Last week, the Social Security Administration incorrectly informed some recipients of Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a federal program that provides financial assistance to disabled Americans and low-income senior citizens, that they were no longer eligible for benefits.
According to a letter from Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon, and Mark Kelly of Arizona to Social Security Administration Acting Commissioner Lee Dudek dated April 7, the agency’s website informed some SSI recipients that they are “currently not receiving payments.”
They also reported that the payment history and all benefit data for SSI recipients had vanished, and they had received numerous reports about the error from constituents.
“In my 50 years of work on Social Security and SSI, I have never heard of this happening before,” said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group for the program, regarding the SSI error.
Chris Hubbard, whose 37-year-old disabled adult son uses the program to pay for his group home, told CBS MoneyWatch that she learned about the problem on March 31, when members of a Facebook group for mothers of autistic children flagged it.
Hubbard, who lives with her husband in Westborough, Massachusetts, said she checked her son’s account and was alarmed to see a similar message, prompting her to stay up all night refreshing the page. She fell asleep at 5 a.m. without seeing any change, she claimed.
“I was continuing to be worried because the message was still on the site, saying this beneficiary doesn’t receive payments,” Hubbard told me.
The following morning, however, the correct information was on her son’s page, and the funds were deposited on April 1, as planned.
However, she and her husband claim they received no communication from Social Security about the problem or an explanation of the error. They chose not to call the agency due to the lengthy wait times that are now frequently required to reach someone.
The Hubbards expressed concern that the glitch could signal further problems with the service, citing the potential impact of SSA workforce cuts.
There is great concern that this will happen again, and why did it happen in the first place? Tom Hubbard said.
The Social Security Administration told CBS MoneyWatch that the problem was limited to SSI recipients and “did not impact Social Security or Medicare only beneficiaries.” A spokesperson for the agency stated, “This particular issue was resolved less than 24 hours later.” All of my Social Security user logins can now connect and view the correct benefit information.
DOGE changes
The SSI error is concerning because it affects “some of the most vulnerable in the nation—low-income seniors, children, and adults with disabilities—and [they] face extraordinary hardship if their benefits are delayed or disrupted,” according to the senators’ letter.
The SSI issue could be the result of changes at the Social Security Administration under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Altman speculated. Musk has claimed that the system is rife with fraud, calling it “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
According to a Washington Post report from April 7, the Social Security website has experienced several outages in recent weeks, some lasting up to a day. The Social Security Administration told CBS MoneyWatch that the “brief disruptions” lasted about 20 minutes each.
“Before Trump, Musk, and DOGE took over, there were no major crashes or glitches on the SSA’s website,” said Maria Freese, senior Social Security expert at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, a retirement advocacy group. “Certainly there were no messages going out telling people erroneously that their benefits were discontinued.”
The maximum monthly SSI payment for an individual in 2025 is $967, with the program aimed at assisting people with disabilities and seniors who have no or little income. According to the Roosevelt Institute, the majority of SSI recipients earn less than the federal poverty line.
“SSI recipients experience high rates of economic precarity, and even brief disruptions in benefits could have devastating consequences for these beneficiaries,” the senators wrote in their April 7 letter. “These recent reports of disruption—or threats of disruption— of Social Security benefits is deeply troubling.”
