Texas officials with the AARP said the nonprofit’s members are fed up with chaos and customer service breakdowns as they try to deal with the Social Security Administration, one of the targets of the Trump White House’s sweeping government cuts.
Despite President Donald Trump’s repeated promises he wouldn’t ax Social Security benefits, retirees and people with disabilities are being confronted with website outages and other technical glitches when they try to access their accounts online, AARP Senior Director for Community Strategy Lisa Rodriguez told the Current. Meanwhile, many who try to call with questions experience hours-long waits and hangups before they can have their issues resolved.
The glitches come as the administration has advised that Americans will no longer be able to apply for Social Security benefits over the phone starting Monday, April 14, Rodriguez added.
“There’s a tremendous amount of anxiety right now about what’s going on, what’s the truth is and whether people need to camp out in front of the Social Security office to authenticate their identities,” Rodriguez said. “It’s only going to get worse.”
Rodriguez said AARP Texas volunteers are overwhelmed by calls and questions from people worried about the future of Social Security benefits they paid into during their working lives. She’s heard the horror stories herself, including one from a woman who had a six-hour hold time as she tried to get answers to questions about her pending retirement.
“It’s not just that one instance,” Rodriguez added. “It’s happening to people across the state. It’s happening to people across the country.”
Indeed, more than 50 million Americans received Social Security retirement benefits as of February, according to agency data. Thousands more qualify for benefits daily, records also show.
Despite the decades’ old program’s wide reach, it’s among those targeted for deep and rapid cuts by billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
To date, 2,800 Social Security Administration employees have taken buyouts or early retirements pushed by DOGE, the New York Times reports. Despite staffing already being at 50-year lows, agency officials said they want to shed 4,200 more positions. That’s left fewer people to answer the phones, and some offices desperately understaffed, according to the Times.
“Previously, people were used to dealing with close to a zero wait time to get answers,” Rodriguez said. “Today, if you call Social Security, you’re looking at hours.”
DOGE has also demanded a 50% cut to the technology division that maintains the Social Security website and oversees electronic access, according to the Washington Post.
Amid those cuts, the agency’s website crashes frequently with one of its outages lasting almost a day, the Post reports, citing six current and former officials familiar with its workings. Some customers have been unable to sign in to their accounts, while others have discovered missing information or have been frustrated by sluggish system responses.
Musk and Vice President JD Vance have both made debunked claims that the Social Security cuts are addressing widespread fraud in the system. But Rodriguez said she’s worried the current confusion is likely to inspire fraud as hucksters target older Americans in a panic over their retirement benefits.
“When you have confusion like this, that’s when the fraudsters attack,” she said.
Rodriguez urged people concerned about the administration’s decimation of the Social Security agency to call their lawmakers to demand that the cuts be stopped and that phone service remain in place indefinitely.
“This isn’t a giveaway,” she said. “We paid into this program. It’s our money.”
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This article appears in Apr 2-15, 2025.
