[drweevil]

Read the following contradiction and tell me they are not trying to disenfranchise:

> 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.

[orionsbelt]

The ID verification changes are limited to the following scenarios:

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.

[tzs]

The could do just as much fraud reduction but with less harm to legitimate beneficiaries by not closing as many offices or by making it so people can do their identity verification at post offices.

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.

[clipsy]

> 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

[chneu]

Trump and his cabinet spend nearly that much on prescription drugs. This has nothing to do with eliminating fraud.

[eesmith]

Trump's golf games during his first administration cost the US $150 million.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

The estimate for his golf playing just for 2025 is already $18 million.

[insane_dreamer]

Doesn’t explain why they’re cutting SS offices