President Donald Trump‘s nominee to run the Social Security Administration, Frank Bisignano, was questioned during a Tuesday Senate hearing about customer service improvements, erroneous payments and the potential privatization of the agency. 

A New Career Path

Asked where he stood on Elon Musk's efforts via DOGE to cut costs at the agency by firing workers and closing offices, Bisignano replied, “My objective is to come in and motivate the workforce we have … to be able to get our job right the first time for the American public.”

During Tuesday’s hearing, Bisignano said he plans to use artificial intelligence to identify and weed out fraud, waste and abuse within the system. He repeatedly referred to the current 1% payment error rate, which he says is “five decimal places too high.”

Meanwhile, A Growing Crisis At SSA

"The federal agency that delivers $1.5 trillion a year in earned benefits to 73 million retired workers, their survivors and poor and disabled Americans is engulfed in crisis, further undermining its ability to provide reliable and quick service to vulnerable customers,” wrote the outlet.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich contends the SSA is not in crisis because it's running out of money and that raising the cap slightly on income subject to Social Security taxes would put the agency "in good shape forever."

Administrative costs, which Musk has bashed as wasteful, comprise only 0.5%, which Reich says are "the lowest by far of any large program in the public or private sector."

Though Trump swore he'd never touch Social Security, by empowering Musk, who has called the SSA a "Ponzi scheme," some say the buck stops with the president.

"What's going on is the destruction of the agency from the inside out, and it's accelerating," Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told the Washington Post. "What they're doing now is unconscionable."

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