The Social Security Administration has 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 from the White House, which claimed the administration had figured out how to detect fraudulent claims through the phone and wouldn’t need to make people prove their identity in person.
“The Social Security anti-fraud team has worked around the clock in person to improve technological capabilities and they are now able to identify fraud on claims filed over the telephone,” White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said in an emailed statement.
In a Tuesday statement on social media, the Social Security Administration 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.”
The plan to cut phone service received major pushback from Democratic members of Congress and advocates for older Americans, such as AARP, 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. Musk also claimed the agency was bombarded by phone calls from fraudsters trying to redirect people’s benefit payments, though available data suggests such scams are relatively rare.
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.
“This is great news for older Americans,” AARP’s Nancy LeaMond said in a statement. “We appreciate SSA listening to AARP and millions of Americans about the impact on their lives and providing better access to customer service for Social Security benefits.”
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.