Trump's Social Security nominee in coordination with DOGE

Not yet approved by the Senate, Frank Bisignano is already on board with DOGE's gutting of Social Security.

Mar 25, 2025

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Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Social Security Administration, Frank Bisignano, has already been coordinating with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on its work inside the agency, even though Bisignano has yet to be confirmed to the position by the Senate.

That was the allegation at Bisignano’s confirmation hearing today, made by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon). Bisignano confirmed to Wyden that he has spoken with Mike Russo, currently serving as the Chief Information Officer for the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Why does this matter? First, Bisignano hasn’t even been confirmed by the Senate but is already in coordination with Russo, who is working on behalf of Musk’s DOGE inside the SSA. Second, it shows that we can expect Bisignano to support DOGE’s efforts inside the agency, which are already resulting in major problems for Social Security beneficiaries, as the Washington Post reported today.

“You personally intervened to get key DOGE officials installed at the agency who have masterminded this shipwreck that we’re dealing with today,” Wyden alleged at today’s hearing.

“I have talked to Mike Russo and I’ve said that to your staff when they asked me,” Bisignano responded, claiming that he “was not involved in onboarding anybody in the middle of the night.”

That midnight onboarding session of DOGE employees is at the heart of a lawsuit against the SSA brought by the AFL-CIO. A former SSA staffer, Tiffany Flick, said she was shocked by the haphazard nature of DOGE’s infiltration of the agency, and concerned with the urgency with which they demanded the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans. It was Mike Russo who led the charge in getting access to that data, which is now the subject of a major court battle (and probably more to come).

More Doom reporting on Social Security

As Bisignano’s confirmation hearing was kicking off, a source inside the SSA messaged to let me know that Russo was out as the agency’s CIO, instead taking a role in the commissioner’s office. (See the photo above.) This makes sense — Bisignano said today he has known Russo for years, so a promotion for Russo. Replacing Russo as CIO is Scott Coulter, another DOGE detailee who came to the SSA from NASA.

Democrats are concerned that Bisignano — whose work in the private sector is synonymous with large staff cuts and other cost-saving measures at companies like Fiserv — will simply go along with DOGE’s gutting of the SSA. Republicans are… not.

Meanwhile, it’s getting hotter for Republicans as seniors and other Social Security beneficiaries make increasing noise at town halls and other events across the country. I spent the weekend with former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley as he spoke at events throughout Florida. You can read that story at Rolling Stone.

Democrats like Wyden worry that the ongoing dismantling of the SSA will result in fewer Americans being able to apply for and receive benefits — all under the guise of DOGE searching for supposed instances of fraud. Wyden noted that the agency’s retirement and disability programs have a “criminal fraud rate of 0.009 percent” and said that benefit cuts “will be draped in anti-fraud rhetoric.”

Three months into DOGE’s work inside the SSA and other agencies, the organization has yet to provide a single instance of actual fraud.

All this comes as some of DOGE’s access to the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans has been temporarily halted by a federal judge. But cuts to the agency are still ongoing, as are the departures of thousands of workers who took a DOGE buyout offer — all those folks are still getting paid by all of us to not work, as O’Malley repeatedly pointed out over the weekend.

If you or anyone you know has had trouble with receiving or accessing your Social Security benefits, please message me on Substack or on Signal at justinglawe.20.

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