Social Security wrongly told disabled people and some seniors their benefits ended, causing alarm

The Social Security Administration last week wrongly informed some recipients of Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the federal program that provides financial assistance to disabled Americans and low-income senior citizens, that they were no longer receiving benefits. 

The agency's website informed some SSI recipients they are "currently not receiving payments," according to an April 7 letter from senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Kelly of Arizona to Social Security Administration Acting Commissioner Lee Dudek. 

The payment history and all data about benefits for SSI recipients had also vanished, they wrote, adding that they received multiple reports from constituents about the error.

"In my 50 years of work on Social Security and SSI, I have never heard of this happening before," said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group for the program, of the SSI error.

Chris Hubbard, whose 37-year-old disabled adult son relies on the program to pay for his group home, told CBS MoneyWatch she became aware of the problem on March 31, when people in a Facebook group for mothers of autistic children flagged the problem. 

Hubbard, who lives with her husband in Westborough, Massachusetts, said she checked her son's account and was alarmed to find a similar message, leading her to stay up through the night to keep refreshing the page. She fell asleep at 5 a.m. without seeing a change, she said.

"I was continuing to be worried because the message was still on the site, saying this beneficiary doesn't receive payments," Hubbard said.

The next morning, however, the correct information was on her son's page, and the money was deposited on April 1, as scheduled. But she and her husband say they received no outreach from Social Security about the problem, or an explanation of the error. They opted against calling the agency because of the long waits now often required to get someone on the phone.

The Hubbards said they're worried the glitch could signal more problems with the service, pointing to the potential impact of cuts to SSA's workforce.

"There's great concern about this happening again, and why did it happen in the first place?" Tom Hubbard said.

The Social Security Administration told CBS MoneyWatch that the issue was limited to SSI recipients, adding, it "did not impact Social Security or Medicare only beneficiaries." A spokesperson for the agency said, "This particular issue was resolved less than twenty-four hours later. All my Social Security user logins are again able to connect and view the proper benefit information."

DOGE changes

The SSI error is concerning because it impacts "some of the most vulnerable in the nation — low-income seniors and children and adults with disabilities — and [they] face extraordinary hardship if their benefits are delayed or disrupted," the senators wrote in their letter. 

The SSI issue could be the result of changes happening at the Social Security Administration under Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Altman said. Musk has claimed that the system is rife with fraud, and alleged the program is "the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time."

In recent weeks, the Social Security website has suffered from a number of outages that lasted as long as a day, according to an April 7 Washington Post report. The Social Security Administration told CBS MoneyWatch that the "brief disruptions" lasted about 20 minutes each, on average.

"Before Trump, Musk and DOGE took over, there were no major crashes or glitches on SSA's website to speak of," noted Maria Freese, senior Social Security expert at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, an advocacy group focused on retirement issues. "Certainly there were no messages going out telling people erroneously that their benefits were discontinued."

The maximum monthly SSI payment is $967 for an individual in 2025, with the program aimed at helping people with disabilities and seniors with no or little income. Most SSI recipients have income below the poverty line, according to the Roosevelt Institute.

"SSI recipients experience economic precarity at high rates, and even brief disruptions to benefits could have devastating impacts for these beneficiaries," the senators wrote in their April 7 letter. "These recent reports of disruption—or threats of disruption— of Social Security benefits is deeply troubling."

• Print
• Email
• Tweet