Let me tell you a story about Chris. Chris was a guy I met at a shooting event in New Jersey last year.

'This is from Fox News back on February 19th. Jesse Watters, one of the network's most well-known faces, is holding court with four other panelists.

So he was a 20 year veteran of the U.S. military. He was one of these guys in one of these elite units, killed a lot of bad guys, put his life on the line.

Jesse says, this guy, Chris was working at the Pentagon after 20 years of active duty service. And Chris had just learned he was about to be laid off.

And he texted me and he said, Jesse, you know, this isn't good. I'm upset. This is really sad. And this guy is not a die consultant. This guy's not a climate consultant. You know, this guy is a veteran. So when you're talking about dodging people, veterans should get priority.

Now, when he says dodging people, he's talking, of course, about Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, which has been slashing through the federal government at a breakneck pace. Federal employees laid off left and right.

I finally found one person I knew that got DOGE’d and it hit me in the heart.

Remember this aired on Fox News. You're not going to find a place more sympathetic to the Trump administration on mainstream cable. And yet, even Jesse Waters was pleading for a little compassion.

We just need to be a little bit less callous with the way Harold. We talk about DOGE'ing people. Okay, I just want to. I want that to sink in.

'Now, waters has not suddenly become anti-Trump or anti DOGE by any stretch, but it just goes to show how wide reaching these efforts to shrink the federal government have gotten. So many people either know someone or know of someone who has been impacted by cuts or funding freezes. Even some Republican lawmakers have been pressing Musk directly to reverse certain cuts. So what happens if the cuts just keep on coming? Because initial plans for cutting even more jobs are due to the white House this week. My guest is CNN senior writer Tami Luhby.. She has the story of how Social Security benefits could get caught up in a DOGE deluge. From CNN, this is One Thing. I'm David Rind.

So, Tammy, much has been made of Elon Musk and DOGE over the first month and a half of this new Trump administration. Not only what they've been doing, but how they've been doing it. So do we get a sense that this move fast and break stuff approach is starting to wear out it's welcome in Washington.

It's possible, but it's hard to know. The New York Times had some great reporting last week about a big behind the scenes clash between Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. There was also some tension, apparently, between Musk and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy over air traffic controllers, and also with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins over staff cuts at his agency.

No clash. I was there. You're just a troublemaker, and you're not supposed to be asking that question because we're talking about the World Cup. But Elon gets along great with Marco and they're both doing a fantastic job. There is no clash.

And Trump has denied that there are any problems or that there are any. You know, that there was a blow up, but there do seem to be signs where Trump is reining in Musk. He told his cabinet secretaries last week that they are in charge of their agencies, not Musk, and the Office of Personnel Management notably updated a memo which added a paragraph that said the agencies are responsible for making decisions about staff cuts.

And could that be trying to get ahead of all of these legal challenges, where they're trying to suss out who exactly is in charge here?

Exactly. And so that's what a lot of experts say. It's unclear whether these are, you know, legitimate moves empowering the cabinet secretaries and, you know, reining in Musk a little bit. Or is it again, just trying to get ahead of these legal cases because there's already been a judge in San Francisco, a federal judge in San Francisco, who specified that the agencies should be in charge. They're the only ones who can be in charge of their hiring and firing. Not the Office of Personnel Management, not, you know, some centralized agency.

I think most important for today, I want the cabinet members to keep good people. I don't want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut. I want the cabinet members to keep the good people and the people that aren't doing a good job.

But one thing that's also notable is, even though Trump said yes, you know, the agencies are in charge and the agency secretaries are in charge. He also said that if they did not cut enough, Musk was going to do that.

And we want them to keep the good people. And so we're going to be watching them and Elon and the group, we're going to be watching them. And if they can cut it's better. And if they don't cut then Elon will do the cutting.

You know, even though, as there are calls for a slowdown in all of these cuts, they are still happening very quickly. And, you know, a lot of the cuts that we've seen so far have been somewhat targeted, you know, to probationary workers or, you know, to people working in, you know, the DEI offices. We're about to see a lot broader, deeper cuts because it's something called reduction in force or RIF.

Reduction in force. All right. I've heard about this. But admittedly, all this alphabet soup of Washington can make my eyes glaze over at times. So can you explain, like what we're talking about here?

Well, your eyes may glaze over, but the words RIF or the letters RIF strike terror into the hearts of federal workers. I've already been hearing from many of them, and this is something that many of them have never had to deal with before, because we haven't seen it since the Clinton administration. But basically, Trump, in an executive order last month told agencies to prepare for a reduction in force. Us, it's a, you know, very procedural, typically a very procedural effort to reduce the size of the federal.

Sounds like layoffs to me.

Yes, it's layoffs, but it can also be buyouts or early retirement packages. So it's layoffs, but it'll be more than just layoffs.

Well, so what's the big problem here then. Because you said that they kind of did this back in the Clinton administration. And this has been the overarching mission of Doge and the administration to kind of reduce the size of government, make it work better. So why are people so scared of this reduction of force?

Because the cuts under the Clinton administration, which was under a program called Reinventing Government or RIGO, were much more thought out.

