‘Depression-era’: Man declared ‘dead’ by Social Security shares the cost of DOGE’s cuts

This is an adapted excerpt from the March 25 episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

On Tuesday, during a Senate confirmation hearing for Frank Bisignano, Donald Trump’s nominee for Social Security commissioner, Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington shared a report from her hometown paper, The Seattle Times.

The story was that of Leonard “Ned” Johnson, an 82-year-old Washington resident, who was mistakenly declared dead by Social Security, which resulted in his benefits being taken away. As Cantwell recounted during that hearing, when Johnson realized the agency’s error, he tried to resolve the problem over the phone. However, after weeks of waiting for a response, he was forced to travel to the Social Security office in Seattle — one of the buildings proposed to be closed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

“It was like a Depression-era scene, he [Johnson] said, with a queue 50-deep jockeying for the attentions of two tellers. The employees were kind but beleaguered,” The Seattle Times reported.

“They are so understaffed down there,” Johnson told the paper. “They think the office is about to be closed down, and they don’t know where they’re going to go. It feels like the agency’s being gutted.”

After waiting for four hours, Johnson told the Times he jumped the line: “I saw an opening and I kind of rushed up and told them I was listed as dead. That seemed to get their attention.”

That’s just one story from one town about one retired person trying to straighten out one problem with Social Security — and finding a Depression-era scene when he did. But, as Trump and Musk continue to hack away at the Social Security Administration, questions about the future of the agency move beyond an anecdote here or there. The question now is how much Social Security can take before it stops working.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post published riveting reporting from Social Security offices around the country. For the report, headlined “Long waits, waves of calls, website crashes: Social Security is breaking down,” the paper spoke to more than two dozen current and former agency employees and officials, customers and others who interact with Social Security. The Post also reviewed internal documents from the agency.

Here’s what it found in Indiana: “In one office in central Indiana, the phone lines are jammed by 9 a.m. with hundreds of retirees, further taxing a staff of less than a dozen that is responsible for nearly 70,000 claimants across the state. … [T]he questions have become predictable: What is the U.S. DOGE Service doing to Social Security? Will the office close? Will my benefits continue?”

The Post reported that employees there received no training on the impending changes and have few answers for those calling in. “I hope we’re going to be here,” one employee told caller after caller, according to the Post. “But I can’t guarantee anything.”

In Baltimore, the Post spoke to an employee who works on critical payment systems who said that as a result of a wave of resignations and retirements, nearly a quarter of his team is either already gone or will soon be.

According to that employee, the reduction in highly skilled staff is already having an impact. “His office is supposed to complete several software updates and modernization processes required by law within the next few weeks and months, he said. But with the departures, it seems increasingly likely that it will miss those deadlines,” the Post reported.

That staffer also said his team is often called on to fix complicated technology glitches that stop payments, but many of the experts responsible for those fixes will soon be gone. He told the Post: “That has to get cleaned up on a case-by-case basis, and the experts in how to do that are leaving. We will have cases that get stuck, and they’re not going to be able to get fixed.”

That same employee then warned, “People could be out of benefits for months.”