Frank Bisignano's hearing before two subcommittees of the House Ways and Means Committee is Wednesday at 2:00. Here are some questions I'd like to hear answered:
- What has surprised you about Social Security since becoming Commissioner?
- Your agency has recently stopped posting processing time information. Why?
- There are reports that you ordered Payment Center employees to stop all regular work in order to complete the WEP/GPO workload by the end of this month -- which happens to nearly coincide with the date of this hearing. Is that accurate? If so, why should the people with WEP/GPO cases take precedence over those of people who have been waiting years to receive any money from Social Security?
- Is it true that Social Security is making widespread use of overtime to do the work of employees who have been induced to leave the agency since Inauguration Day? Why pay time and a half for work when it could have been done for regular pay by those employees who have since departed?
- There has been talk of a goal to get Social Security down to 50,000 employees. Is that a current goal?
- When would you anticipate resuming hiring new employees on a regular basis to replace departing employees?
- Could you provide us with data comparing employee productivity for in office work versus remote work?
- How much of your time is spent working in Woodlawn or Washington as opposed to working from home or from the special office set up for you in New York?
- Does Palantir now have access to any Social Security data? If so, have they been allowed to copy the data to other government computers or their own computers?
- Could you provide us with Full Time Equivalent (FTE) numbers for the Social Security Administration for each month since the beginning of calendar year 2024?
- What is Lee Dudek's employment status at the moment?
- Social Security will turn 90 years old in August. Is that an occasion to celebrate?
20 comments:
* Do YOU personally telework in any capacity or do you report to your assigned duty location at Headquarters daily? Thank you for your attention to this matter.
What is the error rate for the AI product that SSA is using to direct callers? What are the error rates for the AI products that SSA is using in other capacities? Do you consider those rates to be acceptable? What, if anything, is SSA doing to lower those error rates? Identify the AI products that SSA is using, and how much do they cost the taxpayer? Is SSA data being scraped for the AI? What safeguards for privacy are being used if so?
"There has been talk of a goal to get Social Security down to 50,000 employees. Is that a current goal?"
More directly, what is the current headcount? How many employees are you expecting to eliminate via RIF or attrition through retirement without hiring?
Additional questions for Frankie…
• Why take on this difficult job when you’re worth millions.
• Do you consider Leland Dudek a hero for his actions? If so, why is he on administrative leave?
• Are you a DOGE supporter and do you think they did an exemplary job or destroy the agency?
• Did you help DOGE in any manner prior to your confirmation?
• Is your mission to privatize Social Security and help your Wall Street buddies?
• Survey after survey show that the public prefers to do business face to face and not online. Why are being so aggressive in replacing humans with AI?
• Are you a proponent of Project 2025?
• Do you think the actions of DOGE made the work environment at SSA more difficult?
•Any chance that the agency retains many of the SSA employees that are sidelined or recently retired in order to bring the agency back to its mission of helping the public?
Bonus question…
You must have been a big fan of the circus while growing up since you joined one. Are you worried about your reputation going forward?
The SSA orgchart shows we have 52,506 employees. I don’t know how accurate that figure is since the folks who maintained it have left the agency. Also, Lee is no longer listed in the org chart. Apparently he was put on admin leave when Frank took over:
I wonder how Frank and the rest of Trump’s ‘fake leaders’ can sleep at night knowing they are helping destroy our 250 year old Country under their watch. Oh yea, they are cheering it. Thieves enjoy stealing.
We KNOW what the butt-kissing Republicans will say. They want Frankenstein to continue wrecking the agency
Frank, since administration wants agencies to decentralize from HQ's and be more localized with the public being served, why collapse and eliminate Regions that were already serving the unique needs of their respective areas and FOs? Administering SSA is complex and requires programatic, systems and physical facility support components and personnel. Why are the critical and important support systems from the "disbanded Regions" not being attended to? What about returning those highly specialized employees back to their old jobs and hire/train new employees that want to do field work?
Are there plans to look at the gaps after resignations/retirements/voluntarily reassignments (that were under duress regardless of what the signed paper says) and pull back the appropriate people to fill those gaps? They will be much more productive in those roles than in roles they are not suited for.
I didn't know of the reports that the payment center was ordered to drop all regular work to clear out the WEP and GPO retro pay claims. I've noticed that my firm's attorney fee volume has been down this month compared to previous months this year. These reports could explain that fact. Hopefully, things will be be back to normal next month.
After the way I was treated? Hell no. Not coming back under any circumstance! why come back from more abuse from people like Russ Vought who made it clear he hates everyone who dedicated their life to Civil Service and worked their butts off!
Who assigns his duty position?
There were no voluntary reassgnments. There were all made under duress and are not legally binding. They were made under the threat of being fired. Not a way to run any organization, commercial or government.
How much did your personal tax considerations weigh in to your taking the position and being able to defer, perhaps for the rest of your life, capital gains from selling any of your existing stock?
Everyone keeps talking about support and services the FO needs but the regions aren’t there to provide. Besides vhelp, what’s missing? Can someone actually list what’s not getting done?
"Highly specialized"
Thanks for the laugh.
I can only speak for OHO, but in that component, not much. Most of what they do is workload monitoring, which can (and should) be done at a local level by Legal Specialists, HOD/GS, and the HOMS. You don't need a cadre of redundant "management analysts" reviewing the same cases that we're already focusing on locally. The SCP calls are one of the most hilarious wastes of time I've seen in my more than 10, less than 20 years with the agency.
You need a new source for your reports.
There’s a USA Today (I think) article that talks about this. It was from around 2 weeks ago.
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