Twitter, sorry, X posts from Social Security:
From Newsweek
Two Republican Senators voted against the GOP and President Donald Trump last week in favor of an amendment that would have reversed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts at the Social Security Administration (SSA). The vote took place late Friday night as the Senate voted on Trump's multitrillion-dollar tax breaks and spending cuts framework. …
On Friday, Republican Senators Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, both from Alaska, voted in favor of an amendment that sought to reverse "cuts to the Social Security Administration, which may include cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency or any other cuts to seniors' services." It failed to pass in a 50-49 vote. …
From Government Executive:
A draft plan for service delivery at the Social Security Administration includes “field office consolidation” as a goal for next year — even as the agency maintains publicly that it isn’t closing field offices.
SSA posted Monday on X that it “is NOT permanently closing field offices. Only underutilized hearing office space has been closed and without permanently closing field offices.” But a plan circulating within the agency includes a goal to “further reduce footprint” in 2026 and beyond.
The scope of the envisioned "consolidations" is unclear, though the document singles out field offices as on the chopping block next year. …
At the same time the agency is contemplating plans to shutter offices, it also is moving ahead with new identity proofing requirements expected to push more people to those offices. SSA is ending phone service for many of its benefits applications, as well as those looking to make changes to their direct deposit information, leaving them with online or in-person avenues to do so.
Some regional leaders that oversee field offices still haven’t gotten guidance on implementing the changes, which are scheduled to take place next week, according to one current employee. …
From Lisa Rein at the Washington Post:
Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are being directed to do more of their business with the agency online. The website has crashed repeatedly in recent weeks, with outages lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to almost a day, according to six current and former officials with knowledge of the issues. Even when the site is back online, many customers have not been able to sign in to their accounts — or have logged in only to find information missing. For others, access to the system has been slow, requiring repeated tries to get in. The problems come as the Trump administration’s cost-cutting team, led by Elon Musk, has imposed a downsizing that’s led to 7,000 job cuts and is preparing to push out thousands more employees at an agency that serves 73 million Americans. The new demands from Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service include a 50 percent cut to the technology division responsible for the website and other electronic access.
Many of the network outages appear to be caused by an expanded fraud check system imposed by the DOGE team, current and former officials said. The technology staff did not test the new software against a high volume of users to see if the servers could handle the rush, these officials said.
From The Guardian:
Office closures, staffing and service cuts, and policy changes at the Social Security Administration (SSA) have caused “complete, utter chaos” and are threatening to send the agency into a “death spiral”, according to workers at the agency. …
“They have these ‘concepts of plans’ that they’re hoping are sticking but in reality, are really hurting American people,” said a longtime SSA employee and military veteran who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “No one knows what’s going on. They’re just coming up with ideas at the top of their head.” …
“It’s just been a lot of craziness, a lot of foolishness. Until they get rid of Doge and the person in office right now, and the Republicans actually get a backbone and stand up for something for once in their lives, things are just going to be complete chaos. That’s really the best word to describe SSA right now, just complete, utter chaos,” the worker added. “They couldn’t understand the coding, so everything they said SSA was doing illegally, they weren’t. Common sense is something they lack. They don’t know what they’re doing.” …
Voluntary Separation Incentive Program is one of several programs designed to induce Social Security employees to leave their jobs. It's probably the most important of the programs as far as the agency's field offices are concerned. Below is a map showing where the worst field office losses have occurred followed by a list of those offices with a 25% or greater loss. As always, click on the image to see it full size but the map is still a bit hard to read even then. The bottom line is that green represents less than 15% loss. Yellow represents 15-25% loss. Red represents greater than 25% loss.
| Southwest | 713-MINDEN LA | 37.50% |
| A15-COLORADO RIVER BASIN / | 28.57% | |
| 840-LAREDO TX | 27.78% | |
| B57-FLAGSTAFF AZ | 27.27% | |
| E24-EL PASO DOWNTOWN TX | 25.00% | |
| B50-MARSHALL TX | 25.00% | |
| 859-ROSWELL NM | 25.00% | |
| 766-RUSSELLVILLE AR | 25.00% | |
| 852-SAN ANTONIO NW TX | 24.56% | |