Attempting to beat Republican budget cutters to the punch. President Clinton has announced another round of reinventing government cuts cuts much kinder than those proposed by the Republicans. The white House says.

What this should remind us of is that you can reinvent government cut cost to the taxpayers without, I mean, spirit or a meat ax.

You know, they spent six months working with a task force with hundreds of federal employees to try to figure out how to make the government more efficient. You know, where things should change.

At a ceremony, Mr. Clinton was presented a symbolic check for $7.7 billion, which will be collected by the Federal Communications Commission from auctions of mobile telephone frequencies.

Congress then and acted on some of these recommendations and, you know, a bipartisan way. It was much more thought out. The Clinton administration took six months. This is like barely even been six weeks. So everything is moving so fast. And from what I've heard from people, the main concern is, is that there isn't a lot of thought as to making the government more efficient or the roles that these people play or the, you know, positions that are needed. It's basically just, you know, cut, cut, cut wherever you can. And there's a lot of concern, obviously, among the employees, but there's also a lot of concern among, you know, everyone. But how will government function after there are all of these reductions? Though these layoffs are going to happen at many, many agencies and one agency I've been talking to a lot about this is the Social Security Administration.

So, Tammy, before the break, you said you've been talking to a lot of people at the Social Security Administration and how these DOGE efforts have been impacting them. Can you just quickly remind us what Social Security does?

Sure. Social security touches millions, tens of millions of Americans every month. There are more than 73 million retirees, workers with disabilities and others who get monthly checks from the Social Security Administration. And, you know, especially for retirees, this is their main source of income. So these monthly benefits are extremely important to them.

You know, there's crazy things like just cursory examination of Social Security, but we've got people in there that are 150 years old, not, you know, anyone that's 150? I don't. Okay.

So the Social Security Administration is one area that Elon Musk has really been looking into and has been claiming that there's a lot of fraud. Last month, he said there are millions of people who are well over 100 years old, you know, still on the Social Security rolls.

And then there's a whole bunch of Social Security payments where there's no identified identifying information. Well, why is there no identifying information?

It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don't know any of them. I know some people that are rather elderly, but not quite that elderly.

That's something that Trump also went on an extended roof about in his address to Congress earlier this month, talking about all of the people who are, you know, 100, 150, 200 even mentioned one person who's still, you know, on the Social Security rolls, who has been alive since before the nation was founded. What is, though? Yes.

Well, have they provided any evidence for any of these claims?

So what the issue is, is that they're also intimating that these people are getting benefits. I mean, Trump even, you know, was much more clear about saying they're getting paid and paid.

Getting paid and getting paid...nobody does. And it really hurts Social Security and hurts our country.

So there are actually people who are not alive anymore who are still on the Social Security rolls. But those people, the main reason that they're still on in the database is because the Social Security just doesn't have a death certificate for them. So the database is, you know, faulty in that manner, but it doesn't mean that they are getting paid benefits.

That's really helpful. Okay, so what happened when DOGE came to town at the Social Security Administration then?

'So it was very interesting. We, you know, learned a lot about what was happening from various posts that people have put on LinkedIn, as well as some, you know, legal documents. But basically, there was a man named Leland Dudek who was a mid-level employee at the administration, and in mid-February, he put on LinkedIn that he was looking for another job because he had been put on administrative leave pending an investigation into his collaboration with DOGE. And he acknowledged that he had been working with Doge and giving them what he had said was publicly available access and, you know, other information about the agency. So he was reaching out to his network to find another job. And then within days, he ended up becoming the acting commissioner. When the person who had spent 30 years at the agency, Michele King, ended up stepping down.

Wait, so this guy was placed on administrative leave after he admitted that he was giving stuff to DOGE? DOGE called when did this and elevated him to the top spot?

Well, Trump technically elevated him, but yes, he was breaking protocol for sure. And that we've learned later in some legal documents.

Well that's wild. So what has been going on at the agency then, with this guy who did not have any experience really running a place like the Social Security Administration now on the top spot?

Well, he has been carrying out a lot of changes. He has been closing offices. He got rid of the Office of Civil Rights at the agency. And, you know, he has been allowing the DOGE's representatives to have access to the computer systems. We don't know exactly what they're getting. And we know from a former official, Tiffany Flick, who had a declaration as part of a lawsuit that talked about how these DOGE representatives came in. One, named Michael Russo, came in as chief information officer and was demanding that one of his young computer engineers get access to a lot of the files. And what flick explained in detail was, you know, the breaking of the protocols. She had said repeatedly that this man, Michael Russo, was very evasive, wouldn't answer questions. You know, Social Security has a lot of rules over who can access this information, because imagine that, you know, random people who could get access to your Social Security numbers, your earnings, your name. You know, your name, your address. There's the Social Security Administration has a ton of information about, you know, hundreds of millions of Americans. And what we learned from Tiffany Flick was that the DOGE people were trying to circumvent those rules and protocols and give people access, give more people access to those files. We also did some reporting on a meeting that happened last week with Legal Aid attorneys and other advocates, and I spoke to one of the attendees, as well as read notes from another attendee. And, you know, what was remarkable was that during this nearly two hour meeting, the attendee that I spoke to said that Dudek said repeatedly that he is not actually in charge, that people are coming in from the outside. They're unfamiliar with the nuances of this agency. When asked who's in charge that you said it's DOGE, not the DOGE kids. It's the DOGE management. And remember, he's the acting commissioner. We still are waiting for the nominee for Trump's actual nominee.

