Her mother had just died, so the last thing the caller needed was to be on hold forever waiting for a government agency bureaucrat to finally pick up the phone. Even so, the next to last thing she needed was for the Social Security Administration to accuse her of fraud for not reporting her 96-year- old mother’s death, and putting a stop to the checks that came for decades every month. The daughter, who lives in New Jersey, had heard President Trump talk about rampant financial abuse within the agency, claiming the program wastes hundreds of billions of dollars in fraudulent payouts that need to be eliminated. So the daughter, still wracked with grief, with a bunch of arrangements to make, wasted no time trying to tie up that one loose end. They didn’t make it easy for her. “When I called, the recording said the wait time was more than 120 minutes,” she said. “They said it just like that. Not two hours, but 120 minutes. That made it sound worse … So I opted for the call-back.” And someone did call her back — six hours later. So much for government efficiency. The caller declined to use her name for this article. The last thing she needed, next to being on hold forever or being accused of fraud, was for the Trump administration to target her for pointing out the flaws in its arbitrary attack on government. But her ordeal represents the reality for hundreds of thousands of Americans who rely on government services being targeted by Trump and his billionaire emissary Elon Musk. Consumers frustrated by the long waits on hold don’t do any better in person. Many Social Security field offices are no longer accepting walk-in appointments. Combine that with crashed web pages and dropped phone calls, and it’s easy to conclude that the safety net that is Social Security has a big, wide hole in it. “In just nine weeks, the new administration has upended the agency with sweeping and destabilizing policy changes — shifting critical agency functions onto overburdened local offices, slashing telephone-based services, and debilitating the agency’s ability to meet beneficiaries’ needs,” according to a federal lawsuit filed against the agency by a coalition of advocacy groups, including the American Association  of People with Disabilities. Nearly 73 million Americans receive monthly checks from the Social Security Administration. In February, the agency said it would cut nearly 7,000 jobs and cut the number of regional offices from 10 to four as part of its effort to “reduce the size of its bloated workforce and organizational structure.” The cutbacks, administered  by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency advisory team, represent a 12% reduction of the agency’s workforce. “These steps prioritize customer service by streamlining redundant layers of management, reducing non-mission critical work and potential reassignment of employees to customer service positions,” an agency spokesman said in a statement. The agency is also shifting all of its public communication to the X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, including press releases and notices to the general public. That’s pretty self serving, considering Musk owns the company. The new policy also takes quite a leap by assuming that most of the nation’s elderly population have ever even heard of Twitter, including the New Jersey caller’s 96-year-old mother. The New Jersey woman turned 70 this year, and gets her own Social Security benefits. She said she hopes the agency will be around for her children. “I think it will be harder starting it than ending it,” she said. When the agency finally returned her call, the representative on the line was very helpful, she said, resolving her issue in less than 15 minutes. “When I asked about the impact of DOGE cuts, the rep said, ‘I think it’s going to bog us down quite a bit,’” she said. She said she sympathized with him, but wasn’t taking any chances. “I recorded the whole thing,” she said. ...read more read less