Social Security Chief Issues Update: 'Crisis'

The Social Security program is currently facing "a customer service crisis," according to the Social Security Administration's (SSA) new commissioner, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley.

"We're in a customer service crisis right now," O'Malley said, talking on the agency's podcast, SSA Talks, in an episode released on Thursday. "It's not normal. It's not acceptable. And it's not right [that] the people who have worked their whole lives to earn benefits should have to wait for 44 minutes, for an hour or more, in order to have their question answered."

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O'Malley was sworn into his new role in late December 2023, after the SSA came under fire following an investigation that revealed that the agency had asked for billions of dollars back from beneficiaries in overpayments. The investigation was followed by a hearing from the House Ways and Means subcommittee which prompted the SSA to promise a review of its procedures around benefit overpayments.

Explaining what the agency's priorities are going to be under his leadership, O'Malley mentioned the challenges that Social Security beneficiaries are facing because of the agency's lengthy and sometimes troubling procedures.

"It's not right that 10,000 people a year die waiting for their disability determinations to be made, and it's not right that we should have situations where we, through no fault of the recipient, find ourselves in the situation of overpayments and recovering dollars that actually put people out of their homes and inflict enormous hardship on, as you know, seniors," he said. "Half of our seniors who are out there live entirely on Social Security."

Under his directions, the SSA will focus on reducing the call times on the 800 number; reducing the time to the determination of disabilities, both the initials and the appeals; and addressing "the injustice we do to people because of overpayments and underpayments that were not their fault," O'Malley said. "Those are our top priorities."

The former governor didn't specify how the SSA will achieve these goals, saying instead that it will do so in "a hundred or a thousand different ways if we continue to call the huddles, you know, run plays, measure yardage, and make those situations better, not once a year, but every day, every two weeks."

While taking responsibility for doing the work of improving customer service, O'Malley mentioned that "Congress needs to live up to its responsibility," stating that the SSA operate on "a little less this year than 1 percent of what our annual benefits are that we pay out."

According to O'Malley, "you won't find another insurance company in the United States of America, and this is social insurance, different, but you won't find another insurance company in America that has that ratio of just 1 percent overhead to the benefits that they pay out."