Bisignano Controversial At IRS

     From Politico:

… The unusual nature of [Bisignano’s] role [as “CEO” of the IRS] — one that doesn’t exist in federal law — is raising questions about who’s really in charge of the agency as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent holds the title of acting IRS commissioner. Fueling the scrutiny is the fact that Bisignano also serves as commissioner of the Social Security Administration. …

The unusual nature of Bisignano’s position is at the heart of concerns voiced by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle as well as agency staff over whether he can be a change agent for an agency that’s struggled to improve customer service after dramatic swings in leadership and operations since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. The questions are set to be aired publicly when he appears for the first time before the Senate Finance Committee on April 15, just as the first tax filing season of Trump’s second term comes to a close. …

Six people at the IRS, who were granted anonymity to avoid retribution, described a leader who has claimed credit for others’ work, sown discord and acted as Trump’s lieutenant. …

One IRS official called Bisignano “a fake” and said the only notable recent update to the refund tool was making the service accessible through “individual online accounts,” which happened before he came to the agency. The official said Bisignano’s order for the IRS to review and justify contracts made him a “single person chokepoint for procurement” who impaired the agency’s ability to move forward on efforts like using artificial intelligence to aid with tax collection. …

You Can’t Trust Social Security’s IG

      From a Washington Post article on Inspectors General:

… At the Social Security Administration, acting inspector general Michelle Anderson meets regularly with Commissioner Frank Bisignano and has given him information about her work, according to two people familiar with the meetings. Anderson has wanted to maintain a good relationship with Bisignano, the people said.


The inspector general’s office has largely avoided digging into the work of the U.S. DOGE Service at the agency, but it recently told Congress it is investigating allegations that a DOGE member has improper access to sensitive Social Security data. Before that, it had told senators last year that it would not evaluate the agency’s decision to classify thousands of living immigrants as dead.


In December, the Social Security IG released an audit of the agency’s phone metrics, which found that the wait time for someone to talk to a representative had dropped to single-digit minutes. Agency leaders celebrated the report as a vindication of their claims that they had improved customer service. Bisignano later told staffers he had thought the inspector general had wasted taxpayer dollars even looking into the statistics, according to a recording of his remarks.

However, an unpublished draft of the report reviewed by The Post showed that the inspector general had planned to report another metric — called the “total wait time” — to measure the overall time it takes for callers to be connected with an SSA employee. According to that draft report, in 2025 total wait time averaged 46 minutes to over two hours. That information was deleted from the draft after the agency reviewed it before publication, according to the document’s revision history. …

Where’s The Slack Coming From?

From: ^Commissioner Broadcast <Commissioner.Broadcast@ssa.gov>

Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2026 11:35 AM

Subject: SSA Brings Continuing Disability Review Workloads In-House  

A Message to All SSA and DDS Employees      

 

Subject: SSA Brings Continuing Disability Review Workloads In-House 

Today, we announced the agency will bring in-house the processing of medical continuing disability reviews (CDRs) from State Disability Determination Services (DDS) to our federal processing site called Disability Case Review (DCR). CDRs are conducted as part of SSA’s ongoing program integrity workload to determine whether a person receiving disability benefits should continue receiving them.   

Centralizing medical CDRs is another important step to reduce improper payments and improve customer service. This shift allows the DDSs to focus on efficiently processing disability claim decisions and benefits for eligible individuals. Reduced wait times for state level disability decisions means eligible individuals can begin receiving their critical benefits more quickly.   

DDS initial claim backlogs spiked to over 1.2 million in June of 2024. They have done great work driving down the backlog to 831,000 claimants waiting for a decision as of February 2026. This next step will maximize the DDS’s state level resources to further reduce processing time and continue to drive down the pending claims. 

 

DCR, with its experience processing initial disability claims, reconsideration cases, and medical CDRs, will now handle medical CDRs for the entire country—allowing DDS sites to focus on reducing wait times on initial claims and reconsideration cases for citizens in their state. Non-medical CDRs, which do not require the same expertise as medical CDRs to process, will continue to be handled by the agency’s field offices and processing centers. 

Frank J. Bisignano 

Commissioner 

Who’s Running The Show?

