Social Security Admin to require in-person ID checks for new&existing recipients
apnews.com
apnews.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-con... | https://archive.is/2025.03.08-181114/https://www.nytimes.com...
> Retiree advocates warn that the change will negatively impact older Americans in rural areas, including those with disabilities, mobility limitations, those who live far from SSA offices and have limited internet access.
> The plan also comes as the agency plans to shutter dozens of Social Security offices throughout the country and has already laid out plans to lay off thousands of workers.
This isn’t a good-faith effort to save $100M. It’s nefarious.
1. To complete the final identity verification step when initially applying for benefits. This happens only once in a person's life.
2. If one wants to change which bank account their payment gets direct deposited to. This should happen very rarely for someone that is elderly, has mobility limitations, etc. Perhaps once or never.
In addition, the identify verification can be done online in a modern way, very easily.
A $100M estimate for current fraud is well within the realm of reason and is supported by trend lines from prior Biden-era publications.
The people you are worried about "disenfranchising" are therefore the following set: someone who has nobody close to them that could assist them with a basic website sign-up and ID verification online application, who cannot figure it out themselves, and who cannot travel somewhere in person for whatever reason.
What other institution - other than the federal government - would willingly allow $100M of fraud to occur to avoid inconveniencing the above group?
I acknowledge this policy may harm some people, but so does $100M of fraud, which is only getting worse every year.
In other words: who cares if hundreds or thousands of people lose the entitlement they spent their entire lives paying into? It's much more important to eliminate fraudulent payouts that account for 0.006%[0] of social security's annual payouts!
And when Trump pisses 1,000x as much away on tax cuts for the wealthy you won't say a word.
[0]: https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/basicfact-alt.pdf
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
The estimate for his golf playing just for 2025 is already $18 million.
Post offices are already set up to do ID verification for the government—that is one of the ways you can do ID verification when creating a login.gov or ID.me account if for some reason you can’t use their online verification methods.
Since login.gov or ID.me is what they want you to use for doing online SSA stuff if the post office is good enough for setting those up they should be good enough for directly verifying for SSA.
This would provide a way for many people who for whatever reason cannot do online verification and don’t have a nearby SSA office an option since post offices are we more plentiful than SSA offices.
If so that is not comparable to the US because in Europe they actually try to make it easy for people are are eligible to vote to actually get the required ID.
In the US the states that have added stricter voting ID requirements have done things like:
• Close the offices that issue ID in areas that tend to vote against the party that is imposing the ID requirement.
• Reduce the hours that the remaining offices will issue ID, often meaning that to get an ID you have to visit in a middle of a weekday. For poorer people this can mean losing a whole day of work to try to get ID, and can be expensive because the states doing this tend to have poor public transit. These people are also more likely to vote for the other party.
• Allow alternate forms of ID for people who don't have a driver's license. This should be a good thing, but when you look at what alternates are allowed you find things like a state issued hunting license is acceptable but a state issued student ID from a state university is not even though the hunting license and the student ID are both equally is reliable when it comes to showing identity. They say it is just coincidence that people with hunting licenses are far more likely to vote for the party imposing the ID requirements and people with student IDs are far more likely to vote for the other party.
In addition it can cost $100 or more to get the documents needed to get the ID, which is a significant expense to many less well off people (especially added to the lost wages in states where they have to miss work to get the ID).
If they proposed voter ID laws that included funding to help people get IDs so that the above problems went away most of the opposition would go away.
But they never do because the point is not to prevent the fraud that they say is happening (but can never find any evidence for). It is to make it hard for people who vote the wrong way to vote.
Further evidence that is the real goal can be seen by looking at the other things they are doing, such as reducing the number of polling places in areas that vote the wrong way so that there will be long lines. That discourages people from voting in those areas. They also have made laws criminalizing providing food or water to people in those lines making it even harder for people to stick it out until they can vote.
Another trick is to go through the registration list and purge people for whom there is some doubt about their continuing eligibility to vote. Normally that's a good thing and is a normal part of a well fun election system, but it can be turned into a disenfranchisement tactic by doing such a just before an election and not trying to notify the purged people so that they only find out when they actually try to vote. I'll give you one guess which party does most of the "just before the election" purges and which districts they are more likely to do them in.
A purge that is not intended as a disenfranchisement tactic would occur in the years between elections and those purged would be sent notice so people would have plenty of time to reregister if they were still eligible.
