OP-ED: Staffing cuts are undermining Social Security

PHOTO: Christine Lizotte (left), Kathy Davis & AFGE member Ray Thompkins.

This column by Christine Lizotte is secretary treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1164, originally appeared in the July 29 edition of the Bangor Daily News.

I have been working as a claims representative for the Social Security Administration for 21 years and our current staﬃng crisis is the worst I’ve ever seen. Over the past several months, the administration has carried out the largest staﬃng cut to the Social Security Administration (SSA) in history. At the same time, it has radically reorganized regional oﬃces by dramatically increasing wait times, causing stress for both employees and beneﬁciaries. These actions are potentially jeopardizing the delivery of beneﬁts to these vulnerable populations.

Social Security is a critical safety net program that 360,000 Mainers rely on. In addition to processing beneﬁts for retirees, we help so many others who would be in poverty were it not for this lifeline. This includes the parents of premature babies receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which qualiﬁes them for MaineCare so they don’t go bankrupt while their child is in intensive care. We help people with severe autism, Down syndrome and other disabilities receive their beneﬁts.

Many of the people we serve have survived trauma, homelessness and abuse. They come to us in fear because they are broke and can’t pay their bills. Some of them worked for many years and now ﬁnd themselves in crisis due to an injury or poor health. The hardest cases I’ve seen are people with traumatic brain injuries who have problems processing information.

We help the 22-year-old woman who ﬁnds herself wheelchair bound after falling down a ﬂight of stairs and now qualiﬁes for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). We hold the widow’s hand as she breaks down in tears applying for survivor’s beneﬁts. Increasingly we are working with grandparents who have found themselves raising small children because their parents died in the opioid epidemic. We treat all of these people with compassion and give them the dignity and respect that they deserve.

When the current administration took over in January, SSA was already facing a staﬃng shortage. Since then, it has gotten so much worse. First, the Department of Government Eﬃciency (DOGE) pushed out 7,000 SSA employees to meet an arbitrary staﬃng reduction target. It also implemented a federal hiring freeze so that those positions left vacant were never ﬁlled. Not surprisingly, the move has caused record wait times for beneﬁciaries. To address the problem, SSA’s new commissioner, Wall Street billionaire Frank Bisignano, shifted 1,000 employees from ﬁeld oﬃces to the national phone lines.

Our ﬁeld service representatives were only informed on July 2 that the very next day they would be transferred to the national phone line despite having never received the necessary training on how to handle those calls or how to manage the diﬀerent expectations. The SSA’s new phone system automatically routes callers to the national number if no one answers within one minute, so callers are being transferred all over the regional district, which includes Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and parts of northern Massachusetts. This makes it extremely diﬃcult for ﬁeld reps to answer questions from recipients in diﬀerent states with diﬀerent laws that impact Supplemental Security eligibility.

Field oﬃces are now short staﬀed of service representatives who normally answer the phone and run the front counter, further exacerbating the staﬃng crisis and increasing wait times. A month ago, the average wait time in the lobby of our oﬃce in Auburn was 16 minutes. Following these changes it’s now an hour and half. Rather than hiring more staﬀ, DOGE and the Trump administration simply shifted the deck chairs on the Titanic. I cannot tell you how many people I have talked to who have broken down in tears due to the chaos created by this reorganization. Employee morale is at an all-time low.

Elderly Mainers, people with disabilities and children who have suﬀered the loss of a parent deserve a Social Security system that is eﬃcient and easily accessible. This is a promise that was made 90 years ago this August to every American and it must be kept. We urge our congressional representatives to do everything they can to prevent the dismantling of this critical social insurance program.