Bisignano Confirmed as Social Security Administration Chief
May 22, 2025, 3:34 PM
Bisignano Confirmed as Social Security Administration Chief
Frank Bisignano, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Social Security Administration, was confirmed in that role by the Senate on May 6 in a 53-47 vote.
By:Ted Godbout
Frank Bisignano, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Social Security Administration, was confirmed in that role by the Senate on May 6 in a 53-47 vote.
Bisignano is the former CEO of the Fiserv Corporation, a Fortune 500 payment and financial services technology company. He also served in executive positions at JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup, as well as co-chairman of the New Jersey GOP Executive Roundtable.
He will replace former SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley, who resigned at the end of November to run for chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Leland Dudek, who has been serving as acting commissioner of the SSA since February.
Bisignano takes over SSA after the department has been under intense pressure and backlash by lawmakers and retirees alike for ongoing issues and following the purported actions by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as well as the acting director that sought to implement staffing cuts, customer service changes and measures to address alleged fraud.
During his confirmation hearing by the Senate Finance Committee in late March, several senators expressed concern about the state of customer service at the agency. For instance, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who is chairman of the committee, said that beneficiaries “are still waiting too long on hold” and it takes “too long for an initial disability decision” to process.
Similarly, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said that he had a member of his staff call the SSA customer service number to test its responsiveness. He explained that the call was disconnected twice after about two minutes, and then a third time after waiting on hold for about an hour. Bisignano responded that he would aim to get the average wait time to under a minute and to decrease the erroneous payment rate.
Other senators questioned Bisignano about how he would implement recent policy changes given SSA’s announcement that it would be laying off 7,000 of its staff and closing many of its offices, which (with respect to the office closures) the SSA claims were false reports, saying that it has not announced the permanent closure of any local field office.
What’s more, while the SSA announced in March that it would require identity verification for benefit claims and direct deposit changes to be made online or in-person and no longer over the phone, the department has since backtracked on those changes.
Several senators also asked about comments from Trump and Elon Musk about fraud rates at SSA, which some Democratic senators described as inflated and calculated to undermine public support for the retirement program.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who is the ranking member of the committee and former chairman, said that recent remarks by Trump that “millions” of dead people were receiving benefits “are lies.” He said that misrepresentations about fraud at SSA are “setting the stage for cuts to Social Security benefits that are going to be draped in anti-fraud rhetoric,” and are a “prelude to privatizing Social Security and handing it over to private equity.” Bisignano, meanwhile, said that he had “never thought about privatizing” Social Security.
In addition to addressing those issues, Bisignano will now be in charge of overseeing implementation of the Social Security Fairness Act, which was enacted earlier this year and will provide nearly $15 billion in retroactive payments to more than 2.2 million individuals affected by the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset.