From the Washington Post:
The U.S. DOGE Service arrived at the Social Security Administration this year determined to slash staff and root out what it claimed was widespread fraud and wasteful spending — a mission Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team has pursued across the government. But as of this week, many of the major changes DOGE pushed at Social Security have been abandoned or are being reversed after proving ineffective, while others are yielding unintended consequences and badly damaging customer service and satisfaction. The problems come as the agency struggles to cope with a record surge of hundreds of thousands of retirement claims in recent months. …
Social Security is poorly positioned to handle the influx [of new retirement claims], according to several staffers, as well as records obtained by The Post. Thousands of employees have taken the Trump administration’s early resignation offer or its early retirement offer, depleting the workforce and leaving some offices wholly bereft of staff, emails show. A DOGE-led move to slash staffing levels spurred many senior administrators scared of getting fired to accept reassignment to lower-level field office positions, slowing claims processing further as those employees are trained, according to employees and records. …
Bisignano is coming to dislike DOGE and hopes to minimize the team’s influence, the officials said. Another official, however, said Bisignano wants to “partner” with DOGE. …
DOGE staffers came to Social Security vowing to end fraudulent claims filed by scammers and grifters, and convinced that much of that activity was perpetrated over the phone, The Post previously reported. Career staff attempted to explain that wasn’t true, but to no avail, according to three current and former employees familiar with the matter. DOGE proposed ending phone service for retirement and disability claims, then narrowed its proposal after backlash from older claims recipients, advocates and lawmakers — then abandoned the idea. Staff on the IT side developed a solution they hoped would pacify DOGE: A three-day hold on phone calls to allow extra checking for fraud, the employees said. Everyone, from rank-and-file career staff up to Dudek, knew the phone fraud check was not needed, the employees said. But they did it anyway. “People lacked the fortitude to tell DOGE there was no fraud because they were afraid to lose their jobs,” one former high-ranking official said, referring specifically to claims filed by telephone. “They knew there was no fraud.” …
When a Post reporter called the [agency]phone line Friday afternoon, it took eight attempts to get transferred to an agent. The AI bot asked the reporter several times to end the call and gave unrelated information about a cost-of-living adjustment, Medicare Part B’s premium and benefits available to people after the retirement age.
40 comments:
Have you ever turned on a blender and forgot to put the top on? That's kind of like what DOGE and Trump's staff reduction directives have done to staff at SSA. A lot of good staff has been flung out of the agency, and some of what's left is a mixed up mess.
This is not going to work. I will not feel sorry for Frank as he outsources the Trust Fund to his Wall Street buddies destroying my future and contracts out the disability process to vendors costing us tax payers even more. This is all about getting access to more of your tax dollars under the guise of cleaning up waste, fraud and abuse. Just wait as they pull off the biggest waste and abuse of your money. Frank set all this in motion behind the scenes with the DOGE boys and the new political execs before he ever set foot in the door.
March 24, 2025
Whistleblower complaint.
Democratic senators on Wednesday, armed with a report in The Washington Post independently corroborating the whistleblower’s testimony, told reporters that Bisignano’s nomination should be pulled.
“This nominee, Frank Bisignano, lied to the Senate Finance Committee about his involvement with DOGE since his nomination in December,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the panel’s top Democrat. “Here’s what happened: the whistleblower reached out to my staff, and their testimony shows that the nominee appears to be the puppet master behind the chaos at Social Security . . . There’s a trust gap between the nominee and the American people before he’s even gotten in the door. He hand-picked DOGE agents and pressured Social Security employees to cut corners to get them on the job faster.”
“The goal is clear: to destroy Social Security from within, and make it so unworkable, so inefficient that Trump has the pretext to slash benefits to kill it and then privatize the program,” Schumer said. “Everything they’re doing now is in effect a benefit cut . . . They’re killing Social Security by strangling it, by not letting it work and making it so that it’s impossible for people to get help and to get their benefits.”
In a Friday letter exclusively obtained by BI, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, and Kristen Gillibrand called on new SSA Commissioner Frank Bisgnano to immediately stop any action that would reclassify staff members to a new category labeled Schedule F or Schedule Policy/Career.