 

    Frank Bisignano is simultaneously trying to be Commissioner of Social Security and “CEO” of the IRS, a position that doesn’t really exist. When he was nominated to be Commissioner he openly admitted that he knew little about the agency he was supposed to run. Even if he’s a quick learner there’s no way that I can see that he can run Social Security on a day to day basis without subjecting himself to a ton of briefings so that he can understand the issues he’s deciding on. How can he possibly have time for that when he’s also trying to run the IRS, especially if he’s interacting with others at Social Security mainly through video?

      My question is whether insiders think Bisignano is actually running things at the agency on a daily basis. If he isn’t, who is? I suppose one possibility is that Bisignano is making the decisions but without bothering to understand the issues. If you regard Social Security as fundamentally unimportant and don’t expect to be around long, why bother with trying to understand arcane issues? If Trump didn’t bother with understanding the issues presented by embarking with war on Iran, why should Bisignano bother with understanding the issues at Social Security? How important can Social Security be? It pays its Commissioner far less than a million a year, peanuts in Bisignano’s world.

Bisignano Declines To Answer Questions

      From the Los Angeles Times:

The head of the IRS largely declined to answer questions about recent unlawful disclosures of taxpayer data when he was questioned by lawmakers at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, saying they happened before his tenure began.  …

“Was anyone fired? Was anyone disciplined? Was anyone held accountable? Was anyone held to account?” Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) asked Bisignano.

Bisignano cited ongoing litigation and declined to answer questions about the disclosures, adding, “I don’t want to debate the numbers.” …

     A Democratic chairman of the Committee would not allow Bisignano to decide which questions he wouldn’t  answer which is why Bisignano will quickly decide to spend more time with his family and his fortune if Democrats seize control of either the Senate or House in November.

Interesting Parallel

      From the Washington Post:

A federal judge has found that the Internal Revenue Service violated federal law “approximately 42,695 times” when it shared confidential taxpayer addresses with immigration enforcement officials last summer.


U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued the ruling Thursday as part of ongoing litigation over a data-sharing arrangement between the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security.


Federal law requires that before the IRS hands over a taxpayer’s address, a requesting agency must first provide the IRS with the name and address of the person it’s looking for. The requirement exists to ensure that the government can access confidential tax records only for individuals it has already specifically identified.
The ruling finds that DHS did not follow this law. The judge wrote that the vast majority of the nearly 47,300 taxpayer addresses the IRS shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August were disclosed without the IRS confirming that ICE provided a valid address for the person whose records it was seeking. … 

     This happened just before Bisignano became the “CEO” of the IRS. The data compromises at Social Security happened just before Bisignano became Commissioner of Social Security.

Interview With Commissioner

      The AARP recently interviewed Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano. They’ve published a transcript. The questions were only of the softball variety. They didn’t even ask about his dual role with the IRS!

Bisignano To Testify At Congressional Hearing

      The House Ways and Means Committee has scheduled a hearing with Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano for 10:00 on March 4. However, this hearing concerns Bisignano’s position as “CEO” of the IRS, a position that doesn’t really exist. Nothing will prevent Committee members from asking questions about Social Security or Bisignano’s business history.

Who Could Argue?

       From Fortune:

For all the talk about Social Security being in crisis, what hasn’t been stressed enough is the leadership crisis. From December of 2023 to until the current leader’s Senate confirmation of May 6, a parade of four commissioners and acting commissioners cycled through the position. These chiefs departed fast in part because they got frequent hammerings in Congress over the agency’s poor phone and face-to-face service to beneficiaries. 

Enter Frank Bisignano. The Jamie Dimon protegee had a storied career in banking, and was appointed to lead SSA last spring (he has since added the job of IRS CEO to his resume, which you can read about here.) 

But the changes he has quickly enacted at SSA—drawing heavily on his time in the private sector—are real, and they’re impressing even the Administration’s fiercest critics.  … 

No matter what your political party, few could argue that an agency in need of efficiency finally has a leader at the top who is moving the needle. 

Sound Familiar?

      From Government Executive:

The Internal Revenue Service is asking seasoned employees without any direct tax experience to perform entry-level tasks of answering phones and processing tax returns, a step impacted staff call unprecedented as the agency scrambles to prepare for filing season. 

The reassigned workers, who are being detailed out on an involuntary basis, are coming from the IRS human resources and, potentially, the IT departments. Some employees reported that supervisors first asked for anyone who had experience in the front-line fields to consider the roles, but they ultimately chose many individuals with no prior experience working directly on tax issues. 

The details come as IRS has dramatically slashed its workforce, cutting more than 20,000 employees—or more than 20% of total staff—in the last year. The divisions seeking internal staffing support have seen similarly significant losses to their workforces and have struggled to rebuild in time for filing season, according to a new report from the IRS inspector general.  …

Senators Have Questions

      The Chairman and Ranking Democratic leader of the Senate Finance Committee are asking for answers from the Social Security Administration on the recent admissions from the agency on the improper sharing of confidential information outside Social Security, possibly including sharing with nongovernmental partisan entities.

     No hearing has been scheduled. A actual hearing might have to involve Bisignano and Republicans don’t want him facing live questions. 

Bisignano’s Other Job

 

    The New York Times has a piece on Frank Bisignano’s time as “CEO” of the Internal Revenue Service that touches a bit on Bisignano’s position at the Social Security Administration. There’s no such position as CEO of the IRS but he’s leading it anyway. Here’s a brief excerpt from the piece:

… He works at the I.R.S. roughly two days a week, commuting from his home in New Jersey to Washington in his private plane, according to five people familiar with his schedule.

“I run two large organizations,” Mr. Bisignano said. “I don’t divide my time. On any given day, for example at 11:15 today, I will have an S.S.A. call, and at 12:30 I will have an I.R.S. call. They’re just two big divisions I run.” …

     Two days a week at the IRS. How often is he present at his Social Security office? Probably not that much. I think we know which job he regards as his day job.

Which Is His Day Job?

      From Tax Notes:

IRS CEO Frank Bisignano is positioned to lead the tax agency through the next filing season and beyond, according to observers.

After seeing seven different commissioners — including one who underwent a full-length confirmation process — the IRS ended 2025 with a leader whose position didn’t exist two months ago. …

Bisignano With Newly Sworn In Deputy Commissioner Arjun Mody

  

From Twitter (X)

Unending Slime

      I have to say just how much it galls me that the Commissioner of Social Security is a man as deficient in character as Frank Bisignano. Within a few months of leaving his old position as CEO of Fiserv, the new company management accused him of what amounts to a “pump and dump” scheme netting him hundreds of millions of dollars. In any other Administration Bisignano would have been forced to resign. In the Trump Administration it’s just another in an unending series of stories demonstrating how slimy many of Trump’s appointees are.

The State Of Customer Service

      The Social Security Administration has posted data showing the state of customer service at Social Security. I’m sure it’s as accurate and meaningful as the earnings projections made at Fiserv while Frank Bisignano was its CEO. Below is one of the charts from Social Security’s posting.

Click to view full-size

Living Rent Free In Bisignano’s Head

      Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano seems a little obsessed with his predecessor, Martin O’Malley.

No Timeline For New Occupational Data

     From NEXTGOV/FCW:

A long-planned refresh of the occupational data used in the disability adjudication process at the Social Security Administration was tucked inside a regulatory overhaul that the Trump administration abandoned last week. 

As a result, the agency now appears to be without a timeline for finalizing that years-in-the-making update, which SSA has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on, according to remarks made by the Social Security commissioner, Frank Bisignano, during a Monday meeting. …

The commissioner was asked multiple times about the future of the data project now that the regulatory changes have been abandoned. 

Bisignano acknowledged that lawmakers think the data needs to be updated, committed to looking into the issue and said that he hoped it could be updated in the future — emphasizing collaboration and consensus building as important for that process — but he didn't share any specific plan or timeline for doing so.  …

Frank Bisignano Exhibiting The Candor And Integrity For Which He’s Known

From a letter to Congress from Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano:

… After just my first six months on the job, I am pleased to report we are delivering a dramatically better customer experience at SSA. … 

     In other news concerning the Commissioner, the Ranking Member of the House Social Security Subcommittee has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Bisignano’s conduct at his former employer, Fiserv. The SEC shouldn’t need a referral from Congressmen to investigate this one but in the Trump Administration no Trump appointee need fear any sort of federal investigation.

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%.” …