The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Frank Vignano as the Social Security Agency's commissioner.
President Trump's candidate was confirmed by votes of 53-47.
Former Wall Street executive, Visignano will be at the helm at the crucial time. A series of recent changes led by Doge have rattled current and former employees, former commissioners, beneficiaries and their supporters, from deep job seekers to misuse the sensitive database. They are surprised by the fasting and seemingly accidental movements and their departure from established protocols that protect the privacy of their beneficiaries and continue to receive payments.
The question is whether Visignano, former chief of payment giant Fizeb, will stabilize the agency that provides payments for retirement, disability and survivors to 73 million Americans each month.
Sen. Mike Krapo, an Idaho Republican who leads the Finance Committee, last week urged his colleagues to vote for Visignano, highlighting his decades of experience leading large financial institutions and noting his commitment to improving customer service at his agency.