The move would give the White House more control over the hiring, firing, and management of SSA employees by categorizing some as "policy-influencing" — a designation that means workers who were civil servants before, with the protection that affords, would become at-will, and are therefore able to be terminated more easily.
I wonder how he’s gonna respond to OPMs approved RIF plan since it literally cuts from every single component and office. 12.3% cut across the board to remaining HQ components, 41% at ROs (prior to the skinny model. If the RO is at the skinny model level it’s 6%) , 6% at level 1 and 4% at level 2 offices, 7% at OHO, 4% across the rest of the agency. This isn’t surgical it’s a hatchet. OPM has already released the RIF software to us over Easter weekend, just waiting for Frank to push the button. If service was slowing before, this will kill us.
The official who spoke to the Post is named Hank Visignanu.
"Bisignano has grown alarmed by the drastic downsizing ordered by DOGE and carried out by a mid-level employee, Leland Dudek, who led the agency in an acting role for four months"
Unfortunately, the damage is done. Bisignano is stuck with what DOGE and Dudek did to the agency.
Why were experienced front line technicians offered buy outs to quit or retire? Ridiculous.
This reminds me of the Post office which had been led by DeJoy since Trump's first term. DeJoy is very conservative, but even he was horrified by the radical right DOGE agenda and their demands that he implement their recommendations. DeJoy quit rather than giving in.
It sure is nice to know that the self-inflicted mass exodus, the destructive reorganization, the loss of valuable experience, the disbandment of vital teams, and the general chaos meeting employees on a daily basis can just be written off as an "oopsie-doodle!"
“ A DOGE-led move to slash staffing levels spurred many senior administrators scared of getting fired to accept reassignment to lower-level field office positions, slowing claims processing further as those employees are trained, according to employees and records.”
Reading any comment on this sub, you would be led to believe that everyone in the RO and HQ are top tier above the FO employees and that they have YEARS of experience working in the FO already. But now they all need trained on how to operate in an FO? Weird, you would’ve thought that would be a pretext for even being able to get a job in an RO/HQ. Odd.
What are level 1 and level 2 offices?
As someone who worked at the agency over 40 years and seeing who got picked up to go to the regional office and only worked in offices 1-2 years...let's say that quite often it wasn't the cream of the crop that got promoted...
Any cuts at field offices will be catastrophic
HR didn’t have much time to find spaces for reassigned employees or no real plan or both. So there are former CRs in the new Federal DDS and former DEs in the new FO support units. If HR could have taken their time, maybe they would have put people in more appropriate areas. The people without frontline experience are mostly from IT.
Reassignments were made without any consideration for prior experience, whether that be in a field office, program service center, workload support unit, teleservice center, etc.
It was a mistake for DOGE to drive so many experienced, front line workers out of Social Security.
On the other hand, there is a huge bureaucracy at SSA, many unnecessary high grade jobs.
Back in 1968 when my parents worked at SSA, GS12 was a hard grade to attain. Most technical workers such as Claims Specialist (CA or CR back then) were GS 10 or below.
Now there are GS12-13-14 employees galore at HQ,RO, high salaried. .It's time to reappraise this position creation and upward grade creep. Reassign many of them to front line CS positions in the FO and Payment Centers, and do away with the unnecessary high grade positions.
The FO and PSC need the help, and it's the smart and efficient thing to do. It will also save taxpayers millions of dollars.
At this point, cuts anywhere would be catastrophic. They are scrambling and there is a hiring freeze.
2:57 - Since you seem to have firsthand information, please tell us what the unnecessary high grade jobs are - the "employees galore" as you say. I'm sure you have specific examples to support your assertion and can provide solid reasons why the jobs you highlight should not exist. Otherwise, you are just spewing talking points. I do love folks who want to equate current jobs to jobs that existed 57 years ago. Criminy. Heaven forbid that today's workers have better job opportunities than your parents did.
