Senators Want Answers

      From Government Executive:

… In a letter to [current Fiserv CEO Mike] Lyons, Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the top Democrats on the Senate Finance and Banking committees, respectively, demanded information about the circumstances that led to Fiserv’s issuance of overly rosy revenue projections and the subsequent decision to reevaluate those goals.

“At a minimum, Mr. Bisignano appears to have failed to manage Fiserv effectively, and may have misled investors and the public about the company’s financial status, raising concerns about his ability to serve as a key Social Security and IRS official in the Trump administration,” they wrote. “Because of Mr. Bisignano’s mismanagement, many Fiserv investors, including retirees and members of the public, lost money—a fate Mr. Bisignano avoided. Bisignano’s required divestment of company stock helped him avoid about 300 million in losses cause by the stock’s price decline by over 50%.” …

Social Security's Music On Hold Makes Some People Want To Dance

     From Parade.com: 

’80s star Eric Roberts knows how to make the best out of a boring situation.

The actor, who is best known for roles in films like King of the Gypsies, Star 80, and Runaway Train, competed on Dancing with the Stars during season 33 with his partner, Britt Stewart. While the pair reached 10th place on the beloved competition series, it’s safe to say that Roberts, whose sister is beloved film legend Julia Roberts, is number one in his dancing role at home. The actor joined his wife, Eliza Roberts, to take a few spins around the room as they waited out the hold music while calling the Social Security Administration. Sitting on hold? Maybe stars ARE just like us. ...

“It’s a two-hour wait,” said Eliza, who admitted she wanted to do some dancing that night. However, we don’t think that’s what she had in mind.  ...

Shutdown Not Sustainable

      From Wired:

As the U.S. government shutdown stretches into its second month, agency leaders at the Social Security Administration (SSA) are becoming increasingly worried about how the key government department, which provides benefits to roughly 70 million Americans, will continue to operate.

WIRED obtained meeting notes from a Thursday SSA call for the administration’s field offices, where over a thousand managers from around the country spoke with field operations chief Andy Sriubas about the acute and damaging effects of the government shutdown. During the call, managers spoke candidly about staffers who can no longer afford to drive to work and a crisis of confidence in the agency.

“People are coming to me saying they cannot put gas in their car and they cannot afford to come to work anymore, and they'll need to get other jobs,” said one employee on the call. “Pretty soon they won't be able to afford to work at the agency.” ...

Another employee tells WIRED that some field offices have set up food pantries to help colleagues who are on the brink. “People are angry and … betrayed,” they added.  ...

Employees are also struggling with a daunting workload and a backlog of cases. On the call, Sriubas said that he had spoken with SSA’s general counsel, who said that just because SSA’s workload was “excepted” didn’t mean the agency had to do it. “So we can decide not to do it,” said Sriubas. “So if [the shutdown] does go into next week, I ask folks to start thinking about what are the workloads … to say, look, we're just not doing that going forward until the shutdown ends.” ...

“I’ve Lost My Free Will, And Now You’re Trying To Give Me A Lollipop”

      From the Washington Post:

Brace yourself before you call the Social Security Administration, as several million people do each month.
The average wait time is 68.9 minutes.
On the line, your experience will consist of a repeated 5-minute segment of announcements and better-than-usual hold music.

Go ahead, listen. Don’t worry, you can take yourself off hold at any time. …

Because the internet can still be a place that connects you to your curiosity, some people go in search of the full song and its lyrics that float over the melody.  …

Imagine that — a piece of music that breaks free in small ways from our DOGE-enhanced existence. So we went to East Harlem to meet the musician behind it and played him the Social Security hold loop, on speaker.

“That’s horrible!” David D’Alessio howled. He sat with his face in his hands, at his kitchen table.
It was the first time he heard his song — his life’s credo — used as off-the-shelf hold music.
 He felt trapped, imagining himself as a caller. “I feel like I’m being punished,” D’Alessio said. “I’ve lost my free will, and now you’re trying to give me a lollipop.”

