April 14 start-up: Abruptly Eliminating Social Security Phone Services Threatens Access to Benefits

Trump's Social Security Catch-22

By Kathleen Romig, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

The Trump Administration is making it harder for eligible Social Security beneficiaries to access their benefits by eliminating phone services, forcing millions more people to seek in-person help even as it cuts thousands of Social Security Administration (SSA) staff. At the same time, increasingly frequent website outages are making it harder to seek service online. These abrupt and unjustified changes will worsen customer service delays and strain capacity at local field offices throughout the country.

Trump has repeatedly promised not to cut Social Security benefits — but his Administration’s actions will effectively do just that, by making it harder or even impossible for people to access their earned benefits.

Starting April 14, phone service will no longer be an option for retirees and survivors applying for benefits, or for beneficiaries making direct deposit changes. Instead, these services will only be available in person at an SSA field office — a 45-mile trip for some 6 million seniors nationwide, a new CBPP analysis finds — or online, if an online application exists and if a person is able to access SSA’s online tools. Many seniors and people with disabilities lack internet service, computers or smartphones, or the technological savvy to navigate a multi-step, multi-factor online verification process. Even as SSA is encouraging people to do business online, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is making changes to online identity authentication that are triggering system outages and access problems.^[1]

Eliminating most applications by phone will close off an important mode of service for millions of people. Some 5.2 million people began to receive Social Security retirement, survivors, and dependent benefits in 2023.^[2] More than 4 in 10 retirees apply for their Social Security benefits by phone, as do most spouses who are eligible for benefits.^[3] So do the substantial majority of bereaved family members who are eligible for benefits following the death of a worker.

The agency estimates that ending phone service would push about 75,000 to 85,000 more people per week to seek in-person service — over 4 million annually.

SSA itself says this will lead to “longer wait times and processing time” and “increased challenges for vulnerable populations” as the demand for office appointments rises. And it comes when SSA is reportedly pursuing other^[5] policies that will increase the number of weekly field office visits by thousands. This will compound wait times and competition for an already limited number of appointments, which are required for most in-person services.

Reasons Not to Cut Phone Service Are Measured in Miles

For many applicants, the only way to apply for Social Security benefits will soon be by visiting an SSA field office. There is no online application for Social Security survivors benefits, so grieving family members must visit offices soon after the deaths of their loved ones to apply. Children cannot have online Social Security accounts, so their parents must visit offices to apply for benefits on their behalf after a parent dies, becomes disabled, or retires.

Telephone services are critical for seniors and people with disabilities, who may struggle to access online portals and may face barriers to traveling to field offices (if one even exists in their area). Many Social Security beneficiaries don’t drive while others have mobility issues that make getting to in-person appointments difficult or burdensome, even if they do not live great distances away. Nationally, it’s estimated that over 6 million seniors don’t drive, and nearly 8 million seniors report a medical condition or disability that makes it difficult to travel outside the home.

The difficulty this can all pose is especially daunting in rural areas. For example in Alaska, an estimated 60,000 people lack access to broadband, some residents live hundreds of miles from their nearest field office — there are only three statewide — and some communities are not connected to SSA field offices by roads.^[6] And in North Dakota, 13,000 seniors live more than 180 miles roundtrip from their nearest field office, according to CBPP analysis.^[7]

Appointments Are Required, and Scarce

Forcing millions more people to seek in-person service for tasks they previously did by phone will create significant burdens on top of those they already face due to years of constrained funding at SSA.^[8] As of this year, SSA requires appointments for most in-person services.^[9] To make an appointment, people must call the agency’s 800 number, where the wait time for a call back averages 2.5 hours and most callers do not reach an agent.^[10] Then over 60 percent of people must wait over 28 days for an appointment — if they’re lucky.^[11] In fact, “field office calendars are often booked out the full 40 business days that the system allows,” so getting an appointment may require another lengthy phone call.^[12]

These waits will only worsen as millions more people seek appointments from a dwindling staff. The Washington Post reported April 4 that 7,000 staff have already been eliminated, and that DOGE is now seeking even deeper staff cuts, with “reductions in force” starting as soon as the week of April 7.^[13] SSA announced that 3,000 staff have taken buyouts, which require them to leave by April 19 — just as the phone service changes are taking effect.^[14] Most of the staff who took buyouts — nearly 2,000 — work in field offices, and in dozens of those offices, the staff cuts are more than 25 percent.

Rushed Announcement Paves Way for the Fraud It Claims — Without Evidence — to Combat

These changes are not justified by compelling evidence. Though SSA claims that the direct deposit change is intended to reduce fraud, the agency’s own figures show that direct deposit fraud is a very small problem, and in the rare cases it does happen, most are not initiated by phone.^[15] This is a far cry from DOGE and Vice President Vance’s false claims that a sizable percentage of calls to SSA are for the purpose of fraud.

Less than one one-hundredth of a percent of the $1.5 trillion the agency paid out in benefits last year was lost to direct deposit fraud; likewise, less than one one-hundredth of a percent of SSA’s 70 million beneficiaries had their direct deposits redirected in 2023. ^[16] [17]

And SSA’s Inspector General reported that even in the very rare cases that benefits are misdirected, SSA is often able to recover them.^[18] Additionally, in recent months SSA had moved to deploy tools designed to limit fraudsters’ ability to impersonate recipients over the phone.

The rushed announcement that SSA would begin implementing these new restrictions on phone services has led to confusion that “a wave of scammers” is exploiting to target retirees for identity theft, creating opportunities for fraud that the proposal was purportedly intended to curb.^[19]

Abruptly eliminating SSA’s phone services for most applications and for direct deposit changes is the opposite of improving government efficiency. It will be more costly, cause longer delays, and create more burdens for the people who depend on Social Security. SSA should rescind this harmful policy.