Newsweek has an article on Social Security’s response to the story in the Washington Post on the deterioration of service at Social Security. Maybe they gave Newsweek a more substantive response that’s poorly reported but what I’m reading is no more than bluster. Why are they responding to Newsweek anyway? Everybody else rolled their eyes at the agency’s response?
Dec 31, 2025
Dec 30, 2025
Washington Post On The Deterioration Of Service At Social Security
From the Washington Post:
The Social Security Administration — the sprawling federal agency that delivers retirement, disability and survivor benefits to 74 million Americans — began the second Trump administration with a hostile takeover. It ends the year in turmoil. A diminished workforce has struggled to respond to up to 6 million pending cases in its processing centers and 12 million transactions in its field offices — record backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers, according to internal agency documents and dozens of interviews. Long-strained customer services at Social Security have become worse by many key measures since President Donald Trump began his second term, agency data and interviews show, as thousands of employees were fired or quit and hasty policy changes and reassignments left inexperienced staff to handle the aftermath. …
At the start of September, one benefits authorizer in a processing center was called into an all-staff meeting with her colleagues, she said. There, management explained that the backlog at the time — 6 million cases — was unacceptable and that everyone would have to work overtime in an attempt to drive it down to 2 million by Christmas.
“When they told us that, everybody started laughing,” she said. “Because there is just absolutely no way to get it down in that short period of time.” …
There is so much more to this piece. Read it all. It’s just the start as people start realizing there’s so much more to Social Security than answering the phones — not that the phones are answered well.
Dec 29, 2025
I Guess Their Regular Duties Aren’t That Important
There’s a report that 500 Social Security employees are being pulled off their regular duties as Claims Specialists and Technical Experts to answer the agency’s 800 telephone number lines effective Monday.
Dec 28, 2025
Threats In Tupelo
From the Daily Journal:
A Corinth [MS] man with a history of threatening federal employees has been charged with threatening to shoot workers at the Tupelo Social Security office.
James C. Curry Jr., 51, of Corinth, is accused of threatening employees at the Tupelo Social Security Administration office Tuesday, Dec. 16. He was arrested Monday in Lee County and taken into federal custody. He is currently incarcerated at the Lafayette County Detention Center, awaiting preliminary hearing Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court. …
Dec 27, 2025
I Have A Startling Admission To Make — I Love Fruitcake!
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| Although to be honest, this doesn’t look like a great one |
Dec 26, 2025
Dec 25, 2025
Dec 24, 2025
Dec 23, 2025
I Don't Think We Can Trust This Report
Back in July, Senator Elizabeth Warren asked that Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) perform an audit of Social Security's reported telephone call waiting times. The audit has now been completed and a report issued -- just before Christmas. The report says that the agency's metrics were accurate which is probably technically accurate but whether those metrics are fully meaningful is another question.
There are at least three problems with this report. First, there is zero reason to trust OIG. It no longer enjoys any independence. It doesn't report to the Commissioner but it does report to the White House. It is now clear that there can be no OIG reports at any agency which criticize the Administration. The release of such a critical report will be blocked and those who drafted it summarily fired. (Thank you, Supreme Court.) Second, the report admits that 25 million callers to Social Security became so frustrated by Social Security's answering system that they hung up. It didn't add these callers in to the phone answering metrics. If you do add them in you find out that they comprise a whopping 40% of calls to Social Security. That's a lot of frustrated callers. Third, many of the calls were handled by Interactive Voice Response (IVR) rather than a human. How effectively did IVR respond to requests for customer service? The agency reported a big jump in telephone calls this year. How much of that was due to failed IVR? Failed IVR also contributes to customer dissatisfaction.
Senator Warren is already accusing the Social Security of lying.
Dec 22, 2025
30+ Day Wait For In-Office Appointments
From CU-Citizen Access:
Getting an appointment at Champaign’s [Illinois] social security district office continues to take 30 days or more, but some recipients report that once they are at the office their needs are processed quickly.
Yet the wait can be frustrating and difficult.
Kiesha Jones, a Champaign resident, said she waited an hour and a half for her initial appointment at Champaign’s Social Security Office.
“They were like, we’re only taking appointments, you’ve got to call this number. I called the number and I couldn’t get through,” she said. “Once I got through, they made an appointment about 37 days out.” …
Despite her experience, a spokesperson for the Social Security Administration said in a December email to CU-CitizenAccess that most claim appointments for disability benefits are scheduled within a month.
“The Champaign, Illinois office currently schedules the vast majority of T2 disability, SSI Blind and Disabled, and aged claim appointments within 30 days of request,” the spokesperson said. …
Dec 21, 2025
Fair?
The National Committee to Protect Social Security and Medicare is blaming changes made during the Trump Administration for SSA’s data systems crash last Wednesday. Is that fair? I don’t know. I do know that the agency’s data systems are at greater risk due to staffing cuts.
Dec 20, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
Unending Slime
I have to say just how much it galls me that the Commissioner of Social Security is a man as deficient in character as Frank Bisignano. Within a few months of leaving his old position as CEO of Fiserv, the new company management accused him of what amounts to a “pump and dump” scheme netting him hundreds of millions of dollars. In any other Administration Bisignano would have been forced to resign. In the Trump Administration it’s just another in an unending series of stories demonstrating how slimy many of Trump’s appointees are.
Dec 18, 2025
$1.3 Million Dollar Scam
From WGAL:
A social security imposter scammed two Lancaster County residents out of $1.3 million, according to Pennsylvania State Police.
Troopers said two 78-year-olds from Providence Township fell victim to a person who posed as a Social Security Administration employee.
The unknown suspect told the victims that one of their Social Security numbers was compromised and they needed a new one, according to police.
Investigators said the imposter gave the victims detailed instructions to liquidate their retirement assets, stealing a total of $1,328,652.
The suspect used the money to purchase gold that was collected by unknown individuals as payment under the guise of purchasing a new Social Security number, according to police. …
Dec 17, 2025
Systems Problems
I’ve heard that Social Security is having large scale systems problems today but have no details. Can anyone fill me in?
4th Circuit Opinion Of Interest
Attorneys who represent Social Security disability claimants may find the recent decision of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Hultz v. Bisignano dealing with fibromyalgia in particular and subjective symptoms in general of interest. It’s a reversal awarding benefits so you know it’s a strong opinion. You don’t see many of these at the District Court level much less Court of Appeals.
The State Of Customer Service
The Social Security Administration has posted data showing the state of customer service at Social Security. I’m sure it’s as accurate and meaningful as the earnings projections made at Fiserv while Frank Bisignano was its CEO. Below is one of the charts from Social Security’s posting.
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| Click to view full-size |
Dec 16, 2025
Living Rent Free In Bisignano’s Head
Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano seems a little obsessed with his predecessor, Martin O’Malley.
New Requirement For Verification Of Immigration Status
From Emergency Message EM 25067:
This Emergency Message (EM) provides instructions for processing Supplemental Security Income (SSI) claims involving noncitizen applicants and redeterminations involving noncitizen recipients. It clarifies that all noncitizen applicants must have their immigration status verified through the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, regardless of the type or appearance of the immigration document presented. Similarly, all noncitizen recipients must have their immigration status re-verified through SAVE when there has been a change in immigration status and during SSI redeterminations. …
Dec 15, 2025
Coming Back?
Mark Miller writes for the New York Times about the challenges that a new occupational information database presents for the Social Security disability programs. He’s not sure what’s going to happen but feels something is coming sooner or later. I agree with him on this. Ominously, he expects that now supposedly withdrawn revisions to the agency’s regulations that would make it dramatically more difficult for older people to be approved for disability benefits will come back at some point. I strongly doubt that such a thing will ever be politically feasible; maybe if Republicans win an overwhelming victory at the polls next year but that’s unlikely.
Dec 14, 2025
Dec 13, 2025
Oopsie
From CBS News:
Highly sensitive information, including Social Security numbers and bank account information, was mailed out to the wrong recipients in the Delaware Valley. The mix-up created confusion and concern that the mistake could have led to identity theft.
The Maggitti family from Broomall said they got paperwork back after filling out an online application for Social Security benefits for 18-year-old Anthony Maggitti Jr., but there was one glaring problem.
"I started reading it and realized this didn't make sense. This doesn't seem to be his information," Colleen Maggitti said. "So I saw that on the top it was supposed to go to a person named Holly, who does live in this area, but that was all of her information." …
CBS News Philadelphia contacted the Social Security Administration, which said in a statement, "Important to note that this mistake was an isolated incident and the result of human error. The incident is being investigated."
While the administration wouldn't say how many people were affected, they said it was a limited number and corrective actions were being taken. …
By the way, I wouldn’t post this if it only involved a couple of people but it sounds like there’s more involved. Isolated but not that isolated.
Also, by the way, many years ago I discovered a much larger privacy problem at Social Security. When Social Security introduced an electronic data system that most Social Security attorneys call ERE it prepared a demo that it handed out on a CD showing how the system worked. They used real claimants’ records but tried to redact them. Unfortunately, they did a poor job of redaction. PII was openly visible in several places. I happened to be one of the first people to receive the CD. I imagine at least a few dozen other people received the CD at about the same time. I was the one who noticed the problem and notified the agency. My understanding was that they were abashed. I know they tried to get all the CDs back.
Dec 12, 2025
Trump Administration Does Something Sort Of Normal
From Newsweek:
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent letters to 39 governors on Thursday calling for an end to the diversion of foster youths’ earned Social Security survivor benefits.
The ACF said in a press release that state welfare agencies often intercept federal benefits, such as Social Security survivor benefits earned through a deceased parent’s lifetime contributions, that are intended for a child in foster care. The welfare agencies reimburse their own costs using these funds.
The ACF sent letters to governors who allow this practice and said it plans to work with states to end it. …
Dec 11, 2025
And We're Back To This
The New York Post is running an article in which Senator Joni Ernst criticizes Social Security for making payments to dead people. The tone of the article suggests there's some awful scandal going on. However, it doesn't give the entire context showing that payments to dead people are a tiny portion of benefits paid and that Social Security makes extensive efforts to prevent the overpayments. Social Security's efforts to identify dead beneficiaries are so successful that the agency's Death Master File is widely used in the financial industry to prevent fraud. They use it because they can't do better. Most notably the article includes no suggestion on how the agency could do a better job of identifying dead people.
I sometimes think that if Republican leaders had their way the Social Security Administration would spend as much money trying to find fraud as it does to make benefit payments. Why are they so obsessed with fraud? Because they hate the very existence of Social Security and want proof that it's fatally flawed.
Dec 10, 2025
Afraid Of Voters
From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP):
Friday, December 12 is the deadline for public comments on a policy the Trump Administration secretly adopted in May, giving the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) access to personal data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) on nearly every U.S. resident. DHS has been encouraging states to use this data to reverify the citizenship of voters, and DHS says state voting officials have already queried these data tens of millions of times. A court order recently forced the Administration to disclose the arrangement and allow public input.
The Administration policy raises significant legal, privacy, and other concerns. One of the most serious is that Social Security data don’t have complete or up-to-date citizenship information, so using them to verify citizenship will almost inevitably lead to errors — potentially disenfranchising U.S. citizen voters ahead of the midterm elections. …
For people not receiving Social Security benefits, SSA has long stated that its citizenship data are incomplete, can be outdated, and “do not provide definitive information on U.S. citizenship.” While SSA data can be helpful in proving that someone is a citizen — for example, to meet Medicaid’s citizenship requirements — the data have several well-known shortcomings in proving that someone isn’t a citizen. …
Dec 8, 2025
Disparities In Disability Determination
Social Security has posted numbers on initial allowance rates by state and region on disability claims for the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2025. As always, click on the image to view full size. Note the disparities between and within regions. You were much better off filing a disability claim in the Kansas City region than the San Francisco region.
Dec 7, 2025
Dec 6, 2025
Dec 5, 2025
Man Charged With Threatening To Blow Up Field Office
From WWNY TV:
A Watertown [NY] man is accused of threatening to blow up a government office in the city.
City police charged 32-year-old Edmanuel Rivero-Vazquez with making a threat of mass harm.
During a meeting with staff at the Social Security Administration office on Bellew Avenue on Wednesday, Rivero-Vazquez allegedly threatened to blow up the building. ...
Dec 4, 2025
Eye Rolling Comments From Trump
Donald Trump is saying that he likes the idea of Australia’s defined contribution retirement program instead of U.S.’s defined benefits plan. Defined contribution means you have no guaranteed retirement income. Maybe you get more than a defined benefits plan. Maybe not. The risk is yours. Also, how does a defined contribution handle disability and survivor benefits? Maybe those contingencies never happen in Trumpworld. Oh, and there’s also the little problem of how we would transition from what we have now to a defined contribution plan, a problem that has no conceivable solution.
Talking about the U.S. switching to a defined contribution plan is a sure sign that you know virtually nothing about Social Security.
At least I’m talking about eye rolling comments from the President rather than the problem he has keeping his eyes open.
Let’s End Junk Science At Social Security
David Weaver, a former Social Security official, has written a piece for LinkedIn echoing something I had written about recently, the need for Social Security to start using the updated occupational data it has collected in making disability determinations. I thought that Social Security had not released the data. Weaver says they have released the actual data. They just haven’t released a front end for the data, making it useless as is. However, Weaver says that third party vendors have developed front ends making the data usable. Social Security may want to suppress this data but I don’t think this will be possible. The Courts don’t like “junk science.” Is there any “science” more junky than the Dictionary of Occupational Titles?
In Dubious Achievement News
From Think Advisor:
The House passed legislation Monday to update the language used by the Social Security Administration to describe when American workers can claim their retirement benefits. …
The Claiming Age Clarity Act, sponsored by Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., changes the terminology in materials produced by the Social Security Administration. …
The bill, which passed the House Ways and Means Committee in September, states that the agency must use minimum monthly benefit age instead of early eligibility age. …
SSA must also use standard monthly benefit age instead of "full retirement age" and "normal retirement age." …
Dec 3, 2025
Some People Just Won’t Get Service
From Biometric Update.com:
The Social Security Administration (SSA) is remaking itself around a digital identity system that tens of millions of its beneficiaries cannot use – while simultaneously dismantling the in-person safety valve that has long allowed people to navigate the system when digital verification fails. …
But that digital system is built on identity-proofing mechanisms that millions of Social Security beneficiaries cannot satisfy. To access many of SSA’s online services – including creating a my Social Security account, resetting credentials, obtaining replacement documents, checking claims, or managing benefits – individuals must authenticate their identity using commercial data sources.
Those identity checks can include credit histories, mobile carrier records, address histories, and financial account data. They generate “soft inquiries” on credit files and hinge on the existence of a stable and verifiable financial footprint.
The problem is straightforward: millions of Social Security beneficiaries do not have the data these systems require. …
Numerous disability claimants operate with inconsistent documentation due to frequent address changes, medical crises, or disruptions tied to long periods out of the workforce. For these beneficiaries, digital identity verification is not simply difficult. It is often impossible.
Under SSA’s new operational model, that impossibility now carries far-reaching consequences. When digital verification fails, the fallback is a field office – but the agency is cutting field office traffic by 50 percent and reducing staffing across local offices. …
This dynamic recasts SSA’s modernization not as a technological upgrade but as the construction of a two-tiered system – one for beneficiaries with strong credit files, stable addresses, broadband access, and technological competence – and another for those without such resources, who will increasingly face longer waits, reduced access, and the escalating possibility of being unable to access benefits at all. …
Dec 2, 2025
Really? How Will You Achieve This Result?
From NEXTGOV/FCW:
… The Social Security Administration wants to halve the number of people that go to its field offices in the 2026 fiscal year.
More than 31 million people visited SSA field offices over the last fiscal year. Now, the agency aims to have 50% fewer visits — or no more than 15 million total — in fiscal 2026, which began in October, according to internal planning documents viewed by Nextgov/FCW. …
I’d call this wishful thinking at best.
Dec 1, 2025
Let’s Circle Back To This
I want to circle back to something that was in the Washington Post article about Social Security’s decision to scrap their plan to reduce or eliminate the consideration of age in making disability determinations. There was this interesting sentence:
… Among the Trump administration’s concerns with using the new [occupational] data is that younger disabled people with cognitive and mental impairments would probably qualify for fewer jobs, potentially leading more of them to be awarded benefits, the former Social Security executive said. …
OK, so it sounds like they collected data showing that more people with cognitive and mental impairments should be awarded disability benefits but they’re not going to act on that data or even release it to the public. Does that sound like the right thing to do? If the data is subpoenaed for an ALJ hearing shouldn’t it be produced?
I recall a non-disability case where I asked the ALJ to obtain some information about the case from a field office. The field office sent back a memo literally asking “Don’t you understand that the attorney is only trying to get his client approved?” Would that be the agency’s response to a request for the occupational data that they spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars obtaining?
You might think that an attorney raising a fuss over this might be endangering their older clients since the plan to reduce or eliminate consideration of age might come back. That sounds too speculative to me to take into consideration but if an attorney has clients with conflicting interests, you don’t solve the conflict by deciding which clients to not represent zealously. You solve it by withdrawing from cases. That’s non-negotiable.
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