Social Security Administration Identifies $800M in Savings for Fiscal Year 2025

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has managed to identify at least $800 million in cost savings for the agency for the fiscal year 2025.

As the Washington Examiner reports, many of the savings have come from the reevaluation of contracts and grants, as well as payroll, information technology, changes to travel policy, consolidating office space, and switching from printed paper to electronic forms.

“For too long, SSA has operated on autopilot,” said Acting SSA Commissioner Lee Dudek in a statement. “We have spent billions annually doing the same things the same way, leading to bureaucratic stagnation, inefficiency, and a lack of meaningful service improvements. It is time to change just that.”

The main source of savings was a hiring freeze on SSA Disability Determination Services and a reduction in overtime pay, which accounted for $550 million. Another $150 million was saved by cancelling non-essential contracts in the agency’s Information Technology (IT) systems. The agency saved $15 million in canceled contracts and another $15 million in canceled grants.

The SSA saved another $3 million by switching several key forms and notices to online after they were previously only available in print; this included the SSA-1099 and SSA-1042 notices, which led to at least 5.4 customers choosing to opt out of paper notices in favor of electronic forms. Another $28 million was saved by switching to centrally-printed and mailed notices, instead of such forms being printed and mailed locally.

Lastly, the SSA saved $4 million in rent by cancelling over 60 different leases.

Such savings at the SSA and other federal agencies have been credited to the work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is led by billionaire Elon Musk. The primary purpose of DOGE is to reduce government spending that is determined to be wasteful, to fire federal employees whose jobs are deemed redundant, and to abolish entire agencies that are ultimately ruled as unnecessary by the Trump Administration.