The Senate voted on Tuesday to confirm Frank Bisignano as commissioner of the Social Security Administration, which has been thrown into turmoil after a three-month stretch steered largely by Elon Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency.
President Trump’s nominee was confirmed by a vote of 53 to 47, as had been expected, and was split along party lines.
Mr. Bisignano, a former Wall Street executive, will take the helm at a critical juncture. A series of recent changes led by DOGE, from deep job cuts to exploiting sensitive databases, have rattled current and former employees, former commissioners of both parties, beneficiaries and their advocates. They have been alarmed by the fast and seemingly haphazard moves, as well as the departure from established protocols that protect beneficiaries’ privacy and ensure they continue to receive payments.
The question is whether Mr. Bisignano, 65, the former chief of the payments giant Fiserv, will steady the agency, which delivers retirement, disability and survivor payments to 73 million Americans every month.
Senator Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho who leads the Finance Committee, urged his colleagues last week to vote in favor of Mr. Bisignano, emphasizing his decades of experience leading large financial institutions, and noting his commitment to improving customer service at the agency.
But Democratic lawmakers remained unconvinced, and they continued to raise many of the same concerns they grilled Mr. Bisignano about during his three-hour Senate confirmation hearing in late March: Would he give into calls by DOGE that could further hobble the program, or will he act independently in the best interest of the agency and its beneficiaries?
Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, spoke against his confirmation on Monday, with concerns that Mr. Bisignano would simply “rubber-stamp” Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Musk’s agenda. “He’ll let them keep slashing services and threatening benefits,” she said from the Senate floor. “That will hurt people everywhere — from seniors who count on their monthly checks right now, to the parents of kids with a disability supported by Social Security, to every American paying into the program now for later down the line.”
Mr. Bisignano, who is viewed as a turnaround expert, has held positions at several of Wall Street’s marquee firms, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. He earned $100 million in 2017, more than 2,000 times the average employee’s salary at his firm at the time, First Data Corporation, which later merged with Fiserv.
Despite calling himself “fundamentally a DOGE person” in a February interview on CNBC, Mr. Bisignano appeared to distance himself from the recent changes occurring inside the Social Security Administration during his March nomination hearing.
That characterization was challenged at the hearing by Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, who produced a statement that he said was from a whistle-blower. Mr. Wyden, citing the letter, said that Mr. Bisignano had personally intervened to get key DOGE officials involved at the agency, including one who was approved in the middle of the night. Senate Republicans quickly dismissed those concerns, stating he addressed the allegations during the hearing and in writing.
“He has stated that he does not currently have a role at the S.S.A. and was not part of the decision-making process led by the acting commissioner, Lee Dudek, about S.S.A. operations, personnel or management,” Senator Crapo said in a statement.
For Mr. Dudek, the appointment caps a chaotic run, which began when Mr. Musk’s DOGE team arrived at the agency.
A former fraud adviser in middle management for the Social Security Administration, Mr. Dudek had an unlikely rise to the role of acting commissioner, overseeing an agency of roughly 57,0000 thousand employees. Mr. Dudek was given the position when Michelle King, the previous acting commissioner, left abruptly after refusing to give DOGE representatives access to sensitive private data about millions of Americans.
During Mr. Dudek’s short tenure, the Social Security Administration announced plans to cut 12 percent, or 7,000 employees, from its staff and issued stark new policies that were quickly rolled back — all while field offices experienced more technology interruptions and a rise in phone wait times.
In April, the agency began to use some of the agency’s closely guarded data systems as a tool for immigration enforcement, a move that is likely the Trump administration’s most controversial for the S.S.A., and steers it away from its mandate as a social insurance program.
Over the past two months, there were several other dizzying moves. At one point, in response to a judge’s order, Mr. Dudek threatened to shut down the system used for all of the Social Security Administration’s work — only to back down hours later. He also cut contracts to the state of Maine in retaliation for a spat its governor got into with Mr. Trump. That move was walked back as well.
Employees inside the agency have described the environment as chaotic, and morale, which was already strained because of heavy work loads spread among a thin staff, as low.
The American Federation of Government Employees General Committee, and its local unit representing Social Security workers, said in a statement that they “appreciate Mr. Bisignano’s vow to ‘run the agency in the right fashion,’ as long as that means a course correction from January.”
