As the year ends, new reporting confirms that customer service at the Social Security Administration (SSA) has tanked since Trump took office last January – despite the administration’s claims to the contrary. A new investigative report by the Washington Post — based on a thorough analysis of agency data and interviews with customers and SSA employees — reveals that “long-strained customer services have become worse by many key measures.”
Commissioner Frank Bisignano has issued glowing — but bogus — reports touting ‘improvements’ at SSA, but basic common sense says that the scorched-earth tactics the agency implemented after Trump & DOGE took over could only have degraded service.
“Thousands of employees were fired or quit and hasty policy changes and reassignments left inexperienced staff to handle the aftermath,” write Post correspondents Lisa Rein, Meryl Kornfield, and Hannah Natanson. (SSA slashed its workforce by 7,000 jobs at a time when staffing already was at a 50-year low, with 10,000 baby boomers hitting age 65 every day.)
Demonstrators in Baltimore protest DOGE interference at Social Security Administration (AP Photo)
Elon Musk and DOGE swept into SSA last winter, seizing Americans’ personal Social Security data and disrupting agency operations as part of a phony hunt for ‘fraud.’ (Never mind that actual Social Security fraud is statistically quite low.) Musk and Trump’s claims that 150 year-olds somehow collect benefits were part of this charade.
The 73 million people who depend on Social Security have paid the price. “Exaggerated claims of fraud have led to new roadblocks for elderly beneficiaries, disabled people and legal immigrants, who are now required to complete some transactions in person or online rather than by phone.”
Meanwhile, a New York Times report published just before Christmas revealed that DOGE’s crusade to cut government “waste, fraud, and abuse” was a sham.
“The group did not do what Mr. Musk said it would: reduce federal spending by $1 trillion before October. On DOGE’s watch, federal spending did not go down at all. It went up,” according to the Times report.
Musk quit DOGE last summer but left a toxic legacy
DOGE’s assault on the Social Security Administration exposed that the true goal was not to fight waste, but to dismantle crucial functions of the federal government that oligarchs like Trump and Musk find bothersome, such as a social safety net.
As Government Exec reported in September, Musk’s DOGE brats were “a bunch of people who didn’t know what they were doing, with ideas of how government should run — thinking it should work like a McDonald’s or a bank — screaming all the time.”
“The shock troops of DOGE were the advance guard in perhaps the most dramatic transformation of the U.S. government since the New Deal. And despite the highly public departure of DOGE’s leader, Elon Musk, that campaign continues today.” – Government Exec, 9/8/25
After Musk returned to the private sector last summer, subsequent news reports indicated that DOGE may have finally ceased operations. But soon after, Forbes reported that rumors of DOGE’s death may have been exaggerated. “DOGE isn’t dead—it’s been absorbed into the bloodstream of the government, federal employees say.”
Seniors and advocates can take heart that public pressure forced SSA and DOGE to walk back some of their more egregious proposals, but Trump’s campaign to destroy the workings of the federal government continues — with grave implications not only for the Social Security Administration, but for the Medicare and Medicaid programs as well. If recent reporting proves anything, it’s that the fight against Trump’s effort to rend the social safety net will continue into 2026.