GEOFF BENNETT: President Trump continues to say his administration won't touch Social Security, the social safety net that around 70 million retired and disabled Americans depend on each month.

But as Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency look to slash federal jobs and spending, the Social Security Administration has plans to cut 12 percent of its work force.

Our Laura Barron-Lopez reports on how that could affect the program and its payments.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The acting agency head told employees this week that it's Musk and DOGE that are calling the shots at SSA.

The Washington Post reported that Leland Dudek told senior staff at SSA that Musk's team of -- quote -- "outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs are making decisions and that they will make mistakes."

And, this morning, the agency told its workers they can no longer use their government computers to look at, among other things, news Web sites, even blocking access to some of them.

The restriction was said to help protect sensitive information.

But news sites and obituaries are often relied on to confirm death information and prevent fraud.

For a closer look at the effect of potential cuts to Social Security, I'm joined by Martin O'Malley, who was the commissioner of SSA during the Biden administration and previously served as the governor of Maryland.

Governor O'Malley, thank you so much for joining the "News Hour."

The Social Security Administration is looking to cut 12 percent of its work force, some 7,000 people.

How will people receiving Social Security benefits potentially feel the effect of those cuts?

How will this impact the agency?

MARTIN O'MALLEY, Former Commissioner, Social Security Administration: Ever since December, people have been putting in -- those eligible to retire have started to leave the agency.

The agency had already had been driven down to a 50-year low in staffing, even as Baby Boomers of my generation swelled their customer ranks to a new record high every single day.

So, people are going to experience much longer wait times on the telephone.

We had gotten that speed to answer down to 12.5 minutes.

It's now shot back up on average to over a half-hour now.

You're going to see more people dying, waiting in line for their initial disability determinations, which we had started to get moving in a better direction.

That's now going back up.

And it's going to take longer when people do decide to retire to actually effectuate that claim and get them into a payment status.

Ultimately, all of this cratering out of the agency, all of this gutting of the agency's customer service staffing is going to have, I think, very widespread consequences for all 72 million people receiving Social Security, because they have never had to operate these old systems with such few staff, and they are being gutted every single day.

I think they're going to drive more than 7,000 people out of the agency.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: There could be more changes coming to the agency.

Elon Musk has called Social Security -- quote - - "a Ponzi scheme."

President Trump claims that millions of people from 100 years old to 300 years old are getting Social Security money.

And Speaker Mike Johnson has told people to not believe the Social Security Administration inspector general report that said that only 1 percent of Social Security payments are improper.

What's your response to all that?

MARTIN O'MALLEY: It seems that there's a concerted effort to undermine public trust in Social Security, an institution which, by the way, Laura, has the highest trust rating, second only to the Interior Department and Smokey the Bear.

So all of these things, we have heard these arguments before, the Ponzi scheme one.There are not tens of millions of dead people walking around stealing our benefits.

That's been debunked by everyone, including the acting commissioner, who's saluting and taking orders from DOGE.

So I think what they're trying to do is undermine public trust and public confidence in Social Security.

I believe they are intentionally trying to break it, so that then they can loot it for some reason.

I don't really understand what that reason is, but they seem to be hell-bent on gutting the agency and driving it into a ditch.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: In an e-mail to employees earlier this week, the acting administrator said that SSA needs to -- quote -- "outsource nonessential functions to industry experts."

So some in the agency took that to mean that maybe they're going to privatize elements of the SSA.

That could potentially be one of the goals here.

What impact would that have if they moved to privatize sections of the agency?

MARTIN O'MALLEY: The notion that somehow you can fire all the public employees and automatically private sector will step up, how are they going to do that?

Allstate operates at 11 percent overhead as a big insurance company.

Liberty Mutual operates at 23 percent overhead.

When this agency operated well, Laura, they were allowed to operate at 1.2 percent overhead.

I think people running agencies should learn and understand them before they go about dismantling them and crashing them.

For 90 years, they haven't missed a monthly payment, but now they're putting it -- being put at great risk of doing that by being hollowed out and being gutted.

Private sector solutions, sure, bring them on.

But there's no way to serve ever-growing customer base with ever-reduced staffing.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: You recently said that -- quote -- "people should start saving now."

Why are you issuing that warning?

MARTIN O'MALLEY: Because I know a lot -- I learned a lot about the agency and I learned a lot about its I.T.

systems.

The agency is all people helping people and the systems that those people need to process claims, effectuate payments, and make sure that the 72 million Americans get their direct deposit every month or those that opt for a paper check get those.

All of their systems are very old.

They are driving the people out of the agency who actually understand how to maintain that system, not just to code in COBOL, but understand the architecture of how that foundation supports the other foundations on top of it.

So, I believe that you're going to see increasing outages of longer durations of the claims processing systems that will ultimately cascade into a total system collapse that will interrupt benefits.

Whether that will be just one month and then they get it back up, whether that will be two months, I don't know.

But I do believe that people should -- I know that people depend entire -- some people depend entirely on Social Security, but they should start saving for what I believe is the inevitable cratering of this agency and the interruption, for some time anyway, of the benefits.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Martin O'Malley, former head of the Social Security Administration, thank you for your time.

MARTIN O'MALLEY: Thank you.