Problem Solved

 

    If you’ve paid attention to the statements of Commissioner Bisignano you may have noticed that every chance he has had he’s talked about the terrible ratings that Social Security employees have given their agency as an employer, the worst of any large federal agency. He has expressed a strong desire to do something about these ratings, which are derived from surveys done by the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM). 

     The Commissioner can stop worrying about the problem. It’s been solved. OPM has decided to stop doing the surveys.

A Presidential Proclamation

On August 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Act -- a monumental legislative achievement that protects our seniors, uplifts our citizens, and sustains the livelihoods of hardworking Americans who devoted their professions to bettering our country. On the 90th anniversary of the establishment of this historic program, I recommit to always defending Social Security, rewarding the men and women who make our country prosperous, and taking care of our own workers, families, seniors, and citizens first. 

To this day, Social Security is rooted in a simple promise: those who gave their careers to building our Nation will always have the support, stability, and relief they deserve. Thanks to my Administration's efforts, Social Security now stands stronger and more resilient than ever before. Following the passage of the historic One Big Beautiful Bill last month, the vast majority of seniors who receive Social Security will pay zero tax on their Social Security benefits -- the largest tax break for seniors in the history of our country. 

To further strengthen Social Security, my Administration is aggressively rooting out all fraud, waste, and abuse that rob our Federal programs of resources -- including stopping payments to the deceased and eliminating benefits for those who do not legally qualify. These measures will save American taxpayers billions of dollars every year and ensure that future generations receive the benefits they spent their lives paying into. At the same time, I am making the Social Security Administration more efficient, more responsive, and more effective than ever before -- reducing wait times and delivering the payments the American people worked hard to earn. I am also proudly restoring strong border security policies to ensure that Medicare and Social Security are preserved for the citizens who paid into them -- not abused by illegal aliens who have no right to be here. 

 On this 90th anniversary of the Social Security Act, we recognize the countless contributions of every American senior who has invested their time, talent, and resources into our Nation's future. On this momentous milestone, we recommit to strengthening our retirement system, protecting programs like Social Security and Medicare against fraud and abuse, and ensuring that every future generation of American citizens has the income security they need and earned. 

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim August 14, 2025, as the 90th Anniversary of the Social Security Act. 

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourteenth day of August, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fiftieth. 

DONALD J. TRUMP

Commissioner Remains In A Self-Congratulatory Mood

 

The Counter-Argument

          Government Executive goes through the counter-arguments against the letter that Commissioner Bisignano wrote to Senator Warren claiming that service is rapidly improving at Social Security. 

     I deal with Social Security. I know things aren’t going well and the future looks grim. Service is currently improving in some ways and worsening in others. The  only reason service isn’t worse is the generous use of overtime. I expect there will be significantly less OT in the next fiscal year. 

     I know the agency has a huge problem with what I call the “Now now, not later, not ever” backlog, cases that present complications that take time to sort out, time that just doesn’t exist now. The employees are sorting out the easy cases first to create stats. The complex cases aren’t worked and under current circumstances they’re never going to be worked. They just keep piling up. I don’t think anyone is even counting them. I’m an attorney. Of course I raise complications. That’s my job. I know when the workers compensation offset is wrong. I know to ask for a protective filing date based upon a prior claim when the agency took an SSI only claim when they should have also taken a Disabled Adult Child claim. I know to point out that the agency missed a date first insured issue. I’m not the only one. Social Security employees themselves spot many of these things but have no time to act on them.

Smiles All Around

      Social Security’s Commissioner recently visited an agency field office in Staten Island, NY. The Commissioner talked about this visit on a new appearance on Fox News.

Can We Ever Step Back From This?

      Commissioner Bisignano has replied to the recent letter sent to him by Senator Warren. As you might guess Bisignano’s letter bristles with vicious partisanship. Sure, Warren’s letter was accusatory but public servants are not allowed to respond by escalating the situation. At least they weren’t until this Administration. Nothing like this would have been imaginable at any other time in the 90 year history of the Social Security Administration or any other agency.

Taking An Early Victory Lap

      Commissioner Bisignano was on Fox Business channel this week talking about all his accomplishments at Social Security. 

Bisignano Meeting With Senator Warren

     There's no word on the results but Senator Elizabeth Warren is reported to be meeting with Social Security Commissioner Bisignano sometime today.

Turmoil In Social Security Management?

