It was a little more than a month ago that the Social Security Administration (SSA) said it would begin implementing enhanced fraud prevention tools for claims filed over the telephone.
The changes were expected to give the SSA new anti-fraud capabilities designed to protect beneficiaries and streamline the customer experience, even as Elon Musk and DOGE had put a chainsaw to that federal agency and many others.
If you remember at the time, the initiative drew an outcry from seniors and advocates worried that the policy would make it harder for people to file for claims, particularly if they weren’t computer literate or lived far from the agency’s offices.
Like a lot of things that have happened with this administration, from tariffs to layoffs to legal aid, the changes came and just as quickly went … quietly.
The agency will no longer hold retirement benefit applications for three days to check for fraud, according to an email sent to workers, a CNN story says.
So what took so long, considering:
- The backlog in retirement benefit claims has swelled to nearly 575,000 applications, putting more pressure on fewer Social Security employees.
- The anti-fraud checks delayed the processing of retirement claims by 25% and led to worse customer service, according to the May document, per CNN.
- The review process only found two cases out of more than 110,000 claims that had a high probability of being fraudulent, according to an internal document obtained by Nextgov/FCW, which covers technology in federal agencies. Fewer than 1% of claims were flagged as potentially fraudulent.
Social Security posted online that the backlog began rising last fall, from fewer than 350,000 pending claims in September to nearly 600,000 pending claims in April.
That total only figures to increase, with the agency cutting roughly 12% of its staff.
At the same time, the agency is receiving a record number of claims this year thanks to a peak wave of Baby Boomers hitting retirement age and a law passed by Congress that increased Social Security benefits for nearly 3 million federal, state and local workers. Filings this year are up 13 percent, according to a New York Times story.
The backlog prompted an email from Stephen Evangelista, Social Security’s deputy commissioner for operations, to employees urging them to “do their very best” to increase the number of retirement claims they clear every day by at least 10% for the rest of May, CNN wrote.
Good luck with that.