[Salon] Hours in Line, Cut-Off Calls: Accessing Social Security in the Era of DOGE

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

Hours in Line, Cut-Off Calls: Accessing Social Security in the Era of DOGE

Advocates say cutbacks hurt already depleted field offices: ‘It’s like
a house of cards.’

A security guard spoke with people waiting for a Social Security field
office to open Thursday in Bellevue, Wash.

By Ken Thomas

| Photographs by Jovelle Tamayo for WSJ

April 6, 2025

BELLEVUE, Wash.—The line began forming about 30 minutes before the
Social Security Administration field office here near Seattle was set
to open its doors, swelling to about two dozen people by 9 a.m. When a
security guard asked who had a scheduled appointment, about a third of
the people raised their hands.

Mark DeLaurenti, 70 years old, of Bellevue was among those without an
appointment. While preparing his taxes, he discovered an old uncashed
Social Security check for about $2,000 made out to his late father,
who died in January 2024, creating a discrepancy in his tax filings.
His accountant said SSA would reissue the check.

It wasn’t that simple. He showed up at the field office after spending
hours online and on the phone unsuccessfully trying to make an
appointment. When DeLaurenti finally talked to someone at the field
office, he was told to come back in three to four hours to make an
appointment—a moment that proved to be his breaking point. “I’m giving
up. They beat me,” DeLaurenti said. “It’s so inefficient, it’s
unbelievable.”

‘I’m giving up. They beat me,’ said Mark DeLaurenti after he was told
to come back in three to four hours to make an appointment. ‘It’s so
inefficient, it’s unbelievable.’

Such scenes have become more common at about 1,200 Social Security
field offices across the nation, where employees, beneficiaries and
advocacy groups describe a depleted, overburdened staff, long waits
and frequent disconnections from the agency’s toll-free number, and
hours spent idling in field offices. Social Security has become a
central focus of President Trump’s Department of Government
Efficiency, with Elon Musk referring to it as a “Ponzi scheme” and
pressing for dramatic changes.

The Social Security Administration is cutting staff, restricting what
recipients can do over the phone and closing some local field offices
that help people in person. The agency is reducing its workforce from
57,000 employees to about 50,000, the lowest level in decades. These
changes are coming as the number of retirees claiming benefits has
risen in recent years as baby boomers age.

The agency’s computer network has crashed 10 times during the past six
weeks, according to the American Federation of Government Employees,
the main union that represents Social Security workers.

Later this month, the agency plans to roll out new restrictions on
services that can be conducted over the phone, including claims for
retirement or survivor benefits, to reduce fraud and strengthen
identity-proofing procedures. Advocates and workers say that could
lead to longer waits at field offices.

John Pfannenstein said employees in the Seattle area have yet to
receive training or guidance ahead of the April 14 start of the new
identity-proofing procedures.

“It’s like a house of cards that’s about to collapse,” said John
Pfannenstein, who works at a different Seattle-area field office and
serves as a regional vice president for the AFGE. “It’s just been a
gradual degradation of service, of staffing, of funding.”

Pfannenstein said employees in the Seattle area have yet to receive
training or guidance ahead of the April 14 start of the new
identity-proofing measures.

Musk said in an interview with Fox News last month that DOGE’s changes
and modernization efforts would protect benefits for Americans. “As a
result of the work of DOGE, legitimate recipients of Social Security
will receive more money, not less money,” Musk said.

Social Security provides monthly benefits to more than 70 million
retirees, children and people with disabilities, and the social
welfare program has long been described as the third rail of American
politics because of the risk to lawmakers who seek to make changes to
the system. Unless Congress acts to reinforce the retirement program,
it is projected to deplete its reserves in 2033, triggering a 21%
reduction in benefits.

The agency has been led since late January by an acting commissioner,
Leland Dudek, who has pushed for more efficiencies and antifraud
measures. An inspector general report has estimated that improper
benefits represented less than 1% of total benefits, accounting for
tens of billions of dollars.

Signage at the Bellevue, Wash., field office directs people to make
appointments online.

The Senate is expected to soon consider the nomination of Frank
Bisignano, the chief executive of Fiserv, to serve as the agency’s
commissioner. Bisignano said during a recent Senate hearing that the
Trump administration doesn’t intend to touch benefits.

“My objective is to come in and motivate the workforce we have…to be
able to get our job right the first time for the American public,”
Bisignano told senators.

The White House and the Social Security Administration didn’t respond
to requests for comment.

While DeLaurenti’s visit to the Bellevue field office ended in
frustration, others emerged with some optimism. Larry Huffman, an
80-year-old military veteran who has been living in his Toyota Camry,
said he needed help after he discovered his Social Security benefits
had been cut by about $200 this year.

Huffman said the SSA officials were able to explain how the issue
arose, and he expected his Social Security benefits to be reinstated.

Larry Huffman received help at the Bellevue office after discovering
that his Social Security benefits had been cut.

Staff cuts to Social Security are putting a strain on an agency that
already was struggling in some parts of the country. In the summer of
2024, locations in Seattle, Tacoma and Bellevue were identified as
“stressed field offices” in Washington state in need of improvement,
according to SSA documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Other
cities with poor-performing offices on the 2024 list included Chicago,
Indianapolis, San Antonio and the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.

The fate of several field offices remains unclear. DOGE said on its
website earlier this year that it intended to close nearly four dozen
field offices to save money. SSA responded in a recent press release
that such media reports of closures were “false.”

But an internal memo titled “Strategy for SSA Service Delivery,”
viewed by the Journal, described plans in 2026 to “further reduce
footprint (e.g., field office consolidation),” and included a separate
bullet point that called for reassessing staffing levels.

In Seattle, one of the city’s SSA field offices is in a downtown
federal building, named after the late Washington Sen. Henry “Scoop”
Jackson, that was on a list of nonessential government buildings
slated for sale by the General Services Administration. The list was
later removed from the GSA website.

“People are worried they’re not going to get service if they have a
problem, or the field offices will close,” said Mike Andrew, the
executive director of Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action, a
local advocacy group.

People waiting at the Social Security field office.

Write to Ken Thomas at ken.thomas@wsj.com