Social Security, facing pressure from DOGE, weighs big cuts to phone service

Social Security leadership is considering a proposal to end telephone service for claims processing and direct-deposit bank account transactions, instead directing elderly and disabled people to the internet and in-person field offices, according to one of the people and the records. The change would disrupt Social Security’s internal operations and threaten its ability to serve the public, current and former officials warned, just as DOGE is targeting the agency for across-the-board staff cuts of more than 12 percent. They also noted that the agency’s toll-free number is a mainstay for older customers who do not have online access or who have trouble navigating the internet.

The proposed change comes less than a month after members of the DOGE team arrived at the agency and began looking for ways to cut what they labeled “fraud, waste and abuse” as part of their mandate from President Donald Trump to slim down government, the people said. DOGE, which stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, has sought to slash staff and spending across all federal agencies, stirring chaos and criticism that the team is cutting essential functions.

At Social Security, the DOGE team was initially focused on fears that dead people were fraudulently receiving benefits, according to the two people and the records. But in meetings last month, the career staff explained that the appearance of people with impossibly long lifespans on the rolls was an unfortunate feature of an antiquated technology system — and that none of those deceased people or their relatives were actually receiving benefits. The DOGE team appeared to drop the matter, the people said.

Even so, billionaire Elon Musk has continued sounding the alarm that 150-year-olds — and even people who have lived more than three centuries — are somehow receiving tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money, an implausible set of claims he has made without evidence over the past month. Musk spoke about the issue as recently as Monday on Fox News, and Trump amplified his allegations last week during his address to Congress.

The false assertions about dead people are only the latest example of Musk, Trump and their allies exaggerating or even fabricating allegations of fraud to justify their ongoing efforts to dramatically slash government staff and services. The anti-fraud campaign at Social Security also mirrors a long-standing obsession by Musk, whose takeover of the platform then called Twitter — as well as his argument to exit the deal to buy it — was premised on a similar quest to root out fraudulent bots that masqueraded as real human beings on the service.

“His playbook has now become quite clear,” said Paul Barrett, deputy director of the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University, referencing the parallel quest for fraud in the 2022 Twitter acquisition. “It is an extraordinary game he plays of wrecking institutions in order to dominate them.”

The move to end telephone service for claims and direct-deposit actions at Social Security is not yet finalized, the two people cautioned, and no one knows precisely how or when the change would be rolled out. At a tense meeting Tuesday, DOGE staff grilled SSA officials about phone fraud. But as employees suggested potential solutions, DOGE representatives “weren’t interested in anything else but defending the decision that they had already made,” one of the people said.

“Social Security is dedicated to protecting both the public and trust funds from fraud, waste, and abuse,” Nicole Tiggemann, a Social Security spokeswoman, said in an email. “We continuously investigate and analyze potential threats to strengthen and secure our programs.”

Asked about the possible end to telephone service for claims, Tiggemann said: “We have nothing to announce at this time.”

Social Security handles about 9.5 million claims a year for retirement, survivor and disability benefits, and Supplemental Security Income, paying $1.5 trillion in benefits last year. Of Americans age 65 and over, 86 percent receive Social Security payments. Phone claims make up about 40 percent of claims, which can also be filed online or in person at a field office, according to Social Security employees.

Claims processing is just one of many tasks performed by often-overburdened employees who answer the toll-free Social Security phone number. They also field questions about benefits, retirement, death benefit forms and other issues, meeting the needs of disabled and elderly populations who sometimes struggle to navigate websites and phone applications.

DOGE concerns about phone fraud, said one person briefed on the team’s activities, encompass both identity fraud — in which callers can impersonate older Americans to steal their benefits — and cheating in the disability program. While online and phone-based identity fraud amount to a tiny fraction of the cost of the benefits program, the problem is real, career employees and experts say. But cases in which disabled people try to game the claims system when they apply by phone are not prevalent enough to require drastic action or changes, particularly because employees are trained to ask a claimant multiple questions to verify their identity, experts and employees said.

Federal data shows the agency received 81.2 million calls to its national toll-free number in 2023, although not all were for claims. Staff within Social Security are currently going over scenarios for how to handle an abrupt reduction of telephone service, one of the people briefed on the matter said, but they believe the consequences for the American public could be dire.

“It is a 180-degree policy shift,” the employee said. “It would be the single largest service disruption in agency history ever.”

Martin O’Malley, who served as head of the agency under President Joe Biden, cautioned of severe fallout if the plan to limit phone services goes forward.

“It would certainly appear that they’re trying to break the capacity of the agency to serve its customers,” O’Malley said. “And I suppose, if they’re trying to dismember the agency, liquidate its assets, sell pieces of it to their billionaire friends to run, they have to discredit the agency in the eyes of its customers, and they do that by breaking its ability to serve.”

Musk — who settled a charge of securities fraud with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2018 over a false tweet claiming he had “Funding secured” to take Tesla private — has a history of claiming fraud by his opponents, whether in the political or business realms. As he sought to exit his Twitter takeover bid in 2022, he seized on the company’s previous claims about the prevalence of spam and bots on the site, alleging fraud in an aggressive countersuit.

Musk began blasting out claims of widespread fraud at Social Security in mid-February, posting on X shortly after Valentine’s Day to share an image suggesting that nearly 1.5 million Americans over the age of 150 were receiving payments. There was no basis to Musk’s posts, as experts swiftly pointed out online.

It turned out that Musk was pulling his numbers from a Social Security database known as the Numident, which contains a record of every person who has ever been assigned a Social Security number. The Numident system details information on people who died but who lack a recorded date of death, because those individuals received benefits before Social Security records were digitized.

Musk stuck to his allegations: Later in February, during a meandering three-hour interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, he singled out Social Security as a prime example of how, in his view, the government is a pyramid scheme. “I mean, Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” Musk said. “People pay into Social Security and the money goes out of Social Security immediately, but the obligation for Social Security is your entire retirement career.”

Days afterward, on Monday, he posted a meme depicting duct tape holding up a pole, describing it as a “Visual representation of the Social Security database.” Later Monday, in an interview with Fox Business, he floated a baseless claim that the use of Social Security numbers for fraudulent purposes makes up “10 percent of federal expenditures, which is half a trillion dollars.” He signaled that DOGE will keep working for the next year at least, and that one of the team’s targets will be Social Security spending.

“The waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is most of the federal spending is entitlements, so that’s like the big one to eliminate,” Musk said.

While Musk was publicly complaining, the DOGE team he masterminds already knew many of his claims about Social Security fraud were overstated, distorted or baseless, according to the two people, records obtained by The Post and a declaration filed in federal court. The latter is from a declaration from former top Social Security official Tiffany Flick that was filed as part of a federal lawsuit. Flick was forced out after clashing with the DOGE team.

Musk ally Michael Russo was named chief information officer at Social Security in early February. Soon after, Russo began making requests to career staff to investigate whether dead people were receiving benefits, according to the two people. Staff responded quickly and received little follow-up, the people said.

The rest of the DOGE team arrived in force at Social Security on Feb. 10 and began seeking access to internal data in an effort to find and eliminate fraud, Flick wrote in her court filing. The DOGE team was evasive about its intentions, Flick wrote, but she concluded they were looking for three types of fraud: alleged payments to people without Social Security numbers; instances in which one person received multiple benefits; and “untrue allegations regarding benefit payments to deceased people of advanced age,” she wrote.

DOGE’s interest in alleged payments to deceased people intensified after Leland Dudek, a mid-level employee in the anti-fraud office, was appointed as acting commissioner in mid-February, the two people said.

In late February, some of the DOGE team requested another meeting with staffers at the agency to discuss fraud, according to the two people and records obtained by The Post. At the meeting, the people said, staff members pointed the DOGE team to a 2023 inspector general report that examined and explained the death dates listed in the Numident system. The report found that close to 19 million people born before 1920 lack death information in Numident, but that the problem wasn’t worth fixing because it could cost more than $9 million and would deliver “limited benefit,” per the report.

“Almost none of the numberholders discussed in the report currently receive SSA payments,” the report concluded.

Dudek helped auditors compile the 2023 report, one person briefed on the matter said. In recent days, Dudek — who rose to power because he was willing to help DOGE — has twice issued careful corrections to Musk and Trump’s misstatements on fraud.

DOGE members held several meetings last week to discuss their concerns about alleged phone fraud and a possible end to telephone processing of claims, sending panic through some parts of the agency, one of the people familiar said. The discussions continued into this week, another person briefed said. At a meeting Tuesday, DOGE staffers asked Social Security officials pointed questions about whether there was fraud in the phone system.

The staffers proposed ways to quantify how much actual fraud was taking place. But DOGE “wasn’t interested in hearing solutions” and “weren’t interested in anything else but defending the decision that they already made,” the person said.

The DOGE-driven proposal to shift all claims processing online and to in-person offices has spurred pushback internally, employees said, and from outside experts for the same reasons: that it would be likely to imperil millions of Americans’ ability to receive their earned benefits. The field office staff is already facing DOGE-directed depletions as the Trump administration moves to cut 7,000 jobs at the Social Security Administration and eliminate numerous field offices.

A disability benefit application is a long and complex process requiring large numbers of medical records and lengthy forms.

“A huge number of Americans do not have access to computers,” said Nancy Altman, who leads the advocacy group Social Security Works. “They have a smartphone or they have low levels of education or English proficiency. You’re talking about people with disabilities. The whole idea of serving the people is to give people a choice.”

Altman said, “The burden is on DOGE to accurately show, where is all the fraud? They haven’t done that.”

Jacob Bogage contributed to this report.