The federal agency that provides millions of vulnerable Americans with retirement and disability benefits is drowning in up to 6 million pending cases and 12 million transactions after months of turbulence under President Trump.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) started Trump’s second term with what The Washington Post described as a “hostile takeover,” with Elon Musk, 54, and the Department of Government Efficiency slashing their way through the $15.4 billion agency that serves roughly 74 million beneficiaries.
Now, according to internal data and interviews cited by the Post, retirement and disability services for millions of Americans have been delayed.
By late September, call volume to the agency had climbed to 93 million—its highest level in six years—after policy shifts aimed at curbing “fraud” restricted what could be handled by phone and sent more people online or into field offices.
Those changes hit elderly and disabled customers hardest, employees and advocates told the Post, as new identity checks and in-person rules collided with long waits and staffing gaps.
The decline traces back to early 2025, when nearly 7,000 workers—about 12 percent of the workforce—left under firings, buyouts, and “deferred resignation” offers, leaving remaining staff to absorb a surge in baby boomer retirements and complex disability workloads.
Leland Dudek, the mid-level analyst elevated to acting commissioner during the DOGE push, told the Post: “I flipped the switch,” adding that the “casualty” was a downsized agency that is now “subject to the whims of being a political organization.”
Commissioner Frank Bisignano has leaned on overtime and emergency reassignments to triage the pressure, with the agency saying it cut the processing-center backlog by 1 million cases this fall and reduced pending disability claims by about a third.
But internal metrics reviewed by the Post showed the core pipeline was still jammed, with the system for disability benefits suffering a major slowdown. The share of appointments scheduled within 28 days had dropped to 66 percent by December, down from nearly 90 percent earlier in the year.
Phone service became the clearest flashpoint. Average hold times peaked at about 2.5 hours in March, before improving after July diversions pulled staff off field-office work to put out what employees described as a public-relations fire.
Even then, watchdogs found the agency’s headline “wait time” figures did not capture callback delays—often an hour or more—because callers who accepted callbacks were counted as having zero minutes of wait time.
The human cost has played out in crowded lobbies. Three days before Christmas, Brian Morrissey, 65, went to the field office in Silver Spring, Maryland, after struggling with the “MySSA” website. “If they can make the process easier online, great, but right now it is not well designed,” he told the Post.
In the same office, Aime Ledoux Tchameni, an immigrant from Cameroon, said a name error left him waiting until Feb. 9 for an appointment, past the deadline he faced to fix a driver’s license issue: “I don’t understand why I have to wait so long.”
Democrats, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 76, have seized on the breakdown, accusing the administration of dismantling a fail-safe for Americans who cannot navigate digital systems.
An SSA spokesperson told the Daily Beast that an independent OIG audit “proved that the Social Security Administration has made profound customer service improvements as a result of technology and staffing decisions,” adding that the Post “would rather fearmonger seniors than print the truth.”
The White House has also been contacted for comment.
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