From a contracting notice posted by Social Security:
Request for Quotation for the disposal of surplus alcohol-based hand sanitizer for Social Security Administration (SSA) facilities nationwide at approximately 20 locations. SSA has a hazardous waste surplus of expired alcohol-based hand sanitizer from the COVID-19 epidemic, which requires disposal. The disposal must be completed in accordance with the laws as required by the Federal, State, and Local Environmental Laws.
I received this message from a reader.
In case you and NOSSCR are not aware of it, in the last few days SSA has reversed a long standing policy that will potentially have major implications and may introduce legal liability to 3rd party representatives. On claims, SSA will no longer recognize a protective filing for a spouse or children listed on a claim unless the NH puts a statement in the remarks of the application expressing an intent to file on behalf of the spouse/children. I haven't seen this POMS, and I don't know if it is being implemented retroactively or prospectively going forward. Legal reps might have liability if they list the spouse/kids but fail to add the intent to file language to the application remarks. This is obviously a thinly veiled attempt to deny a protective filing to spouses/children of people filing claims. The office I retired from told me they are planning a training session on it very soon.
POMS GN 00204.010 contains the new policy. It has apparently been in place since 04/27/2026. The prior policy applies up to 04/26/2026.
The claims forms ask for a list of children and a spouse. I don’t know how you could not interpret that as an intention to file a claim for them.
There have been problems in the pst when a claimant fails to list all the children, usually for malicious reasons relating to a divorce, but sometimes because the child was born after the claim was filed. That problem is probably a direct result of the statute and regulations rather than anything intended to be harsh.
If we’re talking about harsh and malicious, what the reader is talking about would definitely be a serious gotcha that I would call harsh and malicious. I have a hard time believing this could happen but it’s hard to put anything past this Administration. I think they could not prevail in Court on this.
From an article in the New York Times:
… The Trump administration has held up the publication of an annual Internal Revenue Service estimate of unpaid taxes, a delay that could mask the fiscal cost of the steep decline in the agency’s ability to audit the rich.
The I.R.S. has long published an estimate of the tax gap, the amount of tax owed under existing law that goes uncollected each year. …
The shift comes after the Trump administration pushed out roughly a quarter of the I.R.S. work force and cut the agency’s budget, weakening the government’s ability to conduct time-intensive audits. …
The absence of an updated tax gap estimate is part of a pattern across the Trump administration, which has either stopped collecting or sought to change the measurement of federal data that scientists and other researchers have long relied on for a rigorous, unvarnished understanding of the country. …
An I.R.S. spokesman said the agency was updating the methodologies used to calculate the tax gap and would release the figure when it was ready. Mr. Bisignano, in a statement, said revenue from tax enforcement was increasing this year and did not depend on the number of auditors. …
“Without a metric of the tax gap that is telling us in real time about trends in compliance and how they’re changing, I worry that it’s hard for policymakers to see the full swath of the damage that’s been done by the gutting of the agency,” said Natasha Sarin, a Treasury official during the Biden administration who has written extensively about the tax gap. “And, in fact, I worry that’s the point.” …
In appearances before Congress in the spring, Mr. Bisignano, the first chief executive officer of the I.R.S., suggested that he was skeptical of the methodology behind the tax gap, saying that he wanted to focus on the subset of unpaid taxes that the I.R.S. could realistically collect. …
Sound familiar? Cut staff to the point an agency cannot fulfill its core responsibilities, refuse to release statistics showing how bad things have gotten and try to come up with your own tortured statistics making it look as if things aren’t as bad as they really are. Bisignano is at the helm of two agencies doing this but it sounds like the problem is government wide.
From an report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:
… To maintain accurate earnings information, SSA uses the earnings alert system to identify discrepancies between a recipient’s reported and actual wages. A discrepancy occurs when a recipient’s actual earnings differ from the earnings SSA used to calculate the SSI payment.
We identified 417,291 SSI recipients who had at least 1 pending earnings alert on their record as of September 2024. We randomly selected 100 of these recipients to determine whether SSA took appropriate action to resolve the alerts.
SSA employees resolved earnings alerts for 20 of the 100 recipients we reviewed. However, Agency employees did not resolve earnings alerts for 80 recipients who had at least 1 earnings alert pending as of September 2024.
- For 63 recipients SSA employees did not start reviews of 37 earnings alerts and did not complete their reviews of 26 earnings alerts. As of April 2025, the 63 earnings alerts remained pending.
