The Social Security Administration late Wednesday “abandoned plans it was considering to end phone service for millions of Americans filing retirement and disability claims” in the name of rooting out alleged fraud.
Despite the reversal, DOGE master Elon Musk is still publicly deriding Social Security as a “Ponzi” scheme, as Republicans seem increasingly like to target the popular program for budget cuts.
That “Ponzi” criticism appears to aim beyond removing “waste” and “fraud” — DOGE’s purported mandate — from the system and targets instead the heart of the program and its core mission to provide Americans who paid into it over a lifetime with money to live on during their so-called “golden years.”
According to The Washington Post, the cutting of phone services “would have directed elderly and disabled people to rely on the internet and in-person field offices to process their claims, curtailing a service that 73 million Americans have relied on for decades to access earned government benefits.”
Social Security officials warned that while phone service will remain available for now, “Customers will no longer be able to change a direct deposit routing number or other bank information by phone.” This measure is presented as a fraud inhibitor, though it is not clear that fraudulent direct deposit bank switches are a cause of significant fraud at the Social Security Agency.
“The richest man on Earth repeated again a bevy of lies that entitlement programs tens of millions of people rely on are riddled with fraud and abuse. That’s a pretext to slashing them, but it’s false,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Tuesday.
Before the reversal, More Perfect Union, the nonprofit news organization founded by Faiz Shakir, a senior advisor to independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, responded to the phone service limitation on X by writing: “DOGE is considering no longer letting senior citizens file Social Security claims over the phone, and requiring them to do it online or in person.”
So if your grandma or mom wants to get her Social Security benefits, now she has to either use an app, or go in person after they closed field offices and fired staff? What a sick joke. The cruelty is the point. https://t.co/V9DfVUGw5K
— Rep. Becca Balint (@RepBeccaB) March 13, 2025
U.S. Representative Becca Balint (D-VT) replied: “So if your grandma or mom wants to get her Social Security benefits, now she has to either use an app, or go in person after they closed field offices and fired staff? What a sick joke. The cruelty is the point.”
Nancy Altman, head of the advocacy group Social Security Works, said: “A huge number of Americans do not have access to computers…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.”
She added: “The burden is on DOGE to accurately show, where is all the fraud? They haven’t done that.”
In an interview with Fox New star and former Trump administration official Larry Kudlow, Musk claimed that Social Security fraud was “the big one to eliminate.”