Social Security Abandons DOGE-Led Phone Service Cuts Amid Chaos, Backlash

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By Hannah Natanson and Lisa Rein

Elon Musk’s cost-cutting operation, the U.S. DOGE Service, set off a panic in March among elderly and disabled people after proposing that the Social Security Administration scrap many of its claims services over the phone in an effort to end alleged identity fraud.

Beneficiaries began lining up at field offices across the country, clutching driver’s licenses and asking if they must prove who they were in person. Phone wait times ballooned and the agency’s website started crashing almost daily under a crush of panicked callers and visitors. Besieged by angry constituents, lawmakers demanded that the acting commissioner end the chaos.

Now, after nearly a month of chaos and backlash, the DOGE plans are dead.

According to an internal memo obtained by The Washington Post, plans to force people awarded retirement, disability and Medicare benefits to set up direct-deposit payments online or in person have been canceled after the agency concluded it could vet these transactions for fraud by phone. Those applying for benefits can also continue the process by phone without the need to go online or visit an office in person, according to the Monday memo from acting deputy commissioner Doris Diaz to acting commissioner Leland Dudek.

At the same time, the agency will implement a new fraud-detecting tool to “flag suspect teleclaims based on known, common characteristics of fraudulent claims,” the memo said. Only if an applicant’s phone call is flagged will they be required to show up in person, according to the memo.

The shift amounts to a wholesale retreat by Musk’s team and the Social Security leadership in their bid to dramatically curtail telephone access to services. The changes announced by Dudek in March and pushed by members of the DOGE team would have directed all people filing claims to first verify their identity online or in person. The new system would have removed a phone option, in place for years, which has come to be a mainstay for the 73 million Americans who rely on Social Security for retirement, survivor and disability benefits and Medicare claims.

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