Lawmakers seek details behind SSA plan to slash office visits

Four senators are asking Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano to address their concerns with a reported agency goal to cut the number of field office visits in half in the coming year.

Nextgov/FCW first reported last week that SSA means to have 50% fewer field office visits in fiscal year 2026 than there were in fiscal 2025, or no more than 15 million total. Over 31 million people visited the agency’s field offices last year to file for benefits, get Social Security cards and more.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., detailed their concerns with that goal in a Tuesday letter to 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 back-door cut in benefits by making it harder for Americans to access the Social Security customer services they need,” the group wrote.

The Trump administration has been pushing people to use technology to access SSA services instead of going to field offices or calling the agency. The agency’s intention to see fewer visitors has raised concerns about access, especially for individuals who aren’t technologically proficient. 

The plan comes as the agency has made efforts to centralize field office operations, causing anxiety among staff about the future of field offices themselves. According to the Associated Press, several rural offices have closed this year due to staffing challenges.

The idea of having more SSA recipients use technology to reach the agency instead isn’t completely new. Previous generations of SSA leaders have also sought to encourage people to do their business online and have invested in the agency’s technology so that people don’t necessarily have to go in person to do SSA business. 

But the current administration has also reduced SSA staffing, the letter notes.

SSA announced a plan to shed 7,000 workers in February, and staffing in field offices is down by nearly 2,000 employees already. The agency also moved at least another 1,000 workers off the front lines to instead answer the phone line in July, effectively further slashing staffing in field offices.

In addition to staffing reductions, the senators also expressed concern about the implementation of identity verification processes that require people who can’t access their online SSA accounts to go in person to a field office to do certain transactions. The agency has made several changes to its phone lines and what’s required of callers since March.

“Providing improved phone and online services would be a significant improvement for beneficiaries — but you appear to be attempting to do that at the expense of providing quality in-person service, which will only harm Social Security beneficiaries, especially those living in rural communities,” the lawmakers wrote. “Once again, you seem to have adopted a slash-first, think-later approach to ‘modernizing’ SSA, and beneficiaries will pay the price.”

In addition to significantly decreasing field office visits, the agency also set goals within its operating plan to schedule appointments within 30 days, cut field office wait times to 20 minutes and more.

“Field offices are, and will always remain, our front-line, serving the more than 330 million Americans with Social Security numbers,” an SSA spokesperson previously told Nextgov/FCW about the changes, saying that “SSA will shift its strategy and goals to match our customers’ evolving service preferences.”

The senators want answers to a list of questions in the letter, including if the agency is specifically planning to reduce the number of appointment slots available for field office visits, by Jan. 6.