Trump administration seeks to curtail costs

The White House wants to defund a bipartisan board that advises the president and Congress on Social Security policy, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as the Trump administration moves to cut costs and eliminate independent voices in government. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget has notified staff at the Social Security Advisory Board that it plans to cut the board’s annual budget from around $3 million to zero, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss non-public budgetary details.

The move to defund the SSAB has not been previously reported.

Congress established it in the 1990s as an independent federal agency to provide objective analysis on how to improve Social Security, the popular programme that annually pays out $1.4 trillion in benefits to 73 million Americans.

While the board does not have decision-making power, its research has helped shape how the SSA runs itself and facilitated legislation.

It has also played a role in important policy debates, including a 2005 effort under then-President George W. Bush to privatise the agency that ultimately failed.

The board’s research was a key building block in a 2018 law that reduced the compliance burden for select categories of people appointed to receive benefits on behalf of those who cannot manage their own payments, while tightening checks for others.

While technically a separate agency, the advisory board’s funding is a line item in the SSA’s budget each year. This month, OMB gave SSA its proposed budget for the next fiscal year from October 1, with funding for the board set at zero, the two sources said.

President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have been trying to downsize the government while removing or restricting voices that could serve as a check on his agenda.

His targets have included the 17 inspectors general fired in January whose job was to root out waste and fraud. Bob Joondeph, the board’s chair, told Reuters he had yet to be formally notified of the funding decision.

“Its strength is its bipartisanship. It’s one of the few places you can go in government and get something that a bunch of people from different parties can reach consensus on,” Joondeph, one of two Democrats on the four-person board, said in an interview.

“The fact that it would be eliminated, to me is symbolic of sort of the larger trends in Washington.” Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has targeted the Social Security Administration for significant cuts, triggering complaints from union officials, Democratic lawmakers and advocacy groups about longer wait times for phone service and at understaffed field offices. The agency has announced plans to eliminate 7,000 jobs, roughly 12% of its workforce.

“The Social Security Advisory Board was created to help the president and Congress strengthen the programme - but now, Trump is defunding it,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a statement to Reuters. The SSA and the OMB did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did the two Republican-appointed members of the board. Joondeph has asked the board’s staff to contact OMB for an explanation of its authority to cut funding, one of the sources said. The bulk of the board’s budget goes to paying staff. Defunding it will bring its work to a halt, but officially ending the board will require an act of Congress. Henry Aaron, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former SSAB chair, said that while the board has produced useful research over the years, its impact has been limited by the need to form a consensus between Republican and Democratic members.

Hal Daub, a former Republican congressman who was board chair from 2002 to 2006, said he believes the board has played an important role providing independent analysis, but he is sceptical it will be missed.