DOGE Cuts to Cause 2 Million Extra Visits to Social Security Offices: Study
Source: Newsweek
Published May 28, 2025 at 2:42 PM EDT
Staffing cuts and office closures at the Social Security Administration (SSA), driven by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are estimated to force seniors to make nearly 2 million additional annual trips for necessary in-person assistance, according to a new study. Newsweek reached out to the SSA for comment.
Why It Matters
Social Security provides vital support to nearly 69 million Americans each month, including retired workers and disabled individuals. Record backlogs and rising demand from an aging population, in addition to reduced staffing and cuts to long-held phone services, could hit rural seniors and disabled Americans the hardest—forcing beneficiaries, some with mobility issues or lack of technology access, into long lines at SSA offices or risking benefit interruptions.
What to Know
Researchers at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), in new data released Tuesday, say DOGE cuts plus revised SSA protocols are estimated to require people to make over 1.93 million additional trips annually to understaffed field offices each year—equating to more than 1 million wasted hours on unnecessary travel every year. Data was accumulated by analyzing SSA field office maps, the OpenTimes travel times database, and the geographic distribution of seniors (people aged 65 and over) from the Census Bureau's 2023 American Community Survey.
"Our estimates are very conservative because when they're talking about the time, it's just the time literally to travel from one point to another and back," Devin O'Connor, a CBPP senior fellow and study co-author, told Newsweek. "It doesn't take into account traffic, time of day, other things that come into effect. "But also, it doesn't take into account how long you might spend waiting in a field office or how hard it is to get an appointment to go to a field office in the first place."
Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/doge-social-security-seniors-benefits-elon-2078102
Link to Center on Budget and Policy Priorities REPORT - Social Security Service Restrictions Burden Seniors With Long, Unnecessary Travel
From the report -
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