DOGE cuts have made it hard for Philly seniors to get Social Security offices on the phone

For a “real lesson in torture,” try calling your local Social Security Administration (SSA) office with a question.

That’s what Marcia Chestnut, a 62-year-old former housekeeper from West Oak Lane, sardonically suggests.

In February, Chestnut — who lives with various disabilities — received a notice from the SSA saying her benefits would be cut off by April.

To find out why, Chestnut phoned her local SSA office in Germantown every weekday for two months. She’d get put on hold for four hours or longer, then the calls would be disconnected.

“Live people don’t answer,” she said. “You’re not getting anybody who’ll talk to you.”

Chestnut, who ultimately lost her Social Security benefits and is fighting to reinstate them, said lots of her senior friends who are among Philadelphia’s approximately 400,000 recipients of Social Security benefits feel helpless dealing with the new SSA system phone, conceived by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Since January, DOGE has said it’s been shrinking the federal government by hunting for waste, fraud, and abuse. The SSA installed the new phone system on May 9.

“These days, the difficulty and confusion trying to reach local Social Security offices by phone raise the emotional level,” said Jen Burdick, a Social Security expert and a divisional supervising attorney with Community Legal Services, which serves low-income Philadelphians at no cost.

Burdick, who represents Chestnut, said it’s not clear why phone difficulties persist.

It may be due to bugs in the new AI-powered phone system, she said. It could also be attributed to staff cuts made by DOGE, she added.

SSA staffing has been reduced from 57,000 nationwide to 50,000 on DOGE’s watch, according to agency figures.

But, Burdick said, SSA has not told her office whether Philadelphia personnel have been laid off. The SSA did not provide Philadelphia area numbers to The Inquirer. The SSA has not closed local offices in Philadelphia, Burdick said.

Whatever the reason, it’s hard for Philadelphians to manage their accounts and find answers to their questions when they call the SSA.

“We spend a lot of time calling Social Security offices on people’s behalf — sometimes 15 times a day,“ Burdick said. ”We’re on hold for hours, then get AI bots spewing random information you never asked for before hanging up.

“It really hurts our clients who are in trouble, trying to navigate this difficult system. It’s very upsetting for people.”

When a recipient finally gets through to a live human on the phone, Burdick said, they will often try to make an in-person appointment at a field office to fix a problem, only to face 60-day waits.

In another phone-related complication that took effect this week, if a person calls their local SSA office with a specific problem and no one is available, the phone system automatically routes the person to a representative in another office in a different part of the country, said Angela Digeronimo, executive vice president of Council 220 of the union of American Federal Government Employees.

The caller isn’t told that, Digeronimo said, adding, “You think you’re talking to your local office. And being from a different area, the representative isn’t able to provide the specific information you need. And you don’t get helped.”

Though the Trump administration has insisted Americans’ Social Security benefits are safe from budget cuts, “the administration’s actions will effectively do just that, by making it harder or even impossible” for people to conduct business on the phone according to the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C.

Also, frequent website outages are making online contact difficult, the center reported.

‘A startling and sudden decline’

The level of frustration among Social Security recipients in Philadelphia is rising, noted Allen Glicksman, an expert on aging in the city and a researcher with NewCourtland, a Germantown nonprofit that offers services to seniors.

“I try to get on the phone to Social Security to help seniors,” Glicksman said. “I have a master’s degree and a PhD, and I can assure you that I consistently have problems understanding and navigating their phone system.”

Social Security recipients include retirees; disabled people getting Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits; and the spouses, children, and dependent parents of deceased workers who are receiving survivor benefits.

Since DOGE took power in January, complaints about access to the SSA have been “skyrocketing,” according to AARP, the nonprofit that serves older Americans. That’s because there’s been “a startling and sudden decline in customer service,” AARP said.

Staffing levels at 50-year low

In the aftermath of recent SSA office closures, the SSA has stopped publicly reporting its processing times for benefits, along with the 1-800 number’s current call wait time, according to The Washington Post.

Alex Lawson, executive director of the Social Security Works advocacy group, told the Post that those data removals “hide how much they’ve destroyed the system’s customer service.”

Jonathan Stein, general counsel at CLS, said that SSA workers who were transferred to fill in the gaps are still learning the job at a time when staffing levels had already been at their lowest level in 50 years, he said.

“We are trying to assess impact,” Stein said, “but the agency is not particularly transparent in saying what’s going on.”

Asked to respond, White House assistant press secretary Liz Huston sent a statement to The Inquirer:

“DOGE has played a critical role in improving the Social Security Administration — from modernizing its technology infrastructure to enhancing efforts to identify waste, fraud and abuse. This important work will continue to ensure the federal government is properly serving the American taxpayers.”

Disputing experts’ findings, an SSA spokesperson said that phone waiting times have decreased since DOGE’s intervention.

“We perform daily analytics on the effectiveness of the question-and-answer bots and are constantly improving the feature,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that as transferred employees complete their training, they will “further accelerate the progress the agency is making in many key service areas, including improving wait times on the telephone.”

Loss of experienced staff

Justice in Aging, a national nonprofit with a focus on low-income elderly, sued both DOGE and the SSA in April on behalf of people unable to access services.

“The overall loss of experience at Social Security is devastating,” said Kate Lang, the organization’s director of federal income security.

What’s especially frustrating, Lang and others say, is that changes are being rapidly made to an SSA system that garnered a reputation for functioning at high levels not so long ago.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal last month, Alan Blinder, Princeton University economics professor and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, said that last year, pre-DOGE, the SSA distributed about $1.2 trillion to about 71.6 million people nationwide. Blinder said the funds went out “with remarkable administrative efficiency—costing only 0.5% of benefits, compared with more like 20% for private insurers.”

For the foreseeable future, problems getting in touch with the SSA will continue, Burdick said.

“It will continue to be challenging,” she said.