Got A Little Carried Away

      From a Washington Post article titled Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people:

… At the Social Security Administration’s call center in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, IT workers were told by managers in mid-April that they needed to request a transfer or face possible firing, said Barri Sue Bryant, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2809. Nearly all of the 40-plus workers in that office did so, sending their laptops and spare equipment to the agency’s Baltimore headquarters and awaiting a new assignment while the union attempted to explain to leadership how essential these employees were, Bryant said.

 “We are critically understaffed in all of our departments,” Bryant wrote in an email to leadership. “Having systems and employees down is not contributing to the goals of this agency.”
But management would soon find out on their own.


A specialized scanner that can quickly input forms and scan barcodes broke down and was unusable for a day. A customer service representative who was supposed to answer the 800 number couldn’t take calls for three days while her computer was in disrepair.
“It really sent everyone for a loop,” Bryant said.


After three days, the agency told the union the decision had been reversed. The employees got back their equipment and resumed their normal jobs in Wilkes-Barre.
 

Asked about the IT workers, Social Security provided an emailed statement from an unnamed official, whom it declined to identify. The statement did not address the reassignments but criticized “the fake news media, specifically the Washington Post” for “pushing a false narrative about Social Security. The truth is that President Trump is protecting and strengthening Social Security just like he promised.” …

Cruelty Is The Point

      From The Guardian:

Millions of legal immigrants may be left unable to work after the US Social Security Administration quietly instituted a rule change to stop automatically issuing them social security numbers.

The Enumeration Beyond Entry program is an agreement between the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, where US Citizenship and Immigration Services would provide social security with information from applicants for work authorization or naturalization.

The program began in 2017 under the first Trump administration.

Without any public notice, on 19 March, the program was halted, affecting millions of immigrants every year and burdening Social Security Administration offices, as those applicants will now have to visit a Social Security Administration office and apply separately to receive a social security number. …

The costs of issuing a social security number through this program in the same year, according to a Social Security Administration memo, was $8 per issuance, compared with $55.80 in a field office. …

Whither Musk's People At Social Security?

     I’m laying in supplies of popcorn. There is open acrimony between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Who could have predicted?

    Can we now get Musk's kiddie corps of DOGE computer "experts" out of Social Security? Like being escorted out by security today?  With a subsequent investigation to see whether they did anything illegal?

A New Scam

      From Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Social Security Administration (SSA) is warning the public about a growing scam involving fraudulent remote job offers falsely claiming to be associated with SSA or other government agencies.

Scammers are posing as hiring personnel or recruiters and offering fictitious remotepositions — such as “administrative assistant,” “claims processor,” or “virtual benefits coordinator.” These scammers may use fake SSA email addresses, official-looking documents, or spoofed phone numbers.

Scammers may ask for personal information such as Social Security numbers, banking details, or copies of government-issued IDs. Victims may be told to pay for training materials or computer equipment as a condition of employment. …

It's Maddening

     From the Washington Post:

“We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors, and that our seniors and people that we love rely on. Believe it or not, government databases list … 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129, 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them.”

— President Donald Trump, in a speech to Congress, March 4

This is an example of how, even after falsehoods are exposed, the spin machine keeps working.

By the time Trump delivered his speech to Congress falsely saying that millions of people above the age of 120 were getting Social Security payments, The Washington Post on Feb. 19 had already published a detailed article that documented how claims of such payments — originally circulated by billionaire Elon Musk, then head of the cost-cutting U.S. DOGE Service — were wrong. (We never rated them, but they’re worthy of Four Pinocchios.) ... 

Now, look at the announcement that DOGE made on May 23 in a social media post: 

“After 11 weeks, Social Security has finished this major cleanup initiative: ~12.3M individuals aged 120+ have now been marked as deceased.” 

The post was carefully worded. It did not claim that 12 million people had received improper payments. Instead, it said that these people had been marked as deceased. ... 

[L]ook at how supporters of Trump greeted the news. Many said — or suggested — that Trump’s original false claim was confirmed.

WEP/GPO Cases Prioritized

      From USA Today:

… Social Security Administration employees at processing centers generally prioritize new claims and appeals each day. In late May, employees at many of the nation's eight processing centers were told to put Social Security Fairness Act payments [to address WEP and GPO cases] at the top of their work list and were offered weekend overtime to get it done. …

A half-dozen employees at several of the nation's Social Security processing centers said they were told that the new commissioner wants all of the Social Security Fairness Act claims resolved by July 1, and that they also need to address a backlog of claims that has built up.  …

Employees who received the order said they were told they cannot help with non-priority issues like overpayment reconsideration, updating direct deposit information, checking on monthly payment rates, and Medicare billing related issues. …

The East Coast employee said he’s having to tell caller after caller that he cannot address their Social Security-related need for the next month, which results in both him and his manager being yelled at all day. …

"Chaos Has Ensued"

     From the Washington Post:

...  The administration’s ongoing shake-ups of the workforce, from buyout offers to firings to sweeping reorganizations, are also undermining efficiency.

