The Social Security Administration has apparently backed off on its plans to make more older Americans travel to field offices when they apply for retirement benefits.
The agency had planned to require anyone filing for benefits or changing bank account information to verify their identities in person instead of over the phone if they were unable to do so through the agency’s website.
The changes were supposed to take effect on Monday but have been called off, according to a statement the agency made to the advocacy group AARP, which had lobbied hard against the changes.
“Beginning on April 14, SSA will allow all claim types to be completed over the telephone,” the agency said, AARP told HuffPost.
In a less straightforward statement on social media, the agency said, “Beginning on April 14, #SocialSecurity will perform an anti-fraud check on all claims filed over the telephone and flag claims that have fraud risk indicators.”
Social Security spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for more details.
The plan to cut phone service received major pushback from Democratic members of Congress and advocates for older Americans who said visiting field offices would burden people with limited means who’d have to drive for hours just to show ID.
The identity-proofing scheme had been the brainchild of Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” team. Musk and President Donald Trump have falsely claimed Social Security fraudulently sends out millions of payments in the names of people so old they can’t possibly be alive.
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Social Security’s acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, said the White House pushed him to make the phone service changes as rapidly as possible. Dudek already delayed the changes once and said they wouldn’t apply to disability claimants.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, said 6 million seniors didn’t live within 45 minutes of their nearest field office.
The phone service cuts were reversed the same day Trump scrapped many of the tariffs he’d announced against U.S. trading partners in a shocking dismantling of his signature economic policy.