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Because DOGE cuts destroyed it, Social Security stops reporting call wait times and other metrics
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/20/social-security-wait-times-cuts/. . .
One Social Security employee, who works in a claims processing center and who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said she suspects the erased webpages indicate an attempt to hide exploding call times and service backlogs piling up under the second Trump administration.
She noted that, in her experience under Trump so far, it is taking at least double the time to process a claim than it did under Biden. She sits near colleagues who handle international calls, she said, and often overhears co-workers tell callers that actions will take 15 to 30 business days to process. She attributed the slowdown to mismanagement driven in part by DOGE, which slashed the agency’s staff, hampered its ability to spend and drove down efficiency by enacting massive staff reorganizations.
“Them removing that type of data off the website about processing times doesn’t surprise me, because we’re so behind on things being processed,” the employee said. “It’s really a mess right now, everything is so far backed up.”
. . .
Across the country in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 76-year-old Joan Garnett, for whom Social Security payments are the primary form of income, was also struggling to understand why the agency would revise its website. She, too, thinks it is unrealistic that elderly people will be able to use the portal.
One Social Security employee, who works in a claims processing center and who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said she suspects the erased webpages indicate an attempt to hide exploding call times and service backlogs piling up under the second Trump administration.
She noted that, in her experience under Trump so far, it is taking at least double the time to process a claim than it did under Biden. She sits near colleagues who handle international calls, she said, and often overhears co-workers tell callers that actions will take 15 to 30 business days to process. She attributed the slowdown to mismanagement driven in part by DOGE, which slashed the agency’s staff, hampered its ability to spend and drove down efficiency by enacting massive staff reorganizations.
“Them removing that type of data off the website about processing times doesn’t surprise me, because we’re so behind on things being processed,” the employee said. “It’s really a mess right now, everything is so far backed up.”
. . .
Across the country in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 76-year-old Joan Garnett, for whom Social Security payments are the primary form of income, was also struggling to understand why the agency would revise its website. She, too, thinks it is unrealistic that elderly people will be able to use the portal.