Trump Administration Plans to Force Millions More Seniors and People With Disabilities to Travel to Social Security’s Overburdened Field Offices
Trump Administration Plans to Force Millions More Seniors and People With Disabilities to Travel to Social Security’s Overburdened Field Offices
July 29, 2025, 1:07 pm | By Kathleen Romig and Devin O’Connor/The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The Social Security Administration (SSA) is overwhelming its local offices by forcing millions more people to seek in-person service while cutting thousands of staff who provide that help. These offices, which primarily serve seniors, people with disabilities, and bereaved families, helped nearly 32 million visitors last year. But under a new policy set to take effect in August, beneficiaries will be forced to take millions of unnecessary trips to field offices, where they will face longer waits for appointments and slower processing times.
As of mid-August, SSA will no longer allow Social Security beneficiaries to perform routine tasks solely by phone — changing their addresses, checking the status of claims, requesting benefit verification letters, or asking for tax forms — as they’ve been able to do for decades. Instead, beneficiaries seeking to complete those tasks by phone will need to complete a multi-factor, multi-step online verification process to generate a one-time PIN code to help prove their identity.
The new PIN code process will be impossible for many beneficiaries to complete. And if they can’t, they’ll need to travel to a field office. That will require 3.4 million more people to travel to SSA offices annually, by the agency’s own estimates. This will create a significant new burden, particularly for those who live in rural areas or have transportation or mobility difficulties.
The Trump Administration is rushing these changes with almost no public notice or feedback. Earlier this year, the Administration pulled back on a similarly rushed plan to restrict benefit claims by phone amid widespread public concern — but now the agency is backtracking.
Millions of beneficiaries will start to be affected by this change within a matter of weeks. But SSA did not consult with stakeholders before rushing to make this switch, and it has yet to announce or explain the change to Social Security beneficiaries, instead burying notice of the change in a technical notice on a regulatory website. And the agency has provided no clear justification for the change other than vaguely citing “fraud risk,” despite there being no publicly documented problems with completing any of these tasks by phone.
This new policy compounds the pressure on field offices caused by previous changes. In April, SSA announced a similar restriction to phone service for beneficiaries changing bank information, requiring 1.9 million additional trips to field offices per year. Before that, SSA indefinitely suspended the automatic process to provide Social Security numbers (SSN) to immigrants with work authorization and to update newly naturalized citizens’ status. Instead of the cheaper, faster, and more secure process initially established by the first Trump Administration and used by 2.9 million people last year, immigrants with work authorization and newly naturalized citizens must now visit SSA offices to get the Social Security numbers they need to work and contribute to the system.
SSA’s restrictions on phone service under the Trump Administration will force a total of 5.3 million additional in-person trips per year — a 17 percent increase over last year’s visits — due to the previous direct deposit restrictions and the new ones on address changes, status inquires, benefit verifications, and tax forms. Factoring in the suspension of the automatic SSN process would bring the total even higher.
CBPP estimates of drive time suggest that the phone restrictions will result in beneficiaries spending nearly 3 million additional hours travelling to SSA field offices to get help each year, assuming no traffic, based on our previous estimates of how far seniors live from Social Security offices. And everyone who needs help at a Social Security field office will endure longer waits as millions more people join the queue for in-person service.
At the same time SSA is creating much higher demand for field office service, it has slashed the staff that provides it. In early July, SSA reassigned about 1,000 field office employees to answer SSA’s national 800 number. That’s on top of the nearly 2,000 field office staff who took buyouts this year as part of the largest staff cuts in SSA history, while undisclosed numbers took early retirement or simply left.
Shifting SSA staff away from increasingly understaffed field offices risks further exacerbating the degradation of SSA service. Doing it at a time when SSA is forcing millions more people to seek in-person service seems sure to have negative consequences for people seeking appointments and counting on the work that SSA’s field staff provide. This undercuts SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano’s promise to provide “outstanding service that works for everyone we serve — whether they call, walk into a field office, or choose to manage their benefits online.”
