Pop quiz: Without Googling, can you name the most recent commissioner of Social Security? Can you name any commissioner of Social Security, ever?
Until recently, even the deepest of Washington insiders would have struggled to answer this question. Leading the Social Security Administration (SSA) has long ranked as one of the most obscure big jobs in the federal government. No one seemed to care much about who ran an agency that dispensed $1.6 trillion in benefits last year—comprising almost one-quarter of the federal budget—to more than 70 million seniors and disabled Americans, many of whom rely on those payments to make ends meet. Put simply, no part of our government has such a direct, people-facing role as the SSA, and in no big department has the leader been so faceless.
But suddenly, the question of who runs Social Security matters big time. For years, Congress members and senators have been getting an angry earful from folks who get stuck on hold listening to elevator music when they seek help from the SSA’s 1-800 number. Now, their frustration has reached a whole new level as voters fret that big reductions in manpower and funding will make the giant operation’s already-poor service even worse.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is targeting the SSA as an alleged hotbed of fraud and waste. In February, acting director Leland Dudek announced the elimination of 7,500 of the agency’s 57,000 jobs, and the SSA stirred further outrage when it announced a plan to slash the number of number of field offices. The Washington Post first reported that SSA also proposed shrinking access to the phone service used by over 40% of recipients, then updated its scoop to maintain that the outcry from the public and in the halls of Congress pushed the agency to scale back the plan. Musk’s DOGE heightened the tension by seeking sensitive personal data about individual recipients from the SSA, a campaign stymied for now by decree of a federal judge.
Frank Bisignano’s nomination is the new flashpoint
A fierce debate is now raging on whether control over the SSA’s bureaucracy will fall to what Democrats see as the destructive Musk marauders, or get a much-needed, business-style restructuring courtesy of President Trump’s nominee to lead the agency. That battle exploded into public view when Trump’s choice, corporate superstar and Fortune 500 CEO Frank Bisignano, testified before the Senate Finance Committee on March 25th.
Bisignano appears to be a supremely qualified pick, sporting a resume loaded with examples of success at the intersection of technology and finance. He built the Global Transactions unit at Citigroup into a highly profitable franchise for Sandy Weill. He went on to serve as co-COO at JPMorgan Chase under Jamie Dimon, then rescued troubled payments processor First Data. In 2019, he sold First Data to Fiserv, and became CEO of the acquiring company, which is now a colossus boasting $20 billion in revenue and a capitalization, as of market close last Friday, of $121 billion.
Only three CEOs that headed S&P 100 companies have ever gone on to lead one of the two-dozen “level one” federal departments (of which SSA is one): Rex Tillerson, formerly of ExxonMobil, at the State Department during Trump’s first term; and Hank Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs, at Treasury during George W. Bush’s second term. In the U.S., Bisignano oversees the ferrying of more consumer payments than any other executive by far; the SSA is in a very similar business, and it appears could benefit greatly from the efficiencies Bisignano pioneered at Fiserv. The wonder is that Bisignano, a successful financial mogul at the top of his game, would want the SSA job at all.
In their statements and questioning in last week’s hearing, Democratic senators insisted that whatever the nominee’s skills, Musk and DOGE will really be running SSA—with Bisignano as a mere front man. Declared Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), “[Bisignano] is a puppet behind the chaos in the Social Security Administration.” Wyden stated that a “whistleblower” had come forward to accuse Bisignano of “personally approving several key DOGE hires at the agency… and getting frequent briefings,” adding “you personally intervened to get key DOGE officials installed at the agency who have engineered the shipwreck we’re dealing today.”
Outside the committee, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer compared confirming Bisignano to “hiring an arsonist to run a fire station…you vote yes on Mr. Bisignano and you’re voting to cut Social Security.”
A corporate restructuring-style vision for Social Security
During his testimony, Bisignano stressed his experience operating a business that handles many multiple times the customer interactions that flood the SSA. “Today, the SSA according to public information gets 80 million phone calls a year. And in the organization that I currently run, we do 400 million phone calls a year,” he noted. “I see phone technology as an opportunity, but at some point people want to talk to a live agent. So we have to provide that.”
Bisignano then described one of his aggressive goals. He stated that the average wait time for the SSA 800 number is “not nearly acceptable” and that the delay explains why “46% of the phone calls never get answered.” as fed-up folks hang up. (On its website, the SSA cites average wait times of 21.2 minutes, and an “answer rate” of 47%.) He predicted that “we could get that [wait time] to under a minute,” and promised to summon artificial intelligence for prompting the agents with needed information so that they can cover more calls in a given period. He emphasized that Fiserv’s been deploying AI “before it was called AI”; indeed, the payments giant is harnessing the technology to reduce cardholder disputes and combat fraud. “I believe technology is a great enabler,” he testified. “We do not need to spend lots of money on many of these things. We could do them with the basic technology that’s out there.”
Bisignano referenced an SSA inspector general report that put the “error rate” for improper payments at around 1%, and stated that the number is “completely too high for the function we’re talking about.” He also said the six-month “standard” in assessing disability claims is much too long. His solution: Such disciplines from his experience in payments as “root cause analysis” and “process engineering.” SSA needs to “understand where we are creating backlogs,” Bisignano said. “I don’t believe it’s going to take years. There are many things we can solve in year one, and that would be my expectation.” As for the error rate at Fiserv, Bisignano claimed it’s “about five decimal points to the right” of SSA, and that that’s where the agency should be.
The nominee frequently returned to the promise of AI. “I think it’s one of the greatest efficiency opportunities we have,” he intoned. “That doesn’t mean we use it for answering the phone. It means we use it to learn to do our work better.” He added that SSA can achieve huge improvements working within something resembling its current budget.
The question is whether given the DOGE offensive, Bisignano will get the dollars needed to enact what amounts to a daring restructuring of a revered but lumbering organization.
The Democrats extensively questioned Bisignano on DOGE’s potential influence at SSA, and he showed every sign of striving to go his own way. Asked by Wyden whether he’d intervened to bring DOGE officials to SSA, or been involved with “any operations, personnel or management decisions with those working as Social Security,” Bisignano replied, “No, sir,” adding later in his testimony, “I was not involved in onboarding anyone in the middle of the night.”
Particularly revealing was an exchange with Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt). “You’ll be under the thumb of DOGE,” declared Welch. “Keep Musk the hell out of Social Security!” Bisignano fired back, “The president has made it clear that DOGE is there for input but the agency heads make their own decisions.”
Bisignano’s implied message is that any DOGE team will work for him in a crusade to streamline the SSA, and provide private-sector-worthy customer service. Going forward, the high drama at this once-sleepy, mostly overlooked bureaucracy could prove the essential test case in whether the Trump agenda makes government far more efficient, or just unleashes the wrecking ball the Democrats say is coming. If Bisignano and his like get their way, it will be about rebuilding better, not tearing down.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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