Like multiple levels of temporary bosses at this point.

Right? He has not even been the leader. The acting leader for a month at this point. So he is making a ton of changes.

What are some of those changes?

One of the things was that the Social Security Administration has been canceling contracts. That's one of the big things that DOGE is doing. Also, they're trying to save money through canceling a lot of contracts. Well, one of these contracts was to allow parents of newborns to register their children in the hospital before they leave, you know, after the children are born, to register them for a social security number and a card. And also, notably, as we said before, there's also a contract that, you know, updates the Social Security Administration's databases with death records and death certificates. So those two contracts were both canceled in Maine. The parents got very upset. There was a lot of media attention about.

This, because they would have to do a little bit more work instead of just taking care of all of this at the hospital.

Right. It's much easier to do it after your baby is born. Just register them at the hospital for their social security number and their get their card. So there was a big media flurry of attention on this, and Dudek backtracked and he restored the contracts. You know, apologizing for the problems and acknowledging that he made a mistake.

Yeah, it's just an example of how quickly they're moving without maybe necessarily thinking of the ramifications or what folks might, you know, feel about it. Well, so besides this personal data being at risk, besides new parents being temporarily inconvenienced, you know, what are the kind of risks that advocates are talking about when they describe the dangers of DOGE having kind of free reign?

Well, it's a mixture of DOGE having free reign at the agency. But it's also, again, this drive to get rid of staffers without having a plan of who you're getting rid of and what will come after that. So one of the big issues is that Social Security runs on very old computer systems. It's a language, COBOL, which, you know, isn't really even taught anymore. And it's this intricate web of computers and networks and systems that work together to provide people with these benefits every month and to allow people, you know, the simple thing is a change of address or changing the bank account that they want their benefit to go to or, you know, registering or applying for disability benefits. And so we spoke to, you know, some people who know the inner workings. They told us there are 3600 apps that work at Social Security, you know, to in order to carry all of this out. .

By the way, when it pops up, if you ever sit next to people processing claims, I kid you not, when they turn on the computer in the morning to do their work, there's group, there's green screen pops up and it says welcome to the future. It actually says, actually, it says welcome to the future. There had been talk about removing it because it seems so ridiculous that that would have cost money and required more staff that they didn't have, so they never done that.

So the big concern that some people, including the former commissioner Martin O'Malley, who just stepped down at the end of the Biden administration, you know, he is warning that all of these deep layoffs, you're going to lose a lot of computer programmers and tech experts who have a lot of knowledge to address problems when they arise.

They call that older architecture, the foundational stuff. They should be modernized but hasn't. And they call that tech debt.

So we spoke to former Commissioner O'Malley, and he told us that there are outages that happen. There are glitches and other problems that happen. And you need the people with the knowledge, the long term knowledge, in order to address this issue.

You're going to see those inner those, those interruptions, those they will become more frequent in the months ahead, and they will become a longer duration as they continue to lose people. And then what I believe you will see is, is that cascading into an interruption and, and an entire system collapse, because that underlying foundation needs to be maintained.

So a lot of them are older, their retirement age. And the concern is, is that they're going to leave. And in speaking to several advocates and others who know the agency, there's no plan for knowledge transfer. There's no, you know, backup plan for what's going to happen if all of these people are either pushed out or just leave voluntarily because we've been told the environment there is toxic.

Like forget like actually updating this ancient computer system, which would probably be a smart move. Like they just don't have a plan to even make sure that the people who are still there know how to work the old systems, or.

The people who are left, or maybe the people who are coming in. But yes, the big concern is that there will be glitches. And then eventually if the outage is, you know, long lasting and very serious and very deep, it could affect monthly benefits. That's particularly the concern that former Commissioner O'Malley has raised.

And ultimately, I do believe this is headed to a system collapse and benefit interruptions.

One of the other things that, you know, we think DOGE is going to be doing, because they've listed this on their website, is closing a lot of field offices and other offices that people may go to if they need help. President Trump has promised not to cut benefits or touch benefits, but a lot of the big concern is that the services at the agency, which again, remember, they provide benefits to more than 73 million people every month that those services are going to, you know, be disrupted.

Well tell me. Thanks for the reporting. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

One thing is a production of CNN audio. This episode was produced by Paola Ortiz and me, David Rind. Our senior producers are Felicia Patinkin and Faiz Jamil. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan Dzula is our technical director. And Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Leni Steinhart, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Jeremy Herb and Wendy Brundage. Just a reminder, we're on Spotify. We're on Apple, we're on everywhere. You get your podcasts, so make sure you find us there and follow along so you don't miss an episode. And we'll be back on Sunday. I'll talk to you then.