Social Security News

Jun 1, 2025

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.

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Appendix: State Fact Sheets

May 31, 2025

Waiting In Schenectady

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

May 30, 2025

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. …

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. …

May 29, 2025

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

May 28, 2025

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.