Social Security Administration Offers Receipts To Dispute WaPo Hit Job

The Social Security Administration is disputing a Washington Post report that claims the agency and system got worse under President Donald Trump.

The Washington Post published a story on Tuesday based on “internal documents and interviews with 41 current and former employees, advocates and customers” about how the system has suffered in both “responsiveness and trust” under the Trump administration. According to email correspondences and statements shared with the Caller, the Social Security Administration disputed much of the “findings” to the outlet. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: SSA Rejects Whistleblower Claims, Slams Alleged Release Of Sensitive Data As ‘Highly Irresponsible’)

“After our transparent and thorough responses, it is disappointing that the Washington Post was unwilling to include any facts that contradicted the politically-driven narrative against the Trump Administration,” a Social Security spokesperson told the Caller.

“The Social Security Administration under President Trump’s leadership is serving more Americans than ever before at quicker speeds, and meeting customers where they want to be served. Through technology improvements and modernization, more Americans are choosing to easily and quickly manage their benefits online or over the phone.”

The spokesperson added that the article disregarded “the historic improvements” the administration has made to help customers via the internet and by phone.

“The average speed of answer for the National 800 Number has been in the single digits the last five months,” a spokesperson continued, adding that sixty-five percent more calls were answered in FY 2025 compared to FY 2024.

The Washington Post report states that phone service by the SSA “improved in the second half of the year but is still subpar.” Ahead of publication, the SSA provided an audit to the Post showing how the “average speed of answer for the National 800 Number has been in the single digits the last five months.”

The audit also shows that nearly 90 percent of customers were satisfied with the SSA, a fact that a spokesperson said disputes the Post’s reporting.

The article also highlights worsening “bottlenecks,” noting that the agency argued those bottlenecks had improved. The SSA told the Caller that they actually made “massive improvement” which was “buried.”

“Reducing the backlog at processing centers, enabling 24/7 website access after inheriting 29 hours of weekly downtime, and serving more Americans at faster speeds is not something to be thrown in after undermining SSA,” a spokesperson told the Caller in a statement.

For the story, the Washington Post also interviewed Sen. Elizabeth Warren who has called for a request for an audit.

“We’ve kept up the pressure and held Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Frank Bisignano accountable for the chaos they’ve caused,” Warren said in the interview.

Under @POTUS, Social Security is serving MORE Americans FASTER than ever before!
☎️ SINGLE digit answer speeds
📈 65% MORE calls answered
🕛 30% SHORTER field office wait times
📉 Disability claims backlog DOWN 33% from all-time high https://t.co/BoG0Mgz7vc

— Social Security (@SocialSecurity) December 30, 2025

The SSA responded to Warren’s quote in a statement to the Caller, telling the outlet that Commissioner Bisignano has responded to Warren’s request for an audit in previous letters.

The Washington Post also reported that the audit published by the Social Security inspector general’s office on Dec. 22 “confirmed that millions of callers requesting callbacks were counted as zero-minute waits by the agency.”

The SSA noted to the Caller that the methodology used to measure Average Speed of Answer (ASA) is key to understanding the data.

“It is calculated as follows: for customers who choose to wait in the queue for an agent, it is the total time spent in queue divided by the number of calls answered by agents. For customers who choose the convenience of a callback, we count only the time the customer waited in queue before electing a callback divided by the number of callbacks answered by agents. The combined result is the average speed of answer,” SSA told the Caller.

“Omitting that this methodology has existed for more than a decade is dishonest and undermines the work of the dedicated career public servants who provide the data. Moreover, the average wait time to callback has been nearly cut in half under President Trump as the IG report confirmed,” the agency noted.

The Washington Post also reported that one benefits authorizer in a processing center was told by management during an all-staff meeting that there was a backlog of six million cases. The outlet added that management added that the staff would be expected to work overtime to lower the number to two million.

We recently published the following audit report: Social Security Administration’s Telephone Metrics. You can read more here https://t.co/Uy9e7iOv45 pic.twitter.com/zMDwjJogmw

— Social Security OIG (@TheSSAOIG) December 22, 2025

The SSA pointed out to the Post prior to publication, according to emails reviewed by the Caller, that the agency explained in a letter to Congress that there were 6.2 million pending cases at the beginning of June. By the end of the fiscal year, the SSA reduced that number by more than one million, the letter writes.

“Today, there are 850,000 less pending actions in the processing centers compared to the same time last year, which contrary to the article, shows improvement,” the SSA shared with the Caller.

The SSA also took issue with the Post’s framing of Bisignano’s plan to close half of the agency’s field offices. The outlet reported that more than 31 million people visited field offices in the last fiscal year.

“It is disappointing yet unsurprising that the fake news media is eager to ignore the truth to scare seniors. The truth is simple: field offices are, and will always remain, our front-line, serving the approximately 75 million Americans who receive monthly payments and more than 330 million Americans with Social Security numbers,” the agency told the Caller. The SSA added that Commissioner Bisignano has “pledged to have the right level of staffing to operate at peak efficiency and deliver best-in-class customer service to the American people.”

The Washington Post also reported that in previous weeks there have been hundreds of employees who were transferred to customer service operations and have now been recalled to the roles they were hired to fill in the beginning. The outlet added that others have been placed in a new “digital engagement” office.

The SSA told the Caller that after they introduced new technology this year, they “recognized streamlined workloads in field offices that allowed us to deploy approximately 850 field office employees daily to assist with calls to the National 800 Number.” The agency told the Caller that none of these field office staff have been reassigned to the National 800 Number. Selected staff are now  Customer Service Representatives (CSR), “and the assistance they are providing is consistent with their position descriptions,” the agency shared.

The Washington Post did not respond to a request for comment.