     This is from a couple of posts on Bluesky from @altssa.altgov.info who purports to be a current Social Security employee. I cannot vouch for this person but this fits in with what I’ve heard elsewhere:

Deputy Commissioner of Operations Stephen Evangelista will reportedly be back at work on Monday after having a confrontation with commish Frankie over changes being made to operations and changes they want to make to operations that Evangelista is almost certainly correct about being bad for … [post one]

SSA operations and staffing. Frankie apparently doesn’t like being told he’s wrong, so his reaction to being given data and facts about why his ideas are 💩 was to call Evangelista a “fucking liar.” Allegedly, of course. Sounds like a guy you definitely want to work for, amiright???? 😑😑😑😑 [post two]

You Can Almost Feel Sorry For Lee Dudek

     Here are some interesting messages from the Secretary of Homeland Security to then Acting Commissioner of Social Security Leland Dudek back in April. Note the stern, commanding tone of the messages. Note also the complete lack of legal underpinning for what is being demanded. These were posted by Social Security itself. By the way, Dudek, who apparently has a Twitter account, liked and retweeted my tweet about this. As always, click on the images below to view full size.

 

Commissioner Appears At 90th Anniversary Event

      A Twitter post by the Social Security Administration yesterday:

Today, Commissioner Bisignano spoke at the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) event to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Social Security alongside James Roosevelt III, grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rep. Danny Davis, and Rebecca Vallas, CEO of NASI.

Robbing Peter To Pay Paul

    From Government Executive:

In recent days, the Social Security Administration and its newly confirmed commissioner Frank Bisignano have celebrated “key milestones” in its quest to improve customer service, citing its implementation of the Social Security Fairness Act and addition of new automated service lanes on the agency’s 1-800 number and website. …

But workers at the agency say that as the agency shrinks by an aspired 7,000 workers this fiscal year, management is simultaneously scrambling to triage escalating workloads, causing a communications whiplash akin to being “gaslit,” one said. …

Beginning last week, the agency involuntarily reassigned 500 field office customer support representatives to handle calls to the 1-800 number indefinitely and without notice. By Tuesday, that number had risen to 1,000 reassignments. …

They’re robbing Peter to pay Paul,” [said the leader of the union that represents most Social Security employees].“And it really invalidates [Bisignano’s] whole theory and vision that SSA doesn’t need any more staff and that AI—or other technology—will solve the customer service problems at the agency and on the 1-800 number.” … 

Bisignano’s email to staff on Monday included an additional bit of news: performance bonuses will be distributed next month. Though Bisignano said he “directed” their distribution, the bonuses were originally slated to go out earlier this year but were delayed during the tenure of then-acting Commissioner Leland Dudek. …

Can We Trust Social Security’s Numbers?

From USA Today:

… Over the last several weeks, the agency has stopped making public 34 real-time performance metrics about things like how long they will have to wait to reach a live person on the phone, and how long applications for new senior benefits or social security benefits take to be approved. The metrics have been used for years to show how time-consuming it can be to reach a live person at certain locations or through the national 1-800 number, and as an accountability measure for the agency.

Instead the webpage now emphasizes how quickly problems can be resolved online, and says the "average speed of answer," which excludes callback wait time, is 19.2 minutes.

USA TODAY reporters called Social Security's 1-800 line multiple times over several days and found the wait times to be consistently over an hour. Multiple times they did not reach a live person before the line disconnected with no warning. …

Concerned that the information now available on the website didn't match what her staff was hearing from constituents, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's staff began conducting its own test of the 1-800 number, making hourly phone calls from June 12 through June 20. 

In a letter Warren sent to Bisignano late on June 25, she called the results of her office survey "deeply troubling." Compared to the number available online, wait times averaged nearly an hour and 45 minutes and often exceeded three hours.

Data from the office survey showed that in 50 calls, more than 50% were never answered by a human. The majority ended when the caller was placed on hold and then the call dropped.

Of calls that were answered, 32% had wait times exceeding two hours. The average wait time was 102 minutes. …

  Jen Burdick, supervising attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, said they haven't seen a reduction in call times.

"Social Security attorneys and paralegals from our office call SSA dozens of times every day. We are uniformly finding that we can't get placed into the queue, either because of system outages, phone disconnects, or AI chatbot issues.  When we do get put into the queue, wait times seem to be up from last year ‒ sometimes more than an hour.  …

     I’m fully expecting no further Congressional hearings on Social Security in this Congress but Commissioner Bisignano could still be subpoenaed to testify about this issue before a Social Security Subcommittee controlled by Democrats in 2027 even if he’s no longer Commissioner. 