At the Social Security Administration, for example, Trump officials and DOGE pushed thousands of central-office workers to take lower-level positions answering phones in field offices, threatening to fire whoever did not make the jump, according to emails reviewed by The Post and interviews with a half dozen agency employees.

Chaos has ensued across field offices in the weeks since the reassignments took effect, staffers said. Claims processing has bogged down as regular field office staff — already overburdened because of widespread resignations and retirements — are pulled off their normal duties to train incoming administrators and analysts.

But the backlog means the trainings are being shortened and rushed through, employees said, so inexperienced, reassigned staffers start work unprepared. That leads to more mistakes, more requests for help and more backed-up claims — and more time wasted all around.

To sum it up, “you now have half the staff with very little knowledge of how to do the work,” one relocated staffer said. “And the other half of staff overwhelmed with work and unable to really train or mentor these new folks.”

Asked about the reassignments, Social Security provided an emailed statement from an unnamed official, whom it declined to identify. The statement said DOGE’s work at Social Security had charted a new, better course for the agency.

“The voluntary reassignment of approximately 2,000 employees to direct service positions has not caused disruptions at the agency,” the statement read. “As these employees complete their training and become fully proficient in their new positions, they will further accelerate the progress the agency is making.” ...

Palantir Sounds Scary

      From the New York Times:

In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.

Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm. …

Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions. …

Some current and former Palantir employees have been unnerved by the work. The company risks becoming the face of Mr. Trump’s political agenda, four employees said, and could be vulnerable if data on Americans is breached or hacked. Several tried to distance the company from the efforts, saying any decisions about a merged database of personal information rest with Mr. Trump and not the firm.

This month, 13 former employees signed a letter urging Palantir to stop its endeavors with Mr. Trump. Linda Xia, a signee who was a Palantir engineer until last year, said the problem was not with the company’s technology but with how the Trump administration intended to use it. …

Palantir representatives have also held talks with the Social Security Administration and the Department of Education to use the company’s technology to organize the agencies’ data, according to two Palantir employees and officials in those agencies.

The Social Security Administration and Education Department did not respond to requests for comment. …

     Really, what are the patterns that Palantir could legitimately seek to discover at Social Security? Claims for benefits such as Disabled Adult Child and Parents benefits that should have been taken but weren’t?  Do you really think that Social Security would do business with Palantir for this? The important  trends at Social Security aren’t hidden. They’re easy to spot.

Student Loan Collections Paused

      From CNBC:

The U.S. Department of Education is pausing its plan to garnish people’s Social Security benefits if they have defaulted on their student loans, a spokesperson for the agency tells CNBC.

“The Trump Administration is committed to protecting Social Security recipients who oftentimes rely on a fixed income,” said Ellen Keast, an Education Department spokesperson.

The development is an abrupt change in policy by the administration. …   

$2.5 Trillion In Transactions A Day?

     Frank Bisignano has said that his old employer, Fiserv, handled $2.5 trillion a day in transactions. There are about 8.2 billion people on the planet. If I remember correctly a trillion is a thousand billion. If my math is correct that means that Fiserv handled about $3,000 in transactions per day for each man, woman and child on the planet. Does that sound plausible? What basis would that be for big-timing Social Security employees even if it's true? Fiserv wasn’t trying to determine disability or administer a needs based benefits program, among other things. For that matter, even if Bisignano had some reasonable claim to big-time Social Security employees, is that a smart thing to do as a manager even if it does fit in with the Trump Administration ethos.

     If Bisignano really wants to impress me and others with Social Security experience he should use Elon Musk’s all stars to solve Social Security’s problem with the windfall offset. Great gobs of time are now wasted on manual, yes manual, calculations. There’s got to be a better way. How complicated could it possibly be? It’s only Social Security. However, the odds are that Bisignano won’t even understand the problem by the time he leaves office.

This Burden Falls Heavily On Trump Voters

      From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

The Trump Administration and DOGE have implemented new phone service restrictions that the Social Security Administration (SSA) estimates will require people to make over 1.93 million additional trips to understaffed Social Security field offices each year. Even without any traffic, these additional trips will lead to over a million hours wasted on unnecessary travel each year.

Nationally, assuming no traffic, half of all seniors must drive at least 33 minutes for a field office visit, and nearly a quarter of seniors (13.5 million) live more than an hour’s drive roundtrip from their nearest field office.

 ...