SSA can still prevent adding more stress to the system for beneficiaries by stopping the plan that would rush through additional phone service restrictions.
July 29, 2025, 1:07 pm | By Kathleen Romig and Devin O’Connor/The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The Social Security Administration (SSA) is overwhelming its local offices by forcing millions more people to seek in-person service while cutting thousands of staff who provide that help. These offices, which primarily serve seniors, people with disabilities, and bereaved families, helped nearly 32 million visitors last year. But under a new policy set to take effect in August, beneficiaries will be forced to take millions of unnecessary trips to field offices, where they will face longer waits for appointments and slower processing times.
As of mid-August, SSA will no longer allow Social Security beneficiaries to perform routine tasks solely by phone — changing their addresses, checking the status of claims, requesting benefit verification letters, or asking for tax forms — as they’ve been able to do for decades. Instead, beneficiaries seeking to complete those tasks by phone will need to complete a multi-factor, multi-step online verification process to generate a one-time PIN code to help prove their identity.
The new PIN code process will be impossible for many beneficiaries to complete. And if they can’t, they’ll need to travel to a field office. That will require 3.4 million more people to travel to SSA offices annually, by the agency’s own estimates. This will create a significant new burden, particularly for those who live in rural areas or have transportation or mobility difficulties.
The Trump Administration is rushing these changes with almost no public notice or feedback. Earlier this year, the Administration pulled back on a similarly rushed plan to restrict benefit claims by phone amid widespread public concern — but now the agency is backtracking.
Millions of beneficiaries will start to be affected by this change within a matter of weeks. But SSA did not consult with stakeholders before rushing to make this switch, and it has yet to announce or explain the change to Social Security beneficiaries, instead burying notice of the change in a technical notice on a regulatory website. And the agency has provided no clear justification for the change other than vaguely citing “fraud risk,” despite there being no publicly documented problems with completing any of these tasks by phone.
This new policy compounds the pressure on field offices caused by previous changes. In April, SSA announced a similar restriction to phone service for beneficiaries changing bank information, requiring 1.9 million additional trips to field offices per year. Before that, SSA indefinitely suspended the automatic process to provide Social Security numbers (SSN) to immigrants with work authorization and to update newly naturalized citizens’ status. Instead of the cheaper, faster, and more secure process initially established by the first Trump Administration and used by 2.9 million people last year, immigrants with work authorization and newly naturalized citizens must now visit SSA offices to get the Social Security numbers they need to work and contribute to the system.
SSA’s restrictions on phone service under the Trump Administration will force a total of 5.3 million additional in-person trips per year — a 17 percent increase over last year’s visits — due to the previous direct deposit restrictions and the new ones on address changes, status inquires, benefit verifications, and tax forms. Factoring in the suspension of the automatic SSN process would bring the total even higher.
CBPP estimates of drive time suggest that the phone restrictions will result in beneficiaries spending nearly 3 million additional hours travelling to SSA field offices to get help each year, assuming no traffic, based on our previous estimates of how far seniors live from Social Security offices. And everyone who needs help at a Social Security field office will endure longer waits as millions more people join the queue for in-person service.
At the same time SSA is creating much higher demand for field office service, it has slashed the staff that provides it. In early July, SSA reassigned about 1,000 field office employees to answer SSA’s national 800 number. That’s on top of the nearly 2,000 field office staff who took buyouts this year as part of the largest staff cuts in SSA history, while undisclosed numbers took early retirement or simply left.
Shifting SSA staff away from increasingly understaffed field offices risks further exacerbating the degradation of SSA service. Doing it at a time when SSA is forcing millions more people to seek in-person service seems sure to have negative consequences for people seeking appointments and counting on the work that SSA’s field staff provide. This undercuts SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano’s promise to provide “outstanding service that works for everyone we serve — whether they call, walk into a field office, or choose to manage their benefits online.”
SSA can still prevent adding more stress to the system for beneficiaries by stopping the plan that would rush through additional phone service restrictions.
