Social Security changes will go ‘very very badly’

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My Iowa grandmother drove her Buick well into her 90s, lived independently until her 100th birthday and continued vanquishing her children, grandchildren and then great-grandchildren at Scrabble, card and dice games until her passing in late 2023.

Given that mental sharpness, we figured she’d have no problem mastering the iPad given to her in her 90s so that she could email younger generations and follow their Facebook updates. I quickly realized how mistaken that assumption was soon after unboxing the Apple device.

Scrolling. How a cursor works. Apps and how to open them. Clicking on links. Hitting the send button. Checking the remaining charge on the device. All these were foreign concepts. She tried, but the iPad sat idle until a visitor navigated it for her.

I’m guessing many others have similar experiences introducing new devices or stepping into a tech-support role for older relatives. All of us who’ve shouldered this fulfilling, but sometimes frustrating responsibility intuitively understand why a recent move by the Social Security Administration to limit phone assistance for beneficiaries and push them online instead is problematic.

Among those sounding the alarm: Minnesota’s senior U.S. senator, Amy Klobuchar, who posted this commendably blunt language on social media recently. “Prediction: This will go very very badly. Seriously, have they no shame?”

Social Security, of course, provides “a foundation of income” for retirees, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Workers pay into the system and then collect a monthly payment upon reaching a qualifying age. “About 67 million people, or about 1 in every 5 U.S. residents, collected Social Security benefits in February 2024,” CBPP reports.

Here’s another key data point from that organization: four of every five Social Security beneficiaries are older adults. Any changes to enrollment and other program processes done for efficiency or other reasons should bear that lack of digital fluency in mind.

Are there tech-savvy seniors? Absolutely. But for others, a shift away from familiar technology, such as a phone, requires skills and equipment that they may not have, such as a computer or a reliable internet connection (particularly in a rural area), to access their earned benefits.

The Social Security Administration’s current leadership regrettably failed to acknowledge this reality in a March 18 announcement about a new process for new beneficiaries to navigate.

It “will require millions of Americans who file for benefits by phone to verify their identity using an online system or provide documentation in person at a field office,” the Washington Post reports. “The change is expected to disrupt agency operations just as the Trump administration, driven by billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, is racing to downsize Social Security — cutting 7,000 jobs, consolidating programs, and closing dozens of regional and local offices.”

Social Security’s acting Commissioner Leland Dudek has said the shift away from phone assistance is critical to fight direct deposit fraud. Perhaps, though I’ll add that Axios reports that the $100 million in fraud cited by Dudek “represents about 0.00625% of the $1.6 trillion the government sends out each year in Social Security benefits.” In addition, “Only around half of that $100 million was lost to phone fraud in 2024.”

Fighting fraud is imperative. But the agency, which will soon be permanently headed by a Milwaukee business executive, must not lose sight of its mission: serving the nation’s elderly. Alternatives that strike a better balance are sorely in order, especially with the agency making it harder to visit a field office.

In-person assistance is another path for those unable to file online for benefits, but there will soon be fewer places to go for this help. A total of 47 field offices, where enrollees could go to do this, are listed for closure, according to the Associated Press.

Twenty-six are expected to shutter this year. None of those offices are in Minnesota, but one in Minot, N.D., has a lease date slated to terminate in June.

This means that many seniors, some of whom may already have mobility issues, will now have to travel further in many locations to access in-person help. That’s unacceptable.

Making it even worse: the loss of 7,000 staffers nationally, meaning there could be even fewer people at the field offices to help once you get there. Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley got an earful about this during a recent town hall. “Go to a local office. Try to get an appointment! Right now you’re waiting a month. And we’re going to cut more staff?” an attendee said.

In an interview, Klobuchar said her experience helping constituents is fueling her alarm about the changes. “A significant portion” of requests to her office already involve Social Security.

She’s also skeptical about a potential workaround: enlisting younger family members to help seniors navigate an online process. She recently visited Milaca, Minn., and said a number of people told her that they don’t have family nearby.

Klobuchar vowed that she and others in Congress will hold Social Security leadership accountable, press for better solutions and fight to ensure that programs like Social Security are a funding priority, not tax cuts for the wealthy. “That’s what the big fights coming down the pike are going to be. Do you want to spend the money that way or this way?” she said.

Minnesotans are “used to having government work,” she added. “They expect that if they paid into Social Security their life, they should be able to get their questions answered.”

Klobuchar also had some blunt language about what could be a broader goal: deterring or delaying people from accessing benefits to save money or undercut support for the program. Asked about this, Klobuchar added a welcome side of hot sauce to her usual calm, clear pragmatism to say this:

“Based on Elon Musk calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, and in his words, the big one to eliminate, and the fact that President Trump spouted out a bunch of falsehoods for three minutes in his joint address to Congress about people who were 300 years old that have been found not to be true ... it does make me very concerned that there’s a long term plan here to undermine it.

“And one of the ways you undermine it, is people start to not trust it and then it leads to distrust in the whole system and that appears to be their game.”