability determinations, cannot be completely automated. Cutting administrative funding would means slower processing, longer wait times, and more errors.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:50 AM on March 13 [4 favorites]

I disagree. To make Republican tax cuts permanent, massive cuts from somewhere are needed, and it's sure not coming from the Pentagon. A lot will probably come from Medicaid, which is bad enough and will be extremely unpopular, but to keep that money flowing to the super-rich, they will need to cut social security benefits. Not just enrollment age, not just nibbling at the edges by cutting staff, but actual benefits. That's what they're trying to soften us up for.

Happily, crashing the stock market and persuading the upper middle class to torch social security isn't going to be the easiest thing in the world. As I say, Musk and his ilk are so rich that a market crash is just an opportunity, but the vast majority of fairly rich people lose money when the market falls apart, and then that extra $36,000 per year seems more essential than ever.
posted by Frowner at 7:09 AM on March 13 [7 favorites]

They really do have video game brain - to them we're all just NPCs, with a sharply limited amount of moves we can make and no actual effect on what happens, and that's just as true of the upper middle class couple with a few million in investments as it is of the grocery store clerk.
posted by Frowner at 7:12 AM on March 13 [22 favorites]

Adam Savage coined the phrase 'I reject your reality and substitute my own'.
Galaxy Quest popularized 'Never give up, never surrender'.

MAGA has seemingly appropriated these phrases as their rallying cries.

When the checks don't come, we'll get an earful of "it's all the Dems fault for not capitulating on the budget resolution," or some such.

I suspect another phrase being appropriated by MAGA in DC is 'nobody who matters will be affected.'
posted by zaixfeep at 7:18 AM on March 13 [2 favorites]

Thank you for posting this, Frowner. I applied for Social Security a few weeks ago and I am deeply regretting I did not do it earlier. I am a deadline this week but I will start pestering my elected officials and also the White House phone line about this issue.
posted by Bella Donna at 8:50 AM on March 13 [3 favorites]

R’s for years: privatize retirement with the stock market
T: this stock market? ( sets on fire )
posted by funkaspuck at 9:19 AM on March 13 [8 favorites]

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1EuVy
Blue is corporate profits, red is federal debt (both 1990 = 100)

Any questions?
posted by torokunai2 at 10:42 AM on March 13 [1 favorite]

Those are both in nominal dollars, so of course they go up together, along with pretty much any aggregate economic statistic.

Corporate profits have gone up over the past decade - from roughly 6 to 9 percent of GDP - and debt has skyrocketed, but I know of no obvious connection. Business generally wants lower debt, because that keeps interest rates low.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:09 PM on March 13 [4 favorites]

I suspect another phrase being appropriated by MAGA in DC is 'nobody who matters will be affected.'

I am so weary of banging this drum, but from the 700k or so of us who live in the District of Columbia who lack representation and are being specifically and repeatedly fucked by this admin, can we please not use DC as a synecdoche for the evil morons?

The rest of the country sends MAGA to us.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:59 PM on March 13 [7 favorites]

I'm no expert but it seems to me that the Walmarts and P&Gs and by proxy the index funds really really don't want Social Security money to stop flowing. Again no expert but it seems to me that at a certain point the boards of the Fortune 1000 start taking action no?
posted by jasondigitized at 8:13 AM on March 15 [2 favorites]

Clawbacks: Rolling Stone, Programmable Mutter
posted by jeffburdges at 7:29 PM on March 18