Murray, Senators Investigate Social Security Agency’s Customer Service Chaos Reaching “New Extremes”

Trump’s Social Security head has disrupted Social Security staffing, services
Nearly two-thirds of Social Security employees report customer service has declined in the past year
Senators:“Your forced staff reassignments are harming Social Security beneficiaries, endangering the accuracy of claims, and wasting taxpayer dollars.”
Washington, D.C.– Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, joined Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Ranking Member of the Special Committee on Aging, Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR), Ranking Member of the Committee on Finance, in launching a new investigation into the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) ongoing customer service crisis reaching new extremes, the latest from Senate Democrats’Social Security War Room. In a newletterto Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, the senators raised concerns that his staffing cuts and staff reassignments have left the agency unable to “fully serve” the nearly 75 million Americans who rely on the program.
“(Staff) reassignments are band-aid solutions to patch over ongoing service problems that have plagued the agency under your leadership,”wrote the senators, highlighting ongoing staffing shortages and field office closures.
Staff cuts have left the agency with an average of only one field office representative per nearly 4,000 beneficiaries—a ratio that is 12 percent higher than it wasbefore the cuts. With over 100,000 people visiting their local SSA office every day, these staffing reductions translate to declining customer service. According to arecent surveyof SSA employees, nearly two-thirds reported that “service quality had declined in the past 12 months” and 70 percent reported “service speed had declined.”
Over the last year, the Trump administration has slashed SSA’s workforce by over 7,000 employees, causing some rural field offices to close. At the same time, SSA isshort-staffingfield offices in an effort to eliminate 15 million in-person field office visits, forcing seniors and people with disabilities to wait even longer for an appointment or wait hours on the phone to speak with a live agent.
Instead of fixing those problems, Bisignano has attempted to cover up the mess by reassigning employees and seeking technological shortcuts to paper over staff shortages. Some of those reassignments includepulling expert employees awayfrom SSA’s “disability adjudication, financial and management, field office services, risk and quality, digital services and chief information officer units” to help answer SSA’s national phone line.
“This entire process of firing and pushing out call service staff, re-assigning other employees to serve as call center staff, and now rehiring a whole new set of inexperienced call service staff…is a costly, wasteful process that only adds to the customer service chaos,”wrote the senators.
Reassigned employees are reportedly nowonly receivingthree hours of training before starting on the SSA help line, despite the agency claiming they would receive eight hours of training. Employees familiar with handling the phone line say that eight hours of training is “insufficient due to the complexity of issues that can arise on a call.” The impacts of this lack of training are already becoming apparent — with literal life and death consequences. Newly reassigned employees have reported that they are receivingalarming guidanceon handling callers expressing suicidal thoughts, including reminding callers “that suicide is only one option.”
Bisignano’s past responses to Congress about staff reassignments and field office wait times failed to provide details on the number of employees reassigned or clarify the length of their reassignments. He has also failed to answer the senators’ metric-specific questions on the initial results of reassignments.
“Your forced staff reassignments are harming Social Security beneficiaries, endangering the accuracy of claims, and wasting taxpayer dollars. When SSA pulls employees away from already understaffed field offices or from processing backlogs in claims, customer service and the timely delivery of benefits suffer,”wrote the senators.
The senators asked Bisignano to provide information about the ongoing staff reassignments and customer service problems at SSA by March 27, 2026.
Senate Democrats’Social Security War Roomcoordinates Democrats’ fight to defend Social Security, encourages grassroots engagement by providing opportunities for Americans to share what Social Security means to them, and educates Senate staff, the American public, and stakeholders about Republicans’ agenda and their continued cuts to Americans’ Social Security services and benefits.
The full letter is availableHERE.
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