“SSA’s weekend announcement that the agency will implement ‘new’ fraud prevention measures on its 1-800 phone line seems suspect. In March, SSA announced that people would no longer be able to claim benefits via telephone because of ‘fraud’ risk, even though the fraud rate on the SSA phone line has been less than .001% of all calls. After intense public blowback, SSA reversed itself and said that claimants once again could file for benefits via telephone beginning April 14th.
To be clear, there already were fraud prevention measures in place for claims on the 1-800 phone line before the Trump administration took over. SSA agents had been trained to validate callers’ identity using effective, time-tested protocols. Furthermore, former Commissioner Martin O’Malley instituted additional fraud prevention measures last year.
On Saturday, the agency proclaimed in vague terms that it is implementing ‘enhanced security’ measures on the 1-800 phone line. Frankly, we have no idea what they are talking about — and chances are, they don’t, either. SSA does not cite specific methods — or explain how new measures could have been developed in the brief time since they tried to ban telephone benefit claims less than one month ago. For that matter, why did SSA leadership attempt to shut down telephone claims in the first place if these new, enhanced security measures were so readily available?
This latest announcement is a continuation of the circus that Trump, Musk, and DOGE have created at SSA — causing alarm and confusion for many of the 73 million Americans who depend on Social Security. The Trump administration seemingly will do anything to keep alive the specter of non-existent ‘massive fraud’ at the Social Security Administration.
We support real efforts to reduce fraud in the Social Security system, but there is little evidence to justify the administration’s reckless actions to date, including the whiplash created by obliterating long-standing SSA procedures only to reverse or change course shortly after. We have said before that this campaign really is a scheme to delegitimize Social Security itself, with the ultimate aim of cutting and privatizing the program. Saturday’s announcement only reinforces that view.” – Max Richtman, President and CEO, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare
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