Widespread Resurrections Reported But They’re Now Economic Zombies Instead

       From the New York Times:

The Trump administration has backed away from a maneuver in which it sought to classify thousands of living immigrants as dead in a critical Social Security database, part of a strategy to pressure them to self-deport.

In April, the Social Security Administration placed roughly 6,300 migrants whose legal status had been revoked on its “death master file,” a vital data set that gets distributed to banks, lenders and other financial institutions. …

[N]ow the Social Security Administration has reversed course, taking them off the list in a process known internally as being “resurrected,” according to S.S.A. and White House officials.

Instead, the Social Security numbers of the 6,300 migrants are being flagged as “unverified” in a system typically used by financial institutions to check the numbers. The website generates that response when a person’s Social Security number, name or date of birth do not match the agency’s records. That classification is typically used when a Social Security number may be fraudulent, erroneous or mistakenly associated with someone. …

The new approach was spearheaded by Frank Bisignano, the new commissioner of the agency who took over in May, according to an administration official. It comes after the initial decision to put migrants on the death list generated enormous controversy within the agency. At one meeting shortly after the decision was made, senior level S.S.A. officials had voiced widespread “policy, legal and data integrity” concerns about the approach, according to an email summarizing the meeting viewed by The New York Times. …

From The Commissioner's Written Testimony

     From Commissioner Bisignano's written testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee:

 

Some Questions For The Commissioner

     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? 

Ways And Means Committee Schedules Hearing With Commissioner

      The House Ways and Means Committee has scheduled a hearing with Commissioner Frank Bisignano for 2:00 on June 25th. This will not be a full Committee hearing. It’s a joint hearing between the Social Security and Work and Welfare Subcommittees. The Work and Welfare Subcommittee has jurisdiction over SSI.

Social Security To Turn 90 On August 14

     In less than two months Social Security will celebrate its 90th birthday. When it celebrated its 80th birthday in 2015 there was a ceremony at Social Security headquarters. I wonder what will be done this year? Anything? Does Commissioner Bisignano regard the 90th birthday as an event to be celebrated?

Yawn

      It seems quieter at Social Security since Frank Bisignano was confirmed as Commissioner. I don’t know if it’s a good thing but I have less to write about.

Big NYT Article On DOGE, Dudek And Social Security

      From the New York Times:

Elon Musk stood before a giant American flag at a Wisconsin political rally in March and rolled out an eye-popping allegation of rampant fraud at the Social Security Administration. Scammers, he said, were making 40 percent of all calls to the agency’s customer service line.

Social Security employees knew the billionaire’s claim had no basis in fact. After journalists followed up, staff members began drafting a response correcting the record.

That’s when Leland Dudek — plucked from a midlevel job only six weeks earlier to run Social Security because of his willingness to cooperate with Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — got an angry call from the White House, according to several people familiar with the exchange.

“The number is 40 percent,” insisted Katie Miller, a top administration aide who was working closely with Mr. Musk, according to one of the people familiar with the April 1 call. President Trump believed Mr. Musk, she said. “Do not contradict the president.” 

Throughout the early months of this Trump presidency, Mr. Musk and his allies systematically built a false narrative of widespread fraud at the Social Security Administration based on misinterpreted data, using their claims to justify an aggressive effort to gain access to personal information on millions of Americans, a New York Times investigation has found. …

Mr. Dudek was recently placed on administrative leave … 

Mr. Dudek, 48, has told associates that while he did his best to fend off deeper cuts, he harbors deep misgivings about the effect of DOGE’s oversight, according to several people familiar with the conversations. … 

On Feb. 27, a DOGE engineer told Mr. Dudek in an email that the administration had identified roughly three dozen federal contracts in Maine as “nonessential,” including the two from Social Security. 

“We should cancel them,” wrote the engineer, Ethan Shaotran, 23, who declined to comment when reached by The Times. … 

Mr. Dudek faced another crisis on March 20, when a federal judge issued an order prohibiting Mr. Musk’s team from entering Social Security databases that contained personally identifying information. … 

On the night of the ruling, two DOGE leaders told Mr. Dudek that the agency should continue allowing access to the data despite the judge’s order, with one arguing that the order was so ambiguous that it could block all Social Security employees, not just members of DOGE, from gaining access, according to a person familiar with events. …

     One question I have after reading this is whether Dudek talked with the Times. I’ll guess he did.