If Social Security Commissioner (and CEO of the IRS) Frank Bisignano brought anything with him from the corporate world, it is his ability to sell, sell, sell. At a June 10th hearing on Capitol Hill, the former Wall Street executive did his best to sell the fiction that EVERYTHING IS JUST GREAT at the Social Security Administration – despite massive understaffing, poor morale, and outright abuse of beneficiaries’ personal data.

While House Ways and Means Committee Republicans responded to Bisignano’s testimony with complete credulity, Democrats and Social Security advocates would have appreciated — pardon the pun — a little more Frankness. And maybe even a smidge of humility.

Bisignano bragged in Trumpian fashion about “the best all-around performance ever at the Social Security Administration” and tossed around business buzzwords like “best in class” as if SSA were an airline instead of a public agency serving some 330 million Americans. He declared that the “American people are winning” because of SSA’s performance. He should have added, “So much winning.”

“The American people’s experiences are very different from what the Commissioner is reporting,” said NCPSSM senior Social Security expert Maria Freese on this week’s edition of Capital Quick Takes. “The reality is not as rosy as they claim.”

2025 protest against Trump/DOGE cutbacks at Social Security field office in Evanston, IL (Matthew Eadie, Evanston Now)

Commonsense alone would suggest that you cannot cut some 8,000 jobs at agency that was already at historic staffing lows (at a time when its customer base is rapidly growing), creating an enormous ‘brain drain’ of experienced employees who know how Social Security works… and expect that customer service would actually improve.

Kathleen Romig of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has done excellent work debunking SSA’s claims of ‘great success’ in serving customers. 

“The loss of thousands of employees hit key customer service positions hard, including 3,800 staff who assist visitors at SSA field offices and callers to SSA’s national 800 number. SSA leadership responded by shifting thousands of remaining workers to new roles (with minimal training). But redistributing the too-few remaining workers to roles where they have little experience risks ameliorating one service delivery problem by exacerbating others.” – Kathleen Romig, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Under Bisignano, SSA has publicly released ‘data’ that purports to prove that customer service is “the best ever.”  The data is a little fuzzy, to say the least. SSA claims to have reduced wait times on its 1-800 phone lines. What they don’t say is that they consider a call to have been completed and the wait time over when an AI bot answers or when a customer requests a callback.  That doesn’t mean the callers’ question has been answered or their issue resolved.

“They fudge the numbers to get to some of these statistical claims,” says Freese, including the ludicrous claim that SSA has achieved an 80% drop in customer wait times!

CBPP’s Kathleen Romig has thoroughly debunked SSA’s claims of reduced wait times

Here’s a quick list of some of the misleading statements (if not outright falsehoods) that Bisignano peddled at the congressional hearing:

“I inherited a mess from the Biden administration.”  WRONG! Under former Commissioner Martin O’Malley, customer service was actually improving despite chronic underfunding fron Congress.

“We didn’t close down any field offices.” MISLEADING!  In April, Business Insider reported that the Trump administration had at least temporarily closed in person services at more than a dozen field offices around the country, some for lack of resources due to DOGE cutbacks.

“We didn’t shut down anything facing clients.” MISLEADING! While no customer-facing service has been ‘shut down,’ SSA wants to cut back in-person service at field offices by 50%, forcing seniors and people with disabilities to seek on-line help. SSA also kept revising its phone service policies to limit the kinds of assistance customers could receive on the 1-800 number, forcing people online instead. Not every senior or person with disabilities has the technical resources to conduct all of their business online.

“We are relentlessly fighting waste, fraud, and abuse.” MISLEADING! Actual Social Security fraud is exceedingly rare. Before the Trump administration took over, SSA was one of the most efficient federal agencies, with an overhead rate of less than 1%. But the Trump regime (beginning with Elon Musk and DOGE) used the excuse of hunting for waste and fraud to decimate the agency.

The real “abuse,” of course, is the administration’s misuse of Americans’ personal Social Security data for craven political purposes. The latest outrage was a whistleblower report that SSA planned to move 2.7 million living individuals onto the agency’s Death Master File as part of Trump’s war on immigrants. Our CEO called it “illegal and dangerous.” Bisignano glibly denied the report at this week’s hearing, without providing any rebuttal.

Two things are clear at this point:  1) Bisignano and his SSA will not truly be held accountable or expected to be straightforward until – and if – at least the House changes hands next January and Democrats gain the power to do real oversight; (2) In the meantime, Bisignano will continue to try to convert SSA into a financial tech services company instead of the sacred public trust it is meant to be.

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Post-Script

In his second role – CEO of the IRS – Commissioner Bisignano signed off on Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund last May. Today, a federal judge indefinitely barred the Trump administration from moving forward with the fund, which was created for the bogus purpose of compensating people claiming they were “persecuted” by the government, including convicted January 6th insurrectionists.

READ our CEO’s written testimony for the 7/10/26 hearing here.

WATCH Capital Quick Takes with our senior Social Security expert Maria Freese here.