WATCH: ‘Protect and preserve’: The Social Security commissioner’s plan to save your benefits

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Tuesday, March 24, 2026

OPINION:

When most Americans think about dealing with government agencies, such as the Social Security Administration, certain things tend to come to mind: lack of efficiency, waste, long wait times and headaches.

Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, however, is trying to change that perception. Through efforts to make the SSA a digital-first agency, he is working on bettering the experience for all Americans, bringing the agency into the modern era.

For more from Bisignano, tune into Politically Unstable with Washington Times Commentary Editor Kelly Sadler.

[SADLER] I’m going to start with probably the hardest question, but the question that is on everyone’s minds when they think of Social Security. The president said that he is going to preserve the program, that there will be no cuts to it, that everyone will receive their benefits. But we know it will become insolvent if nothing happens by the year 2032. I mean, we’re in 2026, so future generations are worried that they’re paying into a system that they’re not going to receive any benefits from.

What are you doing within the administration to help preserve this program? And will future generations get the benefits that they’re paying in for?

[BISIGNANO] Well, the president has made it very clear from the start, protect and preserve. And as late as the State of the Union, he was very clear about saying protect and preserve. And so as I took the job as commissioner, it became very clear the first steps were to make it an efficient, well-running organization. And that meant eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse. It also meant creating experience for the Americans that would cause them to look at Social Security as a modern-day environment, and building a pristine control environment.

We’ve saved billions of dollars on erroneous payments that we’re stopping. So, eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse, create an efficient, well-run organization, and protect and preserve is the mantra, and it will happen.

[SADLER] When Elon Musk first came in with the DOGE effort, there was a lot of people on the left that were nervous — that when he’s going into the Social Security Administration, sensitive data might be leaked or compromised, that they were in disbelief how many dead people were getting benefits, people that were aged like 135 years old getting benefits.

Since Musk left the administration, what are you doing — you talked about waste, fraud, and abuse — to clean up the systems? I know you come from the private sector, so I’m sure when you came into the U.S. federal government you were shocked at how antiquated things were and how inefficiently everything was being run.

[BISIGNANO] I thought the first important thing to do was protection of PII. I mean, it’s the number one — if you think about Social Security, we have over 330 million Americans on our rolls. It’s the number one identifier for every American. And we like to talk about it as 74 million Americans collecting benefits, but we really are serving 330 million Americans, right? If you think about the amount of transactions we do, the fact that we have 100 million digital users — we’re the largest digital financial system out there.

[SADLER] So when you say digital users, what do you mean?

[BISIGNANO] I love to explain it. And I think everyone needs to have one, including yourself. What’s called the My Social Security account, which allows you to transact with us if you need information from us. If you need to do anything, you can do it online and not come in. As a matter of fact, if you look at our transaction volumes, you’ll see over 600 million transactions on our SSA website, and you’ll only see 30 million visitors to field offices. Now, we built this out. When I got there, it was down 29 hours a week.

[SADLER] Oh, wow.

[BISIGNANO] A website, there to serve the American public, with service hours. And now, within weeks, we changed that to 24/7.

[SADLER] So what kind of transactions do you do on that website?

[BISIGNANO] A lot of people want to pull their future benefit statement from them. People can be able to access changes to their accounts, beneficiaries, their income verification that they can print out at home and not have to come to the field office. And we’ll be rolling out a mobile app now. So we’ve added tens of millions of users since we’ve been here. We’ve definitely made it a feature of being open always. And then we’ve brought in tons of phone automation.

So if you would think about how clients interact with us, you’d say 80-plus percent on the web, call it 15% on the phones, and 5% at the field office. And people talk about the field offices, and we’re continuing to educate on how people can interact. We like to say we are going to meet clients where they want to be met. If you want to come to a field office, we haven’t shut one field office. We will be there for you.

[SADLER] I love that you said clients, because we’re all American citizens — we’re all clients of your agency. But usually you’re not treated that way when you’re interacting with a government agency. I mean, I think of the IRS and the headaches and the calls that go unanswered and the phones that don’t get picked up. I love that you’re kind of transforming the agency into the modern-day era.

[BISIGNANO] Well, as you know, I’m going to have to respond because, as the CEO of the IRS, we are answering the phone faster than ever. Single-digit wait times. Our refunds are going out faster than ever. If you do direct deposits, within nine days on average of your return. And returns are bigger than ever, thanks to One Beautiful Bill.

[SADLER] Okay, well, you’re going to have a busy season. We’re in March. It’s going to be April. A lot of people will be filing their returns. A lot of people are unaware of what was in this Big, Beautiful Bill. I don’t believe Congress did a great job in selling it. And it was rushed through, then we went into a government shutdown.

So what can the American people expect from this year’s return? What enhancements were made to Social Security in particular that you can claim this year that you couldn’t do last year?

[BISIGNANO] Well, you know, we’re actually saying right this moment — as I said, we compare tax season year over year, day by day, hour by hour. You know, I like to say we count everything. And that’s part of the governance structures that we have in both these organizations to ensure we’re delivering for the American public.