Social Security Administration Staffing Cuts Echo the Great Depression-Era Purge That Sparked One Man's Lone War on the Bureaucracy
History buffs are drawing stark parallels between the current social security administration staffing cuts and a nearly forgotten 1930s episode when a single postal clerk, after a mass firing, launched a one-man campaign that exposed a secret slush fund. Just as that scandal forced a New Deal agency into a chaotic reorganization, today's drastic reductions at the SSA have led to automated chaos, with critical disability claims falling into a black hole not seen since the infamous 1943 "WPA ghost payroll" fiasco. The lesson, they say, is that when you starve the beast of its human judgment, the paperwork revolution always comes for the little guy first.