Lawmakers raise alarm about whether Trump administration is seeking to “quietly kill field offices,” implement backdoor benefits cuts
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden said today he is joining his Senate colleagues in pressing the head of Social Security on reports about a new goal of slashing nearly 15 million field office visits every year in Oregon and nationwide.
“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 senators wrote in their letter to Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Frank Bisignano. “Once again, you seem to have adopted a slash-first, think-later approach to “modernizing” SSA, and beneficiaries will pay the price.”
The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked Social Security. Under Bisignano, the administration has made it harder for Americans to get their benefits, including implementing burdensome in-person and bug-prone identification processes that force millions of Americans to visit field offices each year. The administration is also slashing SSA’s workforce by around 6,000 people and closing regional offices. Instead of staffing up to meet these needs, SSA’s field office capacity has significantly declined. Beneficiaries are being forced to wait hours to get help, only to be told they must call to schedule an appointment. Recent reports now indicate SSA plans to slash field office visitors in half, making it even harder for seniors and people with disabilities to access their earned benefits.
Wyden and his colleagues requested critical details by January 6, 2026 on SSA’s plans to reduce the number of field office visits, including which services SSA will be deployed for online users and individuals calling the National 1-800 number, whether beneficiaries will receive assistance in field offices without an appointment, what the current average wait time is to schedule a field office appointment, among other pressing questions.
In addition to Wyden, the letter was led by U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-V.t.
The text of the letter is here.
A web version of this release is here.
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