By Tim Reid and Nathan Layne
(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to oversee the Social Security Administration said on Tuesday he would review the agency’s computer systems after aides to tech billionaire Elon Musk were given access to SSA’s massive databases.
Frank Bisignano, a veteran Wall Street CEO, also said he would be willing to reverse decisions made at SSA by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has targeted the agency for significant cuts to staff.
“If something was inappropriate, it would be changed,” Bisignano told a Senate confirmation hearing.
A federal judge said last week that the SSA likely violated privacy laws by giving DOGE aides “unbridled access” to the data of millions of Americans and ordered a halt to further record sharing.
Bisignano said he would conduct a full review of the databases.
The SSA, which pays out $1.4 trillion in benefits to 73 million elderly and disabled Americans annually, is cutting staff, closing field offices and restricting what recipients can do over the phone as part of Trump’s push to reduce the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy.
The agency has announced a goal to cut staff by 7,000 to 50,000, rattling employees and advocates who fear the cuts could slow or interrupt the payment of benefits.
“Morale is in the tank. It’s just chaos and anxiety,” said Rich Couture, an SSA attorney and a union representative at the agency.
Bisignano, CEO of Fiserv, a global financial technology company, said he envisioned artificial intelligence helping SSA workers do their jobs more efficiently as well as to identify how many workers the agency needs.
“I know we talk a lot about the staffing level here, but we don’t really know what the right staffing level is,” Bisignano said.
Senator Peter Welch, a Democrat, asked Bisignano if he would reduce staff in the seemingly indiscriminate way that DOGE has driven the firing of workers across government so far, including laying off people in some cases without understanding their function at an agency.
“No,” Bisignano replied.
TIMELINE FOR CHANGE SLASHED
Musk, who is overseeing the government overhaul, has falsely claimed that millions of deceased Americans are still receiving Social Security checks and that the system is rife with fraud. Trump, who has repeatedly pledged not to cut Social Security benefits, has also said it is beset with fraud and waste.
Lee Dudek, the SSA’s acting commissioner, told senior staff and advocate groups in a conference call on Monday that 3,000 staff at SSA have already taken a buyout offered by the Trump administration or early retirement, according to a person on the call.
During the call, Dudek was asked about a planned reduction in phone services, set to begin on March 31. According to an internal March 13 memo from acting deputy commissioner Doris Diaz seen by Reuters, the change could result in an additional 75,000 to 85,000 claimants visiting SSA field offices every week. There will also be “longer wait times and processing time.”
Dudek acknowledged on the call that such a major change would usually take two years to implement, but he had been told by the White House to push through the new system in just two weeks.
The agency has been under strain for several years, in part because of a significant increase in claimants since the 1990s.
Some Republicans have in the past called for privatizing Social Security. Advocates for retirees and the disabled say privatizing the agency could result in reduced benefit payments to millions of Americans who rely on them.
During his confirmation hearing, Bisignano said he had not spoken with anyone about the possibility of privatizing the agency.
Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo, a Republican, called suggestions that Social Security benefits could be cut “scare tactics” by his Democratic colleagues and the media.
“The bottom line is the president of the United States has said very clearly that we are not going to cut Social Security benefits,” Crapo said.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in New York; Additional reporting by Tim Reid; Editing by Ross Colvin, Mark Porter and David Gregorio)
