It wouldn’t be quite accurate to label the brief reign of acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek an unmitigated disaster.

That’s because, disastrous as it has been, there’s one mitigating factor: Dudek’s scorched-earth actions — and their apparent endorsement by others in the Trump administration — have awakened the program’s beneficiaries to the threat they face from the administration.

At a March 14 panel discussion hosted by the National Academy of Social Insurance, former Commissioner Martin O’Malley said that public awareness of the rampage launched by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, at the Social Security Administration has been “ramping up quickly.”

He added, “Whether the democracy can ramp up enough to put the brakes on what’s already in motion is an open question.”

For most of the approximately 70 million Americans who receive benefits, Social Security has operated like a well-oiled machine, as it has for most of the 90 years of its existence.

That record has come under threat, due largely to what has been a concerted effort by Trump — who has vowed to not cut Social Security — and Musk, the head of DOGE, the quasi-governmental agency that has run roughshod through government programs, to undermine public confidence in the program.

The alarm is widespread — and justified.

The words of O’Malley, a Biden appointee, were echoed by his co-panelist, former Commissioner Michael Astrue, a George W. Bush appointee. Astrue also pointed to concerns that Dudek’s opening Social Security databases to DOGE employees could expose personal information about its beneficiaries and the 185 million Americans who make payroll contributions to the program to “very bad actors.”

Astrue called the DOGE people ensconced at the Social Security Administration “idiots” who are “not really understanding what they’re doing.” He blamed Dudek, who he said has acknowledged that “totally illegal and inappropriate conduct is happening.”

The rising concerns come at a crucial moment. Trump’s nominee for commissioner, Wall Street executive Frank Bisignano, will face the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday for a confirmation hearing.

This will be the first opportunity for senators — Democrats and Republicans — to get answers on the record about DOGE’s activities at Social Security, as well as commitments to protect the program from partisan interlopers.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sought those commitments in advance, in a letter they sent to Bisignano on Sunday. Warren is the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Banking Committee and Wyden is the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee.

They asked him to pledge to not privatize any components of Social Security and to reverse layoffs and field office closings if they interfere with the application or collection of benefits by beneficiaries, and to remove DOGE personnel from the Social Security Administration.

Bisignano hasn’t responded to them. Nor did he reply to my questions on these topics, sent via his company, Fiserv.

Let’s take a close look at the damage Dudek has done to Social Security in his brief reign at the top.

A good place to start is Dudek’s abrupt ruling early this month requiring parents in Maine to apply for Social Security numbers for their newborns by presenting the infants in person at Social Security offices, unlike parents in every other state.

The change burdened parents with what could be hours of travel while exposing their newborn children to infectious diseases. It came not long after Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, had publicly challenged Trump over the rights of transgender students.

After an uproar, Dudek quickly reversed himself. “In retrospect,” he said, he recognized that the change “created an undue burden on the people of Maine, which was not the intent.”

He didn’t say then what the intent was, but he revealed it in an interview with the Washington Post published March 18. Asked to explain his action, he stated, “I was upset with the governor’s treatment of the president.”

It should go without saying that manipulating access to Social Security as a political retaliation should be a disqualifying action for any official at Social Security. I asked Dudek, via the agency’s press office, to confirm the accuracy of the quote and to state whether this didn’t show that he was unqualified for his role. I received a “no comment” in reply.

On Thursday, after federal Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of Maryland issued an order blocking DOGE personnel from accessing Social Security data, Dudek claimed that the order was so broad it would apply to all Social Security employees and he would have to shut the agency down.

This was a flagrant misinterpretation of Hollander’s order, which applied only to DOGE personnel who had not been properly vetted or trained for access to the data. She made that crystal clear with a follow-up letter the next day. Dudek confessed to having been “out of line.”

It should be remembered that as I reported earlier, Social Security officials had suspended Dudek — placed him on “administrative leave” in government parlance — for providing unauthorized access to DOGE. While he was still on leave, Trump fired the then-acting commissioner, Michelle King, and gave the job to Dudek.

Dudek isn’t alone in playing fast and loose with Social Security’s well-earned reputation for efficiency. Musk has denigrated the program as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” a repetition of an ancient meme that, as I wrote, demonstrated only that he knows nothing about Social Security, and nothing about Ponzi schemes.

The prospect that DOGE’s rampage through Social Security might delay benefit payments or even prevent beneficiaries from receiving them at all didn’t faze Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a billionaire who volunteered on a podcast with two fellow plutocrats that sending Social Security checks or bank deposits out late would be no big deal.

“Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month,” Lutnick said. “My mother-in-law, who’s 94 — she wouldn’t call and complain…. She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month.”

But “a fraudster,” he said, “always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling and complaining…. The easiest way to find a fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing.”

Lutnick’s observation gained instant meme status on social media, along with his woolly assertions about government spending not having anything to do with inflation, and enhanced his stature as the Trump Cabinet’s outstanding horse’s patootie.

Here’s what I think would happen if Social Security checks and direct deposits were delayed for even a single day: The fallout would be cataclysmic for the Republican Party. There would be nowhere for them to hide. It would be front-page news coast to coast.

While bringing misery to millions of Americans, a delay — which would be unprecedented since the first checks went out in 1940 — would be a gift for Democrats, if they know how to use it.

Lutnick’s dismissal of the effect of delayed payments on millions of Americans was so crass and cavalier it would make Ayn Rand blush. Here’s the truth about the importance of those benefits to the Americans receiving them: Among those 65 and older, 39% of men and 44% of women receive 50% or more of their income from the program. For 12% of men and 50% of women, those payments account for 90% of their income or more.

At the National Academy panel, O’Malley warned that the Social Security Administration’s ability to provide effective customer service to beneficiaries and applicants faced collapse under Dudek and DOGE. He has noted in congressional testimony that the agency’s employee cadre had reached a 50-year low, even as the number of recipients reached a record.

“We worked all last year to turn things around that were all going in the wrong direction,” he said of the efforts he undertook to reduce wait times on the agency’s 800 number and the backlog of disability cases.

The biggest threat to customer service capabilities then was attrition, as more of the agency’s workers approached retirement. “The DOGE team, so-called, have been doing everything they can to accelerate attrition,” O’Malley said. They’ve offered all employees buyouts with a year’s pay, backed by the threat of layoffs if they don’t accept.

Dudek has said that his goal is to reduce the workforce of 54,000 by 7,000. The departures, as O’Malley said, take place without any effort to have the departing people train their replacements or impart the information they need to take over their jobs. “About 40% to 45% of the people in the office of benefit information systems are retirement-eligible. So I think they’re going to lose a lot more than 7,000 people.”

Throughout its history, Social Security has been led by an almost unbroken line of commissioners and advocates whose commitment to the program’s sacred responsibilities to its beneficiaries was unquestioned. That’s not so today. At Bisignano’s confirmation hearing Tuesday, one hopes that senators on both sides of the partisan aisle will make him show that his commitment meets those responsibilities in every respect.