If you are paying attention, the field and PSCs are crying out that they aren't getting the kind of help they need - there's no one to help them now with the challenging cases that don't fit the typical box. There's no one to purchase their supplies or to draft contracts. There's no one to help with sensitive PR cases or broad fraud investigations. They can't get answers out of HR. Systems are not functioning consistently. But sure - none of those folks were needed, right? Penny wise and pound foolish - there ain't millions that are going to be saved....
I'm telling you... Attorneys are not getting paid in the FOs... No more access to R14/R16 requests (this is already proving catastrophic). They want us to pump out 10% more when we are already at 10% on 10% on 10% on 10% from the last 18 months staffing shortages. Does no one remember Michelle King saying when we feel like we can't do any more, "just do one more." That was a yrs ago and there wasn't room in a day for that "one more." The only thing still running is the day to day. Anything technical they want "tickets" for. Im sorry but these tickets will be late, and amount to a policy reference. The FOs need actual assistance with technical issues, not a reference as there is no time to stop and work extra problems. There are level 1s with only a single person on their phone coverage per day. We are on the last Jenga block before it all implodes unfortunately.
100% accurate
Every time someone offers an opinion like 2:57pm suggesting that there was and is room for improvement at SSA, people pile on like 5:17pm. Makes me wish that they'd fire and replace more of these self-centered, mean spirited employees
Where did you hear about these plans as I can’t find it anywhere?
Parts are parts according to Frank. We are all interchangeable.
I have to that we were recently asked for our stretch goals for this fiscal year. The new DCs are asking if we can do even more than we planned with half our staff. Amazing.
Hate to bring the facts but 2:57 is correct, at least when you look at the data.
I pulled a pretty good spread. SSA employee statistics as of 09/30/1999 shows that of the GS 5-8 positions, there were roughly 20,572. Of the GS 9-12 positions, there were 32,180 (Now, the vast majority of these position grades are tele service centers, payment center positions, eventually WSU positions, and field office positions--essentially a majority are direct operations positions). At the same time, there were 6,330 GS 13-15 positions and 117 SES positions. If you want to look at the data yourself, here you go: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2000/2f1-2f3.pdf
Now fast forward to to those same stats as of 09/30/2023....For the GS 5-8 positions, there were 16,393 (net loss of 4,179 positions), for the GS 9-12, there were 31,822 (net loss of 358 positions), but wait! for those GS 13-15 positions, there were 10,807 ( a net GAIN of 4,447 positions) and for the SES, there were 160 (a net GAIN of 43). Here are the stats for 2024: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2024/2f1-2f3.html
So yeah, I think it does ring true that over roughly 25 years, management at SSA essentially robbed operations positions from operations to fluff up RO and HQ. The only jobs in the FO that are GS 13-14 are the ADM position and DM position, and a lot of the offices already had these positions and they didn't need filled/added. SSA management got rid of the CSR position, left the CS position employees to flounder for 25 years but added almost 4500 new GS 13-15 positions and 43 new SES positions?
40% of OCIO is out. Many reassignments and DRP -2 took many of these people. The amount of institutional knowledge is criminal and self sabotage. These private industry knuckleheads did what they always do which is slash and burn. But what these idiots didn’t realize is that the staffing was already critical, and now it’s downright ridiculous.
@819 Thanks for the information.
As a field office employee during the above time period, I took noticed CSRs were reduced. Management kept promoting them, especially if they could speak Spanish, no matter how good they were at their job. Some were great but some were mediocre at best. There were many more backlogs doing initial interviews that CSs were routinely called on to help. Some hadn't been CSRs in a long time so we're less helpful answering questions from the public.
@8:19, I appreciate the listing of numbers. But the question was: what positions are not needed? I could say that all of the GS-8 and below positions technically aren’t needed because any CS can do the work of a CSR. But that doesn’t make operational sense and ignores specialties. So I’m asking you, if these GS-13 and up positions are bloated , who needs to go? What PDs? Research scientists? Statisticians working on algorithms for automation? Operations analysts? Because most of them working at SSA have PhDs. Can we recruit them at a GS-11? How about attorneys who work on data exchanges agreements with states and other agencies, privacy disclosure or White House workloads? They have law degrees. GS-11? What about those in charge of enterprise data architecture? We managed to pull a lot of them from the private sector. It wasn’t with a GS-9 pay grade. How about people statutorily assigned as liaisons to other federal agencies like treasury or the VA? Ever worked with someone appointed by the White House? Those people don’t work insane hours for GS level pay. What about the people who pay user fees for check tracing or send daily W-2 files to the IRS? Are those people needed? What should they be paid for being CPAs, CFEs, or PMPs? 50k? I really want to know what jobs you think can go?
I'm with 10:09. Providing job numbers alone doesn't answer the question at all. We certainly don't need GS4 typists and stuff like that from yesteryear.
Maybe we need more of everything everywhere especially at higher grades. Remember we are not competing against our own history but the job market. TSRs are underpaid when you look at the training they go through compared to private sector.
@8:19. The other side of that is that entry level gov wages have not kept up with the private sector. People cannot simply afford to live on a GS5, 6, 7, 8, 9 salary. Add to that the difficulty/complexity of those positions and you can’t get people to stay. In prior years, it was almost unheard of for people to resign. Now, the FOs, TSCs, and PSCs cannot keep people. If someone can go work at Target for the same wages as the entry level government position, and it takes a week to learn the job at Target vs two years at SSA, what are they going to do?
8:19 Thanks for the excellent analysis. Your statistics show there are many more GS-13-15 SSA employees than 30 years ago. And these high grade employees are not in the FO: most are at HQ or RO.
Why are so many higher grade employees really needed now, when they were not needed in 1990?
PSC and FO managers have long known, that many of their best and most essential employees leave for these high grade positions, which have been created in HQ and RO.
Consider a Claims Specialist, who has been trained in class and with years of experience on the job, and is now excellent at their front line position. Helps keeps workloads and backlogs under control, and is a source of information for claimants and other employees. If a manager sings this employees praises and gives them outstandings in their PACS rating elements, , their best employee will likely be gone, promoted to RO or HQ. Usually at a young age, too.
This system of automatically promoting the best PSC and FO employees to non-front line and less important positions, must be changed. It does not serve the public well. They should stay where they are needed.
I can only speak for my area, but I’ve been with SSA since 2008. What I can tell you is that, when I started, my office was filled with a lot of technicians who were not college educated, super lazy, and didn’t care. Over time, they’ve fallen off, mostly due to retirement, and the office is now all college educated who are more motivated, far more intelligent/capable, etc.
This is just an attempt at damage control by Frank before the coming implosion. He can't distance himself from DOGE - he is DOGE. He's worked with them illegally before confirmation since the beginning, this is all his plan.
Well, the world has turned a few times since 1999. We have a greater need for programmers and web designers today than we did then. Also mass communications plays a far greater role in today’s service delivery than ever before. Additionally, audit, legal, analytical and quality review work has all expanded. These positions tend to be higher graded than front-facing technical roles.
Frank now works out of the now largely abandoned office space of the former New York regional office. A space that used to hold 130 people now has less than 10. Another example of DOGE efficiency…
What a waste of tax payer dollars, sending folks home and paying them not to work until September. Thanks Frank and DOGE. Sending folks to the front line is costing tax payers again. Another example of Frank wasting our taxes.
@243 That wasn't my experience. The college educated CSRs and CSs tended to not try as hard in my office. They were less apt to stay too. The lesser educated who worked their way up seemed to work harder and appreciate the CS jobs more.
I'm glad you have a good crew now.
What happend to dudek? Is he still in a management? Did he return to a job that was eliminated by DOGE?
Yes we have more higher graded employees than we did 30 years ago. But why? HPI is why. Even though HPI was mainly for the HOs, the Union President Jim Marshall was a master class in negotiations. HPI was going nowhere with all those attorney promotions unless the lower graded employees also got opportunities. And not just at the HOs. That is the seed of all those promotions. The back story of SSA is a beaut, but I'm too lazy to write a book. It is a shame what is happening now.
I’ve been wondering this too. His linked in says “senior advisor “ but his old job doesn’t exist anymore after the reorg. So I don’t know where he is.
It also had “Open To Work” on his profile too.
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