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Statement for the Record - Subcommittee Hearing: The Future of Social Security

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Subcommittee Hearing: The Future of Social Security Hearing Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2026 Hearing Time: 3:00 PM Hearing Location: 215 Dirksen Senate Office Building Submitted by: Leland Dudek Former Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration The Honorable Chuck Grassley Chairman Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy United States Senate Washington, DC 20510 The Honorable Bernard Sanders Ranking Member Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy United States Senate Washington, DC 20510 Dear Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Sanders, and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to submit this statement for the record on the future of Social Security. I write as a former Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration and as someone who believes deeply in the mission of the agency. Social Security is not an abstract budget line. It is the foundation of retirement security, disability protection...
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Trustees Report 2026: Money Still Trickles Up

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  Last week, SSA released the 2026 Trustees Report.  Social Security’s retirement trust fund are now projected to be depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032. If Congress does nothing, incoming revenue would cover only about 78 percent of scheduled retirement benefits. Medicare’s Hospital Insurance trust fund faces depletion in 2033, when it would be able to pay about 89 percent of costs. Those dates are close enough so that delay is no longer harmless. Will Rogers once poked fun at President Hoover’s faith that money placed at the top would somehow trickle down to the people who needed it most. Hoover’s background was that of an engineer, and he knew water trickled down. Rodgers was gentle enough to point out that money trickled up. Give money to the people at the bottom, and the people at the top will have it before night anyway, but at least it will have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. That line still works because it is funny, but it works even better because it is t...
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When the Excuse Expires

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  Election season is upon us, and it reminds me that the oldest trick in leadership is to throw the last guy under the bus. It happens in politics, business, and government. A new leader walks in, sees the challenge, and says, “Don’t blame me. I just got here.” Sometimes that is fair. Every leader inherits something: a bad budget, tired employees, broken systems, old backlogs, and a culture built more around avoiding risk than solving problems. There is an old joke about a departing leader who leaves two letters for his successor, each to be opened during a crisis. The first letter says, “Blame everything on me.” So, he does. For a while, it works. Then the second crisis comes. The same excuses no longer work, so he opens the second letter. It says, “Write two letters.” That is the politics of inherited failure. Blame buys time. It does not buy competence. Every leader gets a short grace period to explain what they walked into. But eventually, ownership arrives. The question change...
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The McDonaldization of the Social Security Administration

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Imagine pulling up to a Social Security field office like it is a McDonald’s drive-thru. You state your problem into a speaker. You hand over your papers to someone trained mostly to take the order. Then your claim disappears into a distant kitchen, where some centralized unit, automated system, or overworked specialist is supposed to make sense of it all. That may sound efficient. It may even sound modern. But for an older person who cannot navigate a phone tree, a disabled claimant who cannot explain their life in a web form, or a rural worker who has paid into this system for forty years and now needs help, it feels like something else. It feels like being moved through a line instead of being served by a government that knows your name, understands your problem, and has the authority to fix it. Let me be clear. I believe in IT modernization. I believe in AI. I believe Social Security needs a serious digital future. Modernization is not the same thing as hollowing out service. AI is...
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Breaking the Bottlenecks: Information, Access, and the Fight for Time ACRD 2026 Annual Conference Keynote: Kissimmee, Florida

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  Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Orlando and the ACRD annual conference! It’s a pleasure to be here with you, and even better to see folks in person. We spend so much time on calls, emails, on screens, and helping others, that we don’t always get the chance to step back, shake hands, connect. You matter. You’re doing the hard work. This conference is your opportunity to lean in and connect with “birds of a feather”, other people doing the same work across this great country of ours. So, I am looking forward to the conversations this week. The ones in the hallway. The ones over coffee. The ones where someone says, “Are you seeing this too?” And the answer is usually, “Yes. Every day.” Now I will admit, when I saw the conference was in the Orlando area, I thought to myself, this might be the only conference where people flew in thinking they were going to Disney, and instead got a deep dive on disability policy, medical records, and administrative law. Not quite Space Mountain....
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Location: Orlando, FL, USA
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