Early last year, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, of the short-lived Department of Government Efficiency, accused the S.S.A. of widespread fraud—Musk said on X, without evidence, that millions of centenarian “vampires” were collecting checks from the agency—and listed dozens of offices for closure. Trump appointed a long-time agency employee named Leland Dudek as the acting commissioner after Dudek boasted that he had “circumvented the chain of command” to help DOGE access confidential data. Then, last May, Frank Bisignano, a fintech executive with no government experience, was confirmed by the Senate to lead the S.S.A.; later, he was appointed to run the Internal Revenue Service as well. (A spokesman for the S.S.A. said that Bisignano serves both agencies “100 percent of the time,” and declined my request to interview him.) At an early meeting, Bisignano told a group of S.S.A. managers that he’d known nothing about the agency when he was tapped by Trump. “I’m, like, ‘Well, what am I gonna do?’ ” he said, in audio obtained by ABC News. “So, I’m Googling ‘Social Security,’ you know?”
In 2025, the S.S.A. shed more than seven thousand of its fifty-seven thousand employees, including some three thousand workers who provide direct customer service. Over-all staffing has hit its lowest point since the late nineteen-sixties, when the system served approximately fifty million fewer beneficiaries. In 2024, an index measuring employee satisfaction gave the S.S.A. a score of fifty-four out of a hundred; in 2025, a similar index gave it a score of fifteen.
Bisignano was not one of the Trump appointees who promised to destroy their own agencies. He demonstrated no outward hostility toward the S.S.A., which has dealt with inefficiencies and delays that have stumped Democrats and Republicans alike. But he did introduce significant changes, often—according to Jean and twenty other S.S.A. workers, recipients, and experts I spoke to—without fully understanding the implications of those decisions. Most of his reforms seemed to shrink the role of field offices and nationalize operations.
Jean’s Midwest region, for instance, was combined with much of the West, so that it now stretched from Ohio to Alaska. The head count at the consolidated headquarters went from around five hundred to just sixteen, eliminating many policy experts who had assisted field offices with difficult cases. Bisignano was keen to implement technologies such as A.I. call sorting, and set a goal of reducing in-person visits by fifty per cent in 2026—from nearly thirty-two million to fifteen million. (This goal was circulated to employees in writing, but the S.S.A. spokesman denied its existence, saying, “the fake news media is eager to ignore the truth to scare seniors.”) In November, Bisignano’s chief of field operations told field offices that they should no longer operate like “independent ‘mini-SSAs.’ ” Jean believed that this reflected a misunderstanding of how the public interacts with the agency. “If you keep it local and we are ‘mini-S.S.A.s,’ we’re your source,” she said. “You have someone accountable to fix your problem. You know them. You know their name.”
by E. Tammy Kim, New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Chris W. Kim[ed. When I signed up for Medicare I had to visit the local field office in person 35 miles away (which served both SSA/Medicare). They said they needed to review and copy my personal records (ID, birth certificate, marriage dissolution papers, etc.) before my application could be processed. It took me three tries/separate trips before I could get in because the office was so overburdened. There were about 30 seats, each one taken, and three SSA/Medicare workers to help everyone. Each interview took at least 20-30 minutes, sometimes longer, and there was a line stretching out the door with another 25 or so people waiting to get in. When I finally got lucky on my third try (after only an hour's wait), a barely qualified interviewer who couldn't answer my most basic questions pushed me into a one-size-fits-all template, then immediately sent my application off for processing. When I got home I reviewed my application and compared it to the Medicare booklet and regulations they'd previously sent me. It was then that I realized they'd given me wrong information. If my application went through it would cost me another $1000+/month in additional Medicare monthly payments. So I called back and requested they change my application, but the details were apparently too difficult for the staff on hand to comprehend and they told me it was too late anyway - the forms had already been sent out and they couldn't change them again. So after another couple calls and dealing with that roadblock over and over again I called a Medicare representative on their website toll number. Again, I had to do this three times because every time I called I kept getting a different person who gave me a different explanation or conflicting information. Finally, I gave up and contacted my state Representative's office and laid the whole mess out to them and asked for help. They were finally able to get the manager on the phone who personally reviewed my application, agreed with me, and got everything fixed and resubmitted. But the whole experience was beyond aggravating. Field offices are definitely needed because so many people's situations are unique, but only if they're well staffed with knowledgeble people who have the time and incentive to help (mine wasn't). It was like going to DMV but a hundred times worse. I can't imagine what it's like now.]
