Senators Demand Trump Admin Come Clean on Plan to 'Quietly Kill' Social Security Offices

Leading Senate Democrats and Independent US Sen. Bernie Sanders this week pressed the Trump administration for answers following reports that the Social Security Administration is planning to dramatically reduce visits to its field offices.

"We write with concerns regarding recent reports that the Social Security Administration is reorganizing its field office operations, and has established a goal of cutting the number of field office visits in half—amounting to 15 million fewer visits annually," Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a letter to SSA Administrator Frank Bisignano.

"Given that beneficiaries are already waiting months for field office appointments, and the agency has not shared with Congress or the public on how it plans to achieve this goal, we are concerned that these efforts are in fact part of a plan to 'quietly kill field offices,' implementing a backdoor cut in benefits by making it harder for Americans to access the Social Security customer services they need," the senators said.

"The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked Social Security."

Earlier this month, Nextgov/FCW revealed that the Social Security Administration said in internal documents that it wants “no more than 15 million total” in-person visits to its field offices in fiscal year 2026—or about half the current number of such visits. An anonymous SSA staffer told the outlet that senior agency officials are aiming for “fewer people in the front door" and for "all work that doesn’t require direct customer interactions to be centralized.”

As Warren's office noted Thursday:

The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked Social Security. Under Commissioner Bisignano, the administration has implemented policy changes that make it harder for Americans to get their benefits, including by implementing burdensome in-person and bug-prone identification processes that force millions more beneficiaries to visit field offices each year—at the same time they are slashing SSA’s workforce by around 7,000 and closing regional offices.

Instead of staffing up to meet these needs, SSA’s field office capacity has significantly declined. Beneficiaries are being forced to wait hours to get help—only to be told they will need to call to schedule an appointment.

"We are concerned that your plan is to force beneficiaries onto SSA’s bug-prone website or push them into customer service phone tree 'doom-loops'—which will almost certainly result in delayed or missed benefits for some individuals," the letter adds. "Once again, you seem to have adopted a slash-first, think-later approach to 'modernizing' SSA, and beneficiaries will pay the price."

The senators are asking Bisignano if the reports of proposed SSA office visit reductions are accurate, and if so, how and when the plan will be implemented, how the agency will "provide services to beneficiaries that would otherwise go to field offices," and how the reductions will affect already lengthy wait times and service online users and callers to the agency's 1-800 number.

The lawmakers' letter comes as Republican senators on Thursday voted down a proposed three-year extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, a move that is expected to result, on average, in a doubling of health insurance premiums for around 22 million people. Critics said the vote underscores the need for single-payer healthcare legislation like the Medicare for All Act reintroduced by Sanders and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) earlier this year.