DOGE’s closure of 4 Social Security offices is bad news for these NC regions | Opinion
As Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency hack away at federal services and funding, one of the consequences has been the shuttering of Social Security offices across the country.
Nearly 50 offices are slated for closure thus far, many of which are concentrated in the South. Four offices in North Carolina are among those affected, the most of almost any state. Those offices are located in Roanoke Rapids, Elizabeth City, Franklin and Greenville, and closing them will make it harder for people nearby to apply for retirement benefits, disability and Medicare.
While a closure in any location would negatively impact North Carolinians, it’s the closing of these offices in particular that invites additional concern.
In-person offices may seem redundant these days. Since most everything can be done virtually, you don’t necessarily have to physically visit a Social Security office in order to apply for benefits. But that doesn’t work if you don’t have access to the internet or a computer, or if you have both of those things but just don’t have the digital literacy skills to know how to use them.
Take the Franklin office for example, which is located in Macon County in western North Carolina. That’s an area particularly affected by the digital divide, meaning many households lack access to high-speed internet, or any internet at all. In Macon County, roughly 20% of the population has no internet access, but more than twice as many people lack access to true high-speed internet, according to data from the North Carolina Division of Broadband and Digital Equity. More than 70% of people over the age of 65 — when people start to become eligible for retirement benefits and Medicare — do not have broadband access.
To make matters worse, the Franklin office is the only Social Security office located west of Asheville, so the closure will affect an entire region that will now have to travel more than an hour to the closest open office — and that’s only if someone has the time and the means to get there. Other counties in the area also struggle with broadband access and have a population that is generally older than other counties in the state.
On the other side of the state, it’s a similar story. The Roanoke Rapids office is located in Halifax County, where 30% of the population has no internet access at all. In neighboring Warren County, it’s only slightly better, with a quarter of the population lacking internet access.
The goal of shuttering these offices is ostensibly to “save” the government money. The DOGE website brags that closing the Franklin office will save the government $1,059,184. That “savings,” however, may not be passed along to the residents of western North Carolina, who will now have to go out of their way to find the next closest office. Efficiency, that is not.
While President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised his administration won’t issue any cuts to Social Security, the layoffs and closures are effectively doing just that. While the funding may not have gone away, the program’s ability to deliver that funding to those who need it has certainly been disrupted by DOGE’s efforts. Musk, meanwhile, has been hinting that Social Security is riddled with “waste” and “fraud” in what can only be seen as an attempt to justify potential cuts to the program in the future.
Cracking down on waste, fraud and abuse wouldn’t be a problem if that’s what DOGE were actually doing here. But that’s the problem with Musk and Trump’s venture: their definition of waste, fraud and abuse is highly questionable. A lease on an office building, and salaries for the people who work there, aren’t wasteful if they’re helping people access the benefits they need — especially if it’s the only office around for miles. In the end, they’re just hurting the very taxpayers they claim to be helping.
