A ten-year civil servant at the Social Security Administration is asking why tech billionaire Elon Musk has made one of his first major targets the government agency working with remarkable efficiency despite funding cuts.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Rennie Glasgow said, “We were getting the job done efficiently and effectively, until now."
When he came into office, Trump created the "Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)" by executive order and tasked Musk with leading the effort. That initiative has been behind the upheaval and dismantling of government agencies. Websites, grants, programs, and employees have been cut or frozen under the promise that Trump will save taxpayers trillions.
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Glasgow revealed that SSA has very strict rules about how employees can access Americans' private data, "but there seemed to be no rules at all for DOGE."
“Folks that have not been trained, have not been sworn to protect that information, but they walk in and they just go around accessing and doing whatever they want, and we have no clue where they’re taking that information or what they can do with it,” Glasgow said.
Glasgow revealed that his small office of just 31 people was cut by seven.
"At the same time, the public was hit with numerous confusing emails about what they could or could not do. A dozen people showed up at the Syracuse office on Monday under the mistaken impression that they had to present an ID in person," reported the Beast.
Meanwhile, wait times on the SSA 1-800 number, which "were sharply declining," the report said, are now spiking. The previously reliable website is repeatedly crashing. So they've seen the number of people coming to the office in person double.
"They then often find that only four of the 18 windows are open due to the staffing shortage. And a person could finally step up to a window after a three-hour wait only to encounter more DOGE-induced inefficiency," said the report.
"Every day, between the hours of 10 to about 12, our system goes down,” Glasgow said. “So it’s not just that people are sitting there, waiting for us to help them. When they get to the window, they’re told, ‘Our system is down. We can’t help you. We don’t know what’s going on.‘”
Staff are getting emails every day, Glasgow continued, with new rules making it more difficult for Americans to collect their Social Security benefits.
So, while Trump campaigned on the promise that he wouldn't touch Social Security, Musk's team appears to be set on sabotaging the administration from within, the report said.