First off - this clown Dudek really is proving himself to be quite the piece of work. Just a stupid shill. My impression is they went WAY down the list to find someone pliant enough, and promoted him WAY above his competency. He might have very well been an adequate bean counter/pencil pusher/middle manager, but he has no business being a policy person/public spokesman.
Second - so far everything I see suggests little other than “inconvenience” for some folk. Some folk in the boonies who - for whatever reason are unable to sign up on-line - will have to go in to the office instead of calling on the phone. And, of course, it is stupid to make those changes at a time that walk-ins have been eliminated and staff and field offices are being eliminated. A pretty significant inconvenience, but not insurmountable.
Yeah, it is possible that some changes might be proposed/enacted to actually lessen some peoples’ benefits. But I have not heard of those yet, nor does that NPR story describe them.
Of course, everyone with a brain knows that SOME changes ought to be made to SS - whether increasing the rate, raising the income subject to withholding, increasing age (or - as I recommend but few agree, in part, increasing taxes on benefits for high income/wealth recipients.) In such situations I have never heard of them proposing taking benefits away from current recipients - or even folk close to receiving bens. I guess it COULD happen, but I doubt it.
Perhaps they ARE trying to break it to move to privatization - which would be a disaster fo MANY folk.
(IMO they could make quite a few changes to the disability regs - reduce/eliminate child’s benefits, raise the ages in the Medical-Vocational Guidelines, etc. - but I suspect that would just be nibbling around the edges in terms of savings/solvency… To the contrary, the most recent significant change was to INCREASE disability recipients, by reducing the period considered past relevant work from 15 to 5 years. IMO, in many respects SSA Disability is essentially today’s welfare.)
Yeah, the attacks on SSA impress me as stupid. SSA staff is at a 50 yr low, and they issue 75 million payments/month with a damned high reliability and damned low admin costs. Yeah - it sucks if you are one of the few whose payments get fucked up. But again in the vast majority of situations, those are just inconvenient delays which eventually get fixed. Some old fart complains about hanging on the phone for 3 hrs? So what? Leave the phone on hold next to you while you are reading a book. OR mobilize to pay higher taxes to support increasing staff and resoutces to lessen the wait times! 
What is unlikely to happen is that SSA will “do more with less.” As with all of DOGE’s efforts, there has been ZERO effort to make cuts aimed at reducing waste, culling the worst performers, or meaningfully prioritizing programs. Of the staff who remain, I presume most will simply continue to provide similar effort as they have in the past. Which will mean longer waits. As I told my boss, “If they want me to produce more, I will. But let’s be clear - each “unit” will not be of the same quality as my current work. I can pretty much turn out as much work as they demand - but the quality of each piece will be shit. And, what I will NOT do is donate to the cause by working OT, losing leave, etc.”.
IMO, THAT is the level of service 1/2 the voters voted for.
