Outside a Social Security office, fear, lines and misinformation [View all]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/04/02/social-security-doge-lines-iowa-beneficiaries/

Outside a Social Security office, fear, lines and misinformation
Retirees are flocking to the agency’s office in Des Moines, mistakenly thinking they have to prove their identity anew or their checks will stop.
April 2, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
By Annie Gowen

DES MOINES — They began lining up two hours before the Social Security office opened — huddled against a sharp April cold, clutching convenience store coffees, the steam rising in chill coming off the river that flows through Des Moines.

Some carried files of important documents — an original of a marriage or birth certificate, a Medicare application — or printouts of forms they couldn’t seem to manage to submit online.

Many expressed worry about the upcoming changes at the Social Security Administration and how those might affect the benefits it provides 73 million disabled, elderly or young Americans. For 40 percent of seniors, that monthly check is their sole source of income.

While President Donald Trump has said he won’t touch Social Security, his billionaire adviser Elon Musk has denigrated the system as a “Ponzi scheme.” Cost-cutting teams from Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service have slashed jobs and functions. The result: a flood of worried beneficiaries, website crashes and chaos.

Long lines and wait times were already common at this office, the biggest in Iowa, located between boxy new lofts in a low-slung, red-trimmed building on the fringes of the city’s downtown.

But help here has been complicated by new rules requiring beneficiaries to come in person if they cannot register online, according to Jeremy Maske, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 836, which represents about 100 Social Security workers in this state and Nebraska.

Some recipients are showing up because of confusion over what they do and don’t need to do to prove they are still alive.

They’re “experiencing longer wait times on the phone, if they can get through,” Maske said. “They’re experiencing the same type of fear and trauma the employees are — and are worried they’re going to lose their benefits.”

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