D’Alessio, 54, is an independent musician who put out three albums during a career of over 30 years.  …

He was 35 and had just had a bad breakup. “I was pretty dark about what I was doing, where I was going, who I was,” D’Alessio said, “You know ... the whole nine.” He was stuck.
That’s when “Throw Yourself In Front of It” emerged. First came the melody — the same one piped through millions of phones now. … 

By 2014, he figured it was time to make money from “Throw Yourself in Front of It.” D’Alessio recorded an instrumental version with drums, bass and layers of vocals. That was posted online in a music catalogue for purchase, as the company writes, by “visionary music supervisors in TV, film and advertising.”  As copyright lawyers would put it: the use of D’Alessio’s instrumental version was offered online, non-exclusively, in perpetuity, to anyone who would pay an up-front licensing fee. …

Slowing Down In Woodlawn

      From WBAL in Baltimore:

With the government shutdown in its 36th day on Wednesday, businesses around government facilities are feeling the effects. Businesses near Woodlawn's Social Security Administration are seeing a decline in customers since the shutdown as some federal employees are either furloughed or working without pay.

Pioneer Pit Beef usually sees a line out the door. Not during the shutdown, though. 

"This is why you see today we have no line here," said Jesus Cruz, the restaurant's owner. "Normally this time, lunchtime, we have a lot of people waiting in line. We have about 15 to 20 people waiting in the line before we even open.”

Cruz said his business has decreased by as much as 40% due to the absence of its main customers: federal workers at the Social Security Administration.”Only a few of them come here," Cruz said. "Maybe one or two a week, and they let us know that the rest of the people are off from the department." ...

     By the way, let me say how much I appreciate the sacrifices of those working without pay as well as those furloughed. You deserve better. The nation deserves better. 

How Close Are We?

     Social Security employees are about to miss another payday due to the government shutdown. Commercial aviation is being affected by air traffic controllers and TSA employees calling in sick. The Trump Administration is threatening to not pay furloughed federal employees for the time during the shutdown.j

     There are reports of localized problems at Social Security but nothing extensive. Everybody has their breaking point. The perfunctory email shown here won’t help much, if any. How close are we to major problems at Social Security?     

  

How SSA’s Databases Will Be Misused — Even Leland Dudek Says So

      From Pro Publica: 

This year, when states began using an expanded Department of Homeland Security system to check their voter rolls for noncitizens, it was supposed to validate the Trump administration’s push to harness data from across federal agencies to expose illicit voting and stiffen immigration enforcement. 

DHS had recently incorporated confidential data from the Social Security Administration on hundreds of millions of additional people into the tool, known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system. The added information allowed the system to perform bulk searches using Social Security numbers for the first time. ...

Experts say adding Social Security data to SAVE could help election officials verify, en masse, if voters are U.S. citizens, but it shouldn’t be used to make final determinations that people aren’t citizens.  

That’s because multiple audits and analyses have shown that SSA’s citizenship information is often outdated or incomplete, especially for people who became naturalized citizens. With the 2026 midterms about a year away, Caren Short, director of legal and research for the League of Women Voters of the United States, said she fears the expanded use of SAVE will lead to errors. ...

Still, Leland Dudek, acting SSA commissioner until early May, told ProPublica he doesn’t trust that DHS will accurately flag noncitizens as officials try to cross-match data and files from multiple systems. 

“They are probably going to make some massive mistakes,” he said. ...

That's Nice

      From the Coosa Valley News:

As the effects of the ongoing government shutdown continue to ripple through local communities, one Rome [Georgia] restaurant stepped up this week to show appreciation for federal workers feeling the pinch. Marco’s Pizza, operated by local franchise owner Claude Corbin, provided lunch to employees at the Social Security Office in Rome as a gesture of support and solidarity. ...