Michele Santa Maria was 18 and a year out of high school when she landed a job at the Social Security Administration's field office in Chula Vista, Calif., in May 1990.
She started out answering phones and sorting mail. From there, she worked her way up to customer service, helping people resolve problems with their payments or get new cards. Later, she learned how to process all kinds of claims — retirement claims, survivor claims, family claims, disability claims.
Eventually, she became a claims technical expert, training others and working on complicated cases. She says the work was hard, and the antiquated computer systems added to the tedium.
"It's a thankless job sometimes, but we're going to stick it out because we believe in what we do," says Santa Maria. "And yes, we want to get to that finish line."
The finish line being retirement. The government's formula for retirement benefits is complicated, but typically, federal workers who have put in at least 30 years can retire at age 57 with their full pensions.
"It was the reason why I stayed so long," she says.
But now, Congress looks to be chipping away at those benefits. A provision in the version of President Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" passed by the House last month would cut deeply into the retirement income she's been counting on.
"It puts me in a really bad situation," says Santa Maria.
Staying for the benefits
Federal employees across the country perform complex, critical work that Americans depend on. The jobs are not the most exciting, nor the best paid. Still, many federal workers stay for decades, in part because of the government's retirement package, which far outpaces what most companies provide.
The Federal Employees Retirement System, known as FERS, is often described as a three-legged stool. It includes a pension, a Thrift Savings Plan akin to a 401(k) and — like nearly all U.S. workers — Social Security benefits.
In addition, those who retire before they're old enough to collect Social Security can receive a special retirement supplement between the ages of 57 and 62. It's a portion of what they'll be eligible to receive at 62, meant to be a financial bridge for those five years.
That supplement would disappear under the House-passed bill. Federal employees who are younger than 57 on Jan. 1, 2028 would be out of luck.
"I was in shock," says Santa Maria. "I thought to myself, 'There's no way they're going to do this to us.'"
She retired because she feared she'd be laid off
Like so many federal workers, Santa Maria's career was thrown into upheaval after Trump took office.
She had not planned to retire until she turned 57. But fearing she'd be fired amid Trump's massive government overhaul, she took an early out.
As part of the downsizing, the Social Security Administration offered her a $20,000 voluntary separation incentive to retire at age 53. Her last day was April 19, just three weeks shy of her 35-year mark.
"Nobody knew anything. Management didn't know anything. Nobody really knew if your job was safe," she says. "I thought, better just to take it voluntarily than being forced out."
Only after she had made that irrevocable decision did she learn of the retirement supplement's impending demise. Now, if the Senate agrees to the cut, Santa Maria estimates she'll lose close to $110,000 over five years, money she was counting on to support her in retirement.
"I just can't understand why at the end of someone's career, they would take that away," she says.
"A pure windfall benefit"
Originally, the legislation moving through Congress included bigger cuts to the government's retirement benefits, including changing how retirement income is calculated. Instead of basing it on an employee's highest three consecutive years of pay, the earlier proposal would have changed that to the highest five. That was dropped before the bill went to a vote.
Earlier permutations of the bill also would have eliminated the special retirement supplement as early as this summer, before the date was pushed to 2028.
"What ended up getting passed was really watered down from the original version," says Rachel Greszler, a senior research fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation. She has long argued that federal retirement benefits are unnecessarily generous, far outstripping what most Americans get.
She was glad to see the House act on the special retirement supplement, calling it "a pure windfall benefit."
"It essentially gives them access to Social Security benefits long before every other American has access to Social Security benefits," she says.
Tens of thousands could lose out
John Hatton, staff vice president for policy and programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), says it's hard to calculate how many people would lose retirement income under the House version of the bill. He estimates it could be in the tens of thousands.
"It impacts a lot of people," he says, including many like Santa Maria who are taking early outs now because of the threat of mass layoffs.
NARFE has strongly opposed cuts to federal benefits, calling the clawback of benefits earned from past work "a real red line."
"I find it analogous to if you had a 401(k), and your employer put in contributions toward the 401(k), and they vested it as part of that vesting schedule," says Hatton. "Then after the fact, they start pulling back some of your 401(k) balance because they decided, 'I didn't really want to give you that much money.'"
The White House did not answer NPR's questions about the proposed cut or its impact on longtime federal employees.
An important retention tool or golden handcuffs?
Hatton argues that the retirement benefits serve as an important retention tool for the government. But Greszler says the perks may be keeping too many federal workers locked in.
"That might be a good thing if you're retaining the right workers, but it might not be a good thing if you're preventing people from pursuing something that they would be better at," she says, adding that churn in the workforce can be helpful.
Santa Maria disagrees. She says Americans need civil servants who can expertly navigate the government's complicated systems. And that expertise takes years to build.
"If people are going to come in for three to five years, the quality is just — it's not going to be there," she says.
She voted for Trump, hoping for positive change
Santa Maria, who voted for Trump in the 2024 election, says she'd hoped that his Department of Government Efficiency would bring technical expertise and upgrades to the Social Security Administration.
"But what they're doing now is just eliminating the people and leaving the rest with the outdated computer system," she says.
And now, with part of her retirement on the chopping block, she's even more disappointed.
"I can understand new people — new hires. People who haven't spent a decade with the government. You can make changes at that point. People have the ability to adjust," she says. "But when you have someone who's been there for 34 years and then just to pull the rug out from under you, that's devastating."
She's shared her concerns with California's Democratic Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff but knows there's little they can do to stop the budget bill, given Democrats are in the minority on Capitol Hill. Under the reconciliation process Republicans are taking to get the measure passed, they need only a simple majority of votes.
Santa Maria also started a Change.org petition asking lawmakers to grandfather in those who, like her, made the decision to retire based on the promise they'd have the supplemental income at 57.
"Do not betray the public servants who gave decades of their lives to this country," she wrote in the petition.
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