How many of the things described above are also done in Europe?
Can you say it a different way? Specificity would help.
Given social security, where you are about to receive thousands of dollars in support while you are unemployed, why would a $100 ID matter? Like if you can't even pull up your pants and organize this key item of life, why should you receive support?
Voting is more interesting one. Supposedly better educated and better well off democratic voters aren't able to procure an ID? WTF I am reading?
That's interesting.
How many social security recipients do you suppose are disabled? Are only those of sound body and mind deserving of the social security they've been paying into their whole lives?
But otherwise perhaps inconveniencing 0.1% of cases shouldn’t dictate the rules.
IMO this is prime example of self destructing empathy Musk has been parroting about.
I'm not sure what this solves, and as far as I'm aware it's not being done, so even if it's an "obvious solution" it's a moot point.
> Other one is delegating most of the function to banks.
Again I don't know what this means.
> IMO this is prime example of self destructing empathy Musk has been parroting about.
I'd say the opposite. We are talking inconveniencing everyone on social security not 0.1% and very likely wrongfully booting some off who fail to get the memo or are otherwise unable to meet the requirements. All to chase some hypothetical fraud that makes up 0.1% of the budget. The damage done is very likely to outweigh any savings.
I'm *very* interested in making government more efficient, and even more so rooting out fraud. But the cost of the effort has to be considered, and frankly I have yet to see DOGE do either of those things.
100m / 33m = $3 per person to issue a valid ID. Dunno how much an ID costs in USA, but over 10 years it would pay itself...
In reality the amount of people without some form of Id AND on benefit is at least an order of magnitude less.
For getting ID when retiring a bigger problem might be proving your ID to the agency that issues the IDs. To get a driver's license in some states if you don't already have an acceptable photo ID such as a US passport you need to show your birth certificate (original or a certified copy).
Getting a certified copy of your birth certificate usually require showing ID. Some states require that to be a photo ID.
Some states do provide alternatives if you don't have one of the photo IDs they prefer. Texas for example has three lists labeled A, B, and C. A includes the strongest forms of identity documentation, B intermediate, and C weakest. They want one from A, or 2 from B, or 1 from B and 2 from C. Most people could probably do 1 from B and 2 from C, although it might be challenging if you were the wife in a traditional husband works/wife keeps house arrangement.
Some states will let you get it if you submit a notarized sworn statement saying who you are, so those should be no problem.
There may also be issues in making the request. Remember, for someone retiring we are talking about people born 60-70 years ago. I don't know if all states have consolidated their birth records processing or if it is handled separately by each county. If it is the later for the state where you were born you may need to know which county you were born in to get a copy of the birth certificate.
I have no doubt that there are even people who aren't sure what state they were born in. Kids from military families might have no memories of their birth state. They were probably told what state it was at some point but may not remember that 60 years later when they are retiring.
People who were adopted when very young might also be a problem. If they were adopted young enough that they had not yet learned their own first name the adoptive parents may have changed the child's first name. They may never know their birth name which could make finding their birth certificate hard even if they do know the state or county of their birth.
Another problem could be mismatched names. I ran into that when I realized that I hadn't seen my Social Security card in years and applied for copy. Many common names in the US have short forms that are widely used and alternate forms that are widely used. Someone whose first name is Robert for example might go by Rob or Robbie or Bob or Bobbie or even Bert. I've got a name like that, although with only two short/variant forms.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has me in their records using the longest form of my name. My driver's license has the short form that probably 90% of the people with my first name actually use. The SSA said because of that my driver's license was not acceptable ID to them. The address matched the address they had for me and the birthday matched but that wasn't good enough.
I eventually found one utility where I had used the long form when signing up and an apartment lease that I signed with the long form. A copy of that lease agreement and a utility bill finally convinced them to issue me copy of my card.
After that I got a certified copy of my birth certificate and then got a passport so that I would have one document that could be used for both proof of identity and proof of citizenship and that can be periodically renewed without having to reprove identity and citizenship.
> Voting is more interesting one. Supposedly better educated and better well off democratic voters aren't able to procure an ID? WTF I am reading?
Around 21 million eligible voters in the US in fact do lack ID that would be acceptable under their state's voter ID laws.
Some people are surprised by this, wondering how those people can open a bank account, cash checks, or get a job without without such ID.
Then they learn something even more surprising: 6% of US adults don't have any bank accounts, and 23% of adults making less than $25k/year don't have any bank account.
