When Wall Street veteran Frank Bisignano travels to Congress on Tuesday to lead the Social Security Agency to lead the Social Security Agency, he will face questions about how he suddenly runs for the agency in a drastic situation.
In recent weeks, billionaire Elon Musk has zeroed in on the agency, which is responsible for the firm but crucial work of providing retirement, survivor and disability payments to 73 million Americans a month.
Mr Musk claimed that a claim expert said a large number of Americans deceived the agency, which was clearly wrong. Amid opposition from long-term professional civil servants being kicked out of agency, the Trump administration's administration's efficiency has quickly reviewed its internal database, deploying at least 10 employees on-site, including Mr. Musk's long-term knowledge.
Meanwhile, acting commissioner, former intermediate manager Leland Dudek made many head spins. On Friday, he threatened to shut down all the Social Security Bureau work used to respond to judge orders – retreating only a few hours later.
This loss shocked many elderly and disabled Americans who rely on Social Security payments and worried that it might become more difficult.
“It’s confusing, and frankly a lot of confusion,” said Bill Sweeney, vice president of government affairs at AARP, representing older Americans. “People are scared of what’s going on with Social Security. Congress, policymakers and administration need to take some level of anxiety among our members seriously.”
Some Democratic lawmakers said they were so worried that the Trump administration was trying to fail that they sent a letter Sunday asking Mr. Bisiniano to promise not to privatize any of its components.
“We are very concerned about the current SSA trajectory, and more specifically, those accused of leading may profit from the destruction,” wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon.
It remains to be seen that Mr Bisignano described himself as “substantially a church person” in an interview with CNBC.
Mr Bisignano, who recently heads the payment processing giant Fiserv, has spent most of his career working as a repairman for major financial institutions, hoping to improve its back-end processes. He said in an interview with CNBC that he plans to bring the same approach to social security.
“The goal is not to touch welfare,” he said. “The goal is to figure out that there can be fraud, waste and abuse there. We built AI to find a living, waste and abuse to make a living. It will be a technical story.”
Mr. Bisignano has held positions at several commodity companies on Wall Street, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. He made $100 million in 2017, more than 2,000 times the average employee salary of the company's No. 1 Data Company at the time, and later merged with Fiserv.
A spokesperson for Mr Bisignano declined to comment. “Any American who receives Social Security benefits will continue to accept them. The Governor's only mission is to determine only waste, fraud and abuse,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Some of the agency’s more than 50,000 employees hope Mr Bisignano can restore certainty that they pay about $1.6 trillion in retirement and disability benefits annually. Current and former staff said they know the agency is not perfect, but they have tried for years to better help Americans get benefits than any other federal program.
Changes made by the Trump administration in the name of combat fraud risk have made bankrupt customer service worse, multiple employees said they spoke on anonymously to describe internal concerns.
For example, Americans who wish to sign benefits or change their bank account information will not be able to do it by phone. This change will drive more people to visit on-site offices, just as the agency is ready to get out of the worker, the combination can significantly increase waiting time for appointments.
At a Monday meeting with advocates about phone changes, Mr. Dudek said the quick rollout was in line with the White House’s request, requiring an emergency time frame. Such changes usually involve more planning, he said—a process that usually takes two years instead of two weeks, according to those attending the meeting.
In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, Mr. Dudek admitted that he was concerned about what would happen if rapid changes would have problems that would harm the agency. He told advocates during the meeting that the agency would back down if they undermined citizens until they were untenable.
In another case, the Social Security Bureau briefly terminated a contract that allowed parents of newborn babies in Maine to sign a Social Security number at the hospital, requiring them to do so in person at the office. Mr. Dudek said he was watching Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills order the move after clashes with Trump at the White House. He quickly reversed the decision, and another decision to end the state’s electronic death report.
“I'm not really sincere to the president in Maine,” Dudeck said in an interview. “I messed up. I admit I messed up.”
Due to Mr. Dudek's bumpy term in self-worship, he said he didn't expect it to last longer.
“I can't imagine the nominee trying to leave me behind after the way I do things here,” Dudek said.
Meanwhile, he will continue to cut staff and prepare to reorganize regional offices through the government's demand for cost reduction.
While the Trump administration has adopted similar aggressive bureaucratic approaches across the administration, the invasion of social security is accompanied by strange political risks.
The program is a major source of retirement income for many older Americans, a key voting group. Mr. Trump spent his entire career in the political field that guaranteed social security protection and even proposed to eliminate taxes on welfare during the campaign. Some Republicans on Capitol Hill have taken action to protect local field offices from closures, while Democrats are trying to use the opposition’s decision to seize what has long been the third railroad in American politics.
“In the haystack”
The worry is so keen that regular ics (such as changing payment dates or website issues) now seem to be a sign of deeper issues among many beneficiaries.
Michelle Ouellette, a 67-year-old former attorney in California, applied for benefits online in January without success. More than a month later, she tried several different phone lines and finally got into someone.
“What would it be if I had a hard time getting help before Trump cuts social security?” she said. “I think Trump wants it to be so heavy that you don’t bother to sign up.”
In social security offices across the country, workers say they have seen a significant increase in concerns like Ms. Ouellette — among more visitors, overall fears of a change. In recent weeks, employees said they have heard beneficiaries repeat claims about fraud or fear of Musk’s team seeing their personal data.
This has increased the pressure and workload of the Trump administration plans to shrink 12% of its employees.
On-site office staff have been spread out. Claims experts often have to wear many hats – while completing their own designated case volume, work on the front window and answering calls. Workers say it can take years to speed up on complex systems and policies, which is especially problematic in agencies.
Chris Delaney, an official with the Federal Workers Union, also working as a claim expert in Hudson, New York, said there was a “weird cloud” in his office.
“It seems that the people who are calling don't know what the actual situation of the office on site, or they just want us all to massacre,” he said.
The idea of Mr. Musk’s deceptive claims of the deceased and undocumented immigrants benefiting from social security is that Mr. Musk’s understanding of changing suites is conceived. Experts say that relatively fewer social security payments (estimated less than 1% of paid benefits) have nothing to do with dead people or undocumented immigrants, and in fact, they actually often pay taxes to the system without asking for benefits, improving their financial health.
Nevertheless, Mr. Musk's team has made it one of its earliest projects, listing people as important databases if they are listed as 120 or older, among other criteria. According to people familiar with the matter, engineers on the team are doing the work with professional civil servants, aiming to get rid of the misrecorded database and are not expected to affect anyone receiving payments.
According to these people, it is also necessary that Mr. Musk’s close friend Antonio Gracias also requested information on whether undocumented immigrants receive benefits.
A federal judge condemned Musk's team's fraud by order, forbidding him from obtaining sensitive personal information. “It has searched haystacks for well-known needles without any specific knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack,” wrote Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander.
Last week's order prompted Mr. Dudek to threaten to shut down the agency's system, although he later backed down. He said members of Musk's team no longer have access to sensitive proxy data.
Other initiatives by Mr. Dudek and Mr. Doge continue. The agency said during the Biden administration that recall payments are usually caused by agency errors and that it will no longer withhold full monthly gains, but will deduct up to 10% until the balance is repaid. The goal is to give Americans access to a key source of cash. Mr Dudek reversed the policy and restored all checks until the rest were paid off.
Mr. Dudek said he was the best interest of the social security system and his family was the beneficiary of his childhood.
“Unless you use brute force in the government, you're going to stand still,” Dudek said.
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