Social Security, Buffeted by Turmoil, Awaits a New Leader

When the veteran of Wall Street Frank Bisignano passes in front of the congress on Tuesday while the choice of President Trump to guide the administration of social security, will face questions about how he would have suddenly managed an agency in the upset sockets.

In recent weeks, the billionaire Elon Musk has zeroed on the agency, which is accused of the work stopped but critical to provide retirement payments, survivors and disability to 73 million Americans every month.

Mr. Musk said that a large number of Americans is fraudulently set beneficial from the agency, A statement that experts say is obviously false. Beyond the objections of long -standing public employees pushed out of the agencyThe Department of Government efficiency of the Trump Administration has quickly moved to examine its internal databases, distributing at least 10 staff members inside, including A longtime confidant of Mr. Musk.

At the same time, the interim commissioner, Leland Dudek, a former medium level director, made a series of spine moves. Friday, he threatened to close the system Used throughout the work of the administration of social security in response to the order of a judge – just to take back hours later.

Churn has alarmed many older and more disabled Americans that rely on social security payments and are concerned that it could become more difficult to access them.

“It is a lot of confusion, frankly a lot of chaos,” said Bill Sweeney, vice -president for Aarp’s government affairs, who represents the older Americans. “People are terrified of what is happening with social security. There is a level of anxiety about our members that the congress, politicians and the administration must take seriously.”

Some democratic legislators claim to be so worried that the Trump administration is preparing the agency to fail a letter Sunday asks Mr. Bisignano to promise not to privatize any of his components.

“We are seriously worried about the current SSA trajectory and more specifically, that those accused of guiding it could profit from its destruction,” wrote the senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

It remains to be seen how Mr. Bisignano, who described himself An interview on CNBC As “basically a customs person”, he will sail in these questions.

Bisignano, more recently at the helm of the Fisser payments processing giant, has spent most of his career as a repairer for the main financial institutions that hope to improve their back-end processes. In the CNBC interview, he said he planned to bring the same approach to social security.

“The goal is not to touch the benefits,” he said. “The goal is to understand, there may be fraud, waste and abuse in there. And we build to find fraud, waste and abuse to live. It will be a technological story.”

Mr. Bisignano has held positions in various Wall Street tent companies, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and JpMorgan Chase. Him earned $ 100 million in 2017More than 2,000 times the average salary of the employee in his company at the time, First Data Corporation, who later merged with Fiserv.

A spokesman for Mr. Bisignano refused to comment. The press secretary of the White House, Karoline Leavitt, said in a declaration: “Any American performance that receive social security will continue to receive them. The only dog’s mission is to identify waste, fraud and abuse.”

Some of the over 50,000 employees of the agency hope that Mr. Bisignano will be able to restore a measure of certainty in their work of disbursement of about $ 1.6 trillion of retirement and disability performance every year. The members of the current and ex -staff say they know that the agency is not perfect, but that for years they have tried to help Americans better adhere to the benefits that more people raise poverty than any other federal program.

The changes that the Trump administration has made in the name of the risks of combat fraud already worsen customer service, according to several employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal concerns.

Americans who want to register for benefits or soon modify the information on their bank account will not be able to do it on the phone, for example. That change He will push more people to visit the offices on the field just as the agency is preparing to lose workers, a combination that could abruptly increase waiting times for an appointment.

During a Monday meeting held with supporters to face the changes of the phone, Dudek said that the rapid launch was at the behest of the White House, which required an urgent period of time. He said that such a change would generally imply much more planning, a process that would normally take two years instead of two weeks, according to a person who participated in the meeting.

Mr. Dudek recognized in an interview with Friday New York Times to have concerns about what would have happened if the rapid changes generated problems that compromised the agency. During the meeting he told supporters that if they had interrupted citizens to the point of being unsustainable, the agency would have made them go back.

In another case, the administration of social security briefly concluded a contract that had allowed parents of newborns in the Maine to sign their children for a social security number in the hospital, instead asking them to do it in person in an office. Dudek said he ordered the move after seeing Janet Mills, a democratic governor of Maine, collided with Mr. Trump in the White House. He quickly reversed that decision, as well as another to put an end to the relationships on electronic death in the state.