One way to cash a check without ID is to use a third party endorsement. You sign the check over to a trusted friend who does have ID and they cash the check and then give you the cash.
For jobs my guess is that a fair number of the people without ID are living with someone who does have ID and has a job. In a traditional household with one income earner and one person who stays at home the stay at home person may go nost of the life without ever needing whatever ID their state requires for voting.
My guess is many of the rest have jobs that pay in cash and are off the record.
I’ve worked at election polls in New York for every election since 2012. There is a lot of noise about enrollment here, and confusion about the laws. People who are deceased for years, but have not been removed. Some youth return home to vote, but actually live elsewhere.
And voter ID is particularly contentious. Every election someone holds up the line to debate the issue. Certainly in my community many voters have above average incomes, and they can’t imagine what the inconveniences could be as they drive to the polls and fetch their drivers license from their wallets—a whole series of commitments which happen to support their mistaken beliefs of secure elections (check your privilege).
So when someone tries to argue it was too easy to vote, I remind them—first, they are asked to identify themselves by name, to provide their address as the challenge question. Their signature is their oath and affidavit that they are the named voter. Finally, to make a false claim is a felony.
Harley efficient fraud to impersonate one voter at a time, in a room with 750 of your local neighbors who could overhear your fraud and contest your vote. With early voting, and mail in voting the registered voter could have already voted. What’s more, it was the case you could overwrite your mail-in vote with an in-person vote on the date of the election. That is no longer permitted. So the hypothetical fraudster could strike out—so no, it’s not very easy.
I feel proud to see my colleagues help my neighbors vote smoothly and efficiently
I asked the bureau of elections that I work only in my local districts, so I guess theoretically I could also contest a vote. But here’s the amazing thing, even if someone contests your vote and fills out our paperwork and gives their information, that contested voter can still vote by giving their oath they are who they say they are. Wow! This is what democracy looks like to me.
These are poor people struggling to get by, they are going to cheat the system, who wouldn’t when you live on the edge. It’s a drop in the bucket all for a PR attempt.
She’s 77 and has a TracPhone. It has a camera and browser, but the state’s website does no support the browser.
Alternatively, she could visit a local business to perform the digital verification. And that’s what she did, costing $20.
> He said a problem with eliminating fraudulent claims is that “the information that we use through knowledge-based authentication is already in the public domain.”
I mean, they’re getting exactly what they overwhelmingly wanted. I’m sure some states will try to, essentially, red line the office locations and screw over blue cities, but hard to care about the rural folks getting what they wanted.
Destroy the Consumer Protection Agency "to save money" but open up more detention centres and hire more border guards, etc etc.
More scrutiny of the plebs less so on the rich.
Right wing politics in a nutshell.
And yes I'm well aware that leftwing politics has descended into nothing but D.E.I. nonsense.
Its all about extremes. Disturbing that this is the direction the West is headed in.
This is about screwing the poor out of social security benefits.
If they require in-person registration they should allow doctors or nurses to be deputized to verify newborns for SSN purposes.
Correct. They already tried to take care of that two weeks ago.
Since 1988, through a program called Enumeration at Birth (EAB), as part of their state's birth registration process (typically done at the hospital when the baby is born) allowed the parents to request Social Security registration. The state would then automatically send the information to the Social Security Administration (SSA) for processing.
Last week the acting SSA director ordered EAB cancelled in Maine, so parents would have to go to an SSA office to register their newborn [1][2][3]. The DOGE website showed that EAB was cancelled in Arizona, Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, and Rhode Island (but did not list Maine).
There was enough objection to this that they then reversed the cancellation in Maine. The acting director said
> I recently directed Social Security employees to end two contracts which affected the good people of the state of Maine. The two contracts are Enumeration at Birth (EAB), which helps new parents quickly request a Social Security number and card for their newborn before leaving the hospital, and Electronic Death Registry (EDR) which shares recorded deaths with Social Security. In retrospect, I realize that ending these contracts created an undue burden on the people of Maine, which was not the intent. For that, I apologize and have directed that both contracts be immediately reinstated
He also said that EAB and EDR remain in place for every state.
As far as I know there was no explanation given on why specifically Maine, or on why those 5 other states were on the DOGE site.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/maine-trump-doge-social-security-...
[2] https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/social-security...
[3] https://www.pressherald.com/2025/03/06/social-security-start...