- For 17 recipients, SSA employees cleared the earnings alerts but did not verify and record all earnings that affected the SSI payment amounts.. their reviews of 26 earnings alerts. As of April 2025, the 63 earnings alerts remained pending. …
Based on our sample results, we estimate SSA paid about 333,800 recipients approximately $1 billion that they would not have been eligible to receive had the Agency properly considered and fully developed their unreported earnings when it determined their SSI eligibility and associated payment amounts. .
I’ve asked Chat GPT about Commissioner Bisignano’s real estate holdings. Unfortunately, there are layout problems I don’t know how to correct. It still seems worth posting despite the way it looks.
How many homes does Frank Bisignano, Commissioner of Social Security, own and where are they located?
According to Frank J. Bisignano’s public federal financial-disclosure filing, he reported 11 residential properties. The filing does not necessarily mean all are personally titled in his name; several are held through LLCs or trusts in which he reports an ownership interest.
|
Location |
Number |
Description in disclosure |
|
Mantoloking, New Jersey |
1 |
Residential rental property |
|
Montclair, New Jersey |
1 |
Residential rental property |
|
Westfield, New Jersey |
1 |
Residential rental property |
|
Watchung, New Jersey |
1 |
Residential rental real estate |
|
New York City, New York |
4 |
Units identified as 19-B, PH1F-G, 25F and 6-H |
|
Emerald Isle, North Carolina |
1 |
Residential rental property |
|
Atlantic Beach, North Carolina |
1 |
Residential rental property |
|
Bachelor Gulch, Colorado |
1 |
Residential rental/vacation property |
|
Total |
11 |
|
The filing also reports vacant land in Watchung, New Jersey, which I have not counted as a home. It separately reports a commercial rental property in Watchung, also not counted.
A few important qualifications:
Yes. I reviewed the underlying OGE Form 278e financial disclosure rather than relying on the summary. The disclosure gives value ranges, not exact appraised values.
Bisignano’s reported residential real estate
|
Property |
Reported value |
|
Mantoloking, NJ |
$1,000,001 - $5,000,000 |
|
Montclair, NJ |
$500,00 - $1,000,000 |
|
Westfield, NJ |
$1,000,000 - $5,000,000 |
|
Watchung, NJ |
$5,000,001 - $25,000,000 |
|
New York City 19-B |
$1,000,001 - $5,000,000 |
|
New York City PH1F-G |
$5,000,001 - $25,000,000 |
|
New York City 25F |
$1,000,001 - $5,000,000 |
|
New York City 6-H |
$500,001 - $1,000,000 |
|
Emerald Isle, NC |
$1,000,001 - $5,000,000 |
|
Atlantic Beach, NC |
$1,000,001 - $5,000,000 |
|
Bachelor Gulch, CO |
$5,000,001 - $25,000,000 |
The individual figures are directly from the disclosure.
Total reported value
Adding the ranges gives a combined reported property value of approximately $18 million to $87 million.
There is an important wrinkle, however: the disclosure says that 2020 Trust 1 owns a one-third interest in the Watchung and four New York properties. Thus, the $5–25 million Watchung figure and the four NYC figures represent the reported value of the underlying real estate, not necessarily the value of Bisignano’s personal beneficial interest.
The Bachelor Gulch property is particularly notable: it was purchased in 2024 for purposes of being a rental/vacation property and had not yet been rented as of the date of the filing. It was reported at $5,000,001–$25,000,000.
Also, I would correct one point from my previous answer: the Watchung property is described in the filing as residential rental real estate, while a separate Watchung property is commercial real estate. The commercial property is worth $5,000,001–$25,000,000 but is not included in the 11 residential properties above.
If you want, I can next calculate Bisignano’s estimated personal equity in each property, taking into account the disclosed mortgages and the one-third trust interests, which gives a much more meaningful picture of what the properties are actually worth to him.
From WKRC:
A Florida woman says she's tired of trying to prove to government agencies that she is actually still alive after she was mistakenly declared dead two years ago.
Priscilla Slack, 84, told WFLA that after her husband died two years ago, she was also accidentally listed as deceased. The error began with the Social Security Administration (SSA) but eventually started causing problems elsewhere.
"First they canceled my bank account, and they canceled my credit card. When I went to vote, I was still canceled," Slack said.
Slack initially tried to laugh the problem off, believing it would be solved quickly. But over the last two years, the issue kept resurfacing, even after the SSA fixed the mistake.
Now, Slack says she's been dealing with the IRS, which sent her a letter claiming she filed a tax return using a Social Security number that belonged to a deceased person. Trying to resolve the error now has her going back and forth with the IRS and the SSA. …
I don’t see how this could keep happening, especially with another federal agency involved, unless there’s something wrong at Social Security.
The AARP is estimating that Social Security’s Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) for this year will be 3.6%. We’ll know for sure in a few weeks.
