Social Security offices are facing long lines and wait times amid D.O.G.E cuts

People are waiting outside Social Security offices before the sun even comes up. In cities like Seattle, the line starts 30 minutes before doors open. By 9 a.m., there’s already a crowd.

When a guard steps outside and asks who actually has an appointment, only about a third of the hands go up. Everyone else is there to fight the system and maybe, just maybe, get a human to talk to them.

One of them is Mark DeLaurenti from Bellevue, who came without an appointment after finding a $2,000 Social Security check made out to his late father. The check was messing up his taxes, and his accountant told him the SSA would reissue it. But after spending hours trying to book an appointment online and failing on the phone, he showed up in person. When he finally reached a human being, they told him to come back in 3 to 4 hours just to make the appointment. “I’m giving up. They beat me,” he reportedly told Wall Street Journal. “It’s so inefficient, it’s unbelievable.”

D.O.G.E downsizes, wait times explode

Scenes like this aren’t rare. There are about 1,200 Social Security field offices in the U.S., and most of them are just as bad—if not worse. Workers, retirees, and advocates all say the same thing: the place is a mess. People sit in offices for hours, calls to the agency’s main number get cut off, and staff are burned out. The system’s falling apart, and it’s all happening under D.O.G.E.

D.O.G.E, pushed by Trump and “first buddy” Elon, has made Social Security one of its main targets. Elon has even called it a “Ponzi scheme” and says it needs to be completely reworked.

On top of that, the tech is garbage. The agency’s computer network has gone down 10 times in six weeks, according to the American Federation of Government Employees. That’s the union for Social Security staff. They say the outages screw up everything and add even more delays.

Elon Musk said last month on Fox News that D.O.G.E is making things better. “As a result of the work of D.O.G.E, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive more money, not less money.” But for now, people aren’t getting anything at all. Just long lines, dropped calls, and excuses.

System crashes while demand increases

The Social Security program sends out checks to more than 70 million Americans—retirees, kids, and people with disabilities. But unless Congress steps in and throws money at the problem, the reserves will run dry by 2033. When that happens, payments will be slashed by 21% across the board.

Since January, the agency has been run by acting commissioner Leland Dudek. He’s all about efficiency and fraud prevention. An inspector general report recently showed that less than 1% of total benefits are fraud, but that still adds up to tens of billions of dollars. They want to stop that, even if it means cutting corners elsewhere.

Now, Frank Bisignano, the CEO of Fiserv, is up for nomination to be the next permanent Social Security commissioner. During a Senate hearing, he said:

“My objective is to come in and motivate the workforce we have…to be able to get our job right the first time for the American public.”

So what’s next? According to D.O.G.E, they want to shut down nearly 48 field offices to save cash. That’s straight from their own site. But the SSA tried to deny it in a press release, calling the closure reports “false.” Still, internal memos tell a different story.

One document called “Strategy for SSA Service Delivery” lays out plans for 2026. It talks about reducing their “footprint,” which is code for closing more offices. There’s even a note about reassessing staff levels—which usually means firing more people.

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