Republicans and Democrats don’t concur on many things these days, but on one point they increasingly agree: Social Security is a mess. The latest evidence comes from a viral Washington Post story reporting that the government’s retirement program “ends the year in turmoil.”

The story touches on the program’s many problems heading into 2026: a multimillion-case backlog, field offices buried under record transaction volumes, and customer service in disarray, with average callback wait times exceeding an hour.

“It was not good before, don’t get me wrong,” John Pfannenstein, a claims specialist, told the outlet. “But the cracks are more than beginning to show.”

While some of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency-inspired reform efforts may have added to the chaos, Social Security’s problems extend well beyond recently reported case backlogs and poor customer service.

Waiting an hour for a bureaucrat to return a phone call is frustrating, but it pales in comparison to a $25 trillion funding hole. And while the president might want to take credit for everything, it’s not fair to lay this disaster at his feet.

Social Security is facing insolvency, the Bipartisan Policy Center

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