“I was popped up to the governor of Maine for not having been really friendly for the president,” Dudek said in the interview. “I ruined. I have to admit that I ruined.”

Due to the self-amateur mandate of Mr. Dudek, he said he didn’t expect to last much longer.

“I can’t imagine that the candidate would like to keep me after the way I did things here,” Dudek said, adding that he had not had contacts with Mr. Bisignano.

In the meantime, it is continuing to push the application of the administration of cost reductions, cutting the staff and preparing to reorganize the regional offices.

While the Trump administration has adopted an equally aggressive approach to bureaucracies throughout the government, the foray into social security involves singular political risks.

The program is the primary source of pension income for many American elderly people, a critical vote block. Trump has spent his entire career in politics promising to protect social security, even proposing to eliminate taxes on the benefits during the campaign. Some Republicans in Capitol Hill have moved to protect the local field offices from the closure, while the Democrats Try to take advantage Of the decision of their opposition to grasp what has long been the third track of American politics.

‘Needle in the hay pavilion’

The concerns are so acute that routine sobs – how to change the date of the payments or problems of the website – now seem many beneficiaries as signs of deeper problems.

Michelle Ouellette, a 67 -year -old former lawyer in California, required online benefits in January without success. After more than a month, he then tried several telephone lines, finally reaching someone.

“If it was so difficult for me to get help before Trump will cut social security, how will it be after?” he said. “I assume that Trump wants to make him so heavy that you don’t worry about subscribing.”

In social security offices across the country, workers claim to attend a considerable increase in concerns such as that of Ms. Ouellette – and in more visitors overall they are worried about the changes to come. In recent weeks, employees have declared that they had heard the beneficiaries repeat the statements on the fraud or express fear for the Musk team that sees their personal data.

This is adding to stress and workload for a staff that the Trump administration plans to reduce 12 percent.

The employees of the field offices are already thin. Rafendications specialists often have to wear many hats: working on the front window and responding to phones, all while completing their assigned workloads. Years can be needed to accelerate on complex systems and policies, a key reason why friction is particularly problematic for the agency, workers say.

Chris Delaney, an official for a federal workers’ union who also works as a specialist in the claims to Hudson, New York, said there was a “disturbing cloud” that looms on his office.

“It seems that people who call the blows have no idea how the field office actually is, or they only want that all of us are massacred,” he said.

Under the suite of changes is the fixation of Mr. Musk on the idea that the deaths and immigrants without documents fraudulently claim the benefits of social security. Experts say Dead people or immigrants without documents, which in fact often pay taxes In the system without ever claiming benefits, improving his fiscal health.

However, Mr. Musk’s team gave priority as one of his first projects that marks the dead people in a crucial database if they are listed as 120 years or more, together with other criteria. The team engineers are working with the public career employees for this effort, which aims to free the defective record database and does not require you to influence anyone who receives payments, according to people who are familiar with work, who have not been authorized to talk about it publicly.

Separately, Antonio Gracias, a private equity investor who is a dear friend of Mr. Musk, and Doge Aides also requested information on the fact that immigrants without documents received benefits, according to these people.

A federal judge chatted the fraud work of Team Musk in an order that has held access to sensitive personal information. “He launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete awareness that the needle is actually in the haystack,” wrote the judge Ellen Lipton Hollander.

The order at some point last week pushed Mr. Dudek to threaten to close the system that the agency suffered, even if he later retired. Mr. Musk team members no longer have access to the sensitive data of the agencies, he said.

Other initiatives by Mr. Dudek and Doge are still proceeding. During the Biden administration, the agency said that it would no longer have retained a monthly advantage to remember excess payments – which are often caused by agency errors – but instead retain a maximum of 10 percent until the balance is refunded. The goal was to leave the Americans with access to what is often a critical source of money. Mr. Dudek reversed the policy and resumed to withdraw the entire check until the excess is reimbursed.

Dudek said he had in mind the interest of the social security system, of which his family was a beneficiary of when he was a child.

“Unless you use brute force in the government, you stall,” Dudek said.

Nicholas Neham, Ryan Mac AND That is Murray Contributed relationships.