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WASHINGTON -- After months of occupation cuts, enactment turnover and different turmoil astatine the Social Security Administration, the agency's recently minted commissioner faced pointed questions from lawmakers astir the aboriginal of the bureau and its quality to wage Americans their benefits and support their privacy.
Frank Bisignano, who was sworn successful past period arsenic President Donald Trump's prime to pb the agency, told lawmakers helium intends to amended accuracy successful payments and rise morale astatine the agency, which has already mislaid 7,000 workers since billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency embarked connected a cost-cutting ngo astatine the bureau earlier this year.
“Increased staffing is not the agelong word solution,” Bisignano told lawmakers, vowing alternatively to put successful exertion truthful that the bureau could relation with less workers. “We volition bash this by becoming a digital-first, technology-led enactment that puts the nationalist arsenic our focal point.”
He called it his “personal goal” to person a “highly motivated workforce” and rise the agency's lasting aft 3 consecutive years of ranking past among authorities agencies successful worker satisfaction.
Bisignano testified that astir 2,000 workers person been voluntary reassigned into direct-service positions astatine SSA, and astir 3,700 employees person voluntarily near the agency. In 2026, helium said, “we volition absorption our hiring efforts connected highly skilled IT unit and tract offices with staffing gaps that interaction our quality to deliver.”
Bisignano took implicit an bureau aft a bid of chaotic lawsuit work changes, enactment exits, and mendacious allegations made by the president and Musk that millions of dormant radical were receiving benefits.
The chaos astatine the agency began soon aft acting commissioner Michelle King stepped down successful February, a determination that came aft DOGE sought entree to Social Security recipient information. That prompted a suit by labour unions and retirees, who asked a national tribunal to contented an exigency bid limiting DOGE’s entree to Social Security data.
The U.S. Supreme Court precocious decided not to assistance restrictions connected the access that DOGE has to Social Security systems containing idiosyncratic information connected millions of Americans.
In February, the bureau announced plans to chopped 7,000 radical from the bureau payroll done layoffs, worker reassignments and an connection of voluntary separation agreements, arsenic portion of an intensified effort to shrink the size of the national workforce.
During the Wednesday hearing, Bisignano was called to reply for respective statements by Musk, including the billionaire's assertion connected a podcast earlier this twelvemonth that Social Security was “the biggest Ponzi strategy of each time.”
The SSA provides benefits to astir 72.5 cardinal people, including retirees and children.
In disagreeing with Musk, Bisignano repeated the phrase: “I hold it’s a committedness to pay.”
The Social Security Administration could person to chopped payment to recipients if Congress does not enactment to adequately money the program.
The go-broke day — oregon the day astatine which the programs volition nary longer person capable funds to wage afloat benefits — was precocious pushed up to opening successful 2034, alternatively of past year’s estimation of 2035, due to the fact that of caller authorities approved by Congress. Social Security ’s spot funds — which screen aged property and disablement recipients — would past lone beryllium capable to wage 81% of benefits, according to an annual study released past week.
The imaginable shortage has not been addressed successful the taxation chopped and spending measure presently making its mode done Congress.
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