Appendix: State Fact Sheets

• Alabama
• Alaska
• Arizona
• Arkansas
• California
• Colorado
• Connecticut
• Delaware
• District of Columbia
• Florida
• Georgia
• Hawaii
• Idaho
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Maine
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• Montana
• Nebraska
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• New York
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Ohio
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Utah
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Virgin Islands
• Washington
• West Virginia
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming

Waiting In Schenectady

    People are waiting for service in Schenectady but, in truth, they're waiting everywhere.

Improving Service Easy For A Man Who Has Run A Much Bigger Organization

      From Federal News Network:

The new head of the Social Security Administration is looking to get call wait times down to “single digits,” as part of this strategy to make the agency a “digital-first organization.”

An SSA official told Federal News Network that the agency’s monthly average call wait time dropped from 30 minutes in January to just about 12 minutes in May, when including callers who were given a “callback” option and didn’t have to remain on hold.

SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano told employees in an all-hands meeting on Thursday that was agency’s “best performance” since it started tracking these metrics. But said he plans to cut call wait times to a fraction of that using artificial intelligence tools.

“We’re going to get that thing down to single digits,” he said.

Bisignano, a former Wall Street executive who led a financial tech company before joining the Trump administration, told employees he was “using AI before it was AI,” and oversaw financial organizations that processed a higher volume of payments than SSA does.

“Much bigger orgs, much bigger problems — but not as important. Can you see the difference? Here we do $1.5 trillion a year. In my last job, we did $2.5 trillion a day. This is more important than that, though,” he said. …

Finally

      Social Security can cut off disability benefits if there is medical improvement. However, claimants can ask that their disability benefits continue while they appeal. More than 40 years after benefit continuation came into being Social Security has finally created a form for claimants to use to request benefit continuation.

Social Security Won’t Be Hiring Anyway So …

     From Government Executive: 

Federal job applicants will soon be quizzed on their favorite Trump administration policy as part of the hiring process, according to the Office of Personnel Management’s new “merit hiring plan.” 

“How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role?” asks one of four essay questions that job seekers must answer if they are seeking any federal position GS-5 or above. “Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired. …

What’s The Backup Plan?

     From CBS:

Frank Bisignano, commissioner of the Social Security Administration, told CBS News that he believes technology, and specifically artificial intelligence, could be the key to improving his agency's customer service, despite recent changes that have prompted concern among some of the nearly 69 million Americans that receive Social Security each month. 

"We're bringing a massive technology effort to transform the servicing agenda," Bisignano said. "We're gonna bring AI into the phone system...I intend it to be completed this year."  …

      From the New York Times:

… “The technology we’re building today is not sufficient to get [to Artificial General Intelligence or A.G.I. which would be needed to switch Social Security phone service mostly to A.I.]”,  said Nick Frosst, a founder of the A.I. start-up Cohere who previously worked as a researcher at Google and studied under the most revered A.I. researcher of the last 50 years. “What we are building now are things that take in words and predict the next most likely word, or they take in pixels and predict the next most likely pixel. That’s very different from what you and I do.”

In a recent survey of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a 40-year-old academic society that includes some of the most respected researchers in the field, more than three-quarters of respondents said the methods used to build today’s technology were unlikely to lead to A.G.I. …

         The AI phone system that Social Security has tried to implement has been a complete failure so far. I’m not aware of any institution that has an AI phone system that would come close to what Social Security needs. There is good reason to believe that no such system will be in the offing any time soon, if ever. My question is, what’s your backup plan, Mr. Bisignano?

Visiting Offices In New Jersey

 

Rulings Rescinded

      From a notice posted by Social Security in the Federal Register:

By this notice we are rescinding the following [Social Security Rulings]:

• SSR 83-33: Titles II and XVI: Determining Whether Work Is  Substantial Gainful Activity--Employees;
• SSR 83-34: Titles II and XVI: Determining Whether Work Is  Substantial Gainful Activity--Self-Employed Persons;
• SSR 83-35: Titles II and XVI: Averaging of Earnings in Determining Whether Work Is Substantial Gainful Activity;
• SSR 84-25: Titles II and XVI: Determination of Substantial  Gainful Activity If Substantial Work Activity Is Discontinued or Reduced--Unsuccessful Work Attempt; and
• SSR 84-26: Titles II and XVI: Deducting Impairment-Related Work Expenses From Earnings In Determinations As To Substantial Gainful Activity Under Titles II And XVI And As To Countable Earned Income Under Title XVI. ….

     The stated reason for rescinding the SSRs is that subsequent regulations have superseded them. 

Dudek Pens Op Ed

      Former Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek has written an Op Ed for the New York Post about the “media’s Social Security hysteria”. It’s about what you’d expect.

Memorial Day 2025