Elon Musk's Department of Government of Efficiency (DOGE) has left a wide swath of "chaos and dysfunction" within the halls of the Social Security Administration with recipients facing new and, at times, insurmountable obstacles getting help.
According to a report from MSNBC by Zeeshan Aleem, Musk and some of his DOGE employees may be gone, but the damage has been done and watchdogs are stunned by the staffing cuts that have left seniors scrambling when they can get someone to answer the phone.
Noting a Washington Post report detailing "swamped" phone lines, MSNBC is reporting that callers are being forced to wait up to five hours to get through.
According to Jessica LaPointe, of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), transfers and dismissals of staffers have severely damaged the agency's ability to provide support.
“The 1-800 number — they do offer a critical role at the agency, but it’s triage, whereas customer service representatives actually clear work for the agency,” LaPointe explained. “So it’s just going to create a vicious cycle of work not getting cleared, people calling for status on work that’s sitting because the claims specialists now are going to have to pick up the slack of the customer service representatives that are redeployed to the tele-service centers.”
Jen Burdick, a Social Security expert with Community Legal Services added, "We spend a lot of time calling Social Security offices on people’s behalf — sometimes 15 times a day. We’re on hold for hours, then get AI bots spewing random information you never asked for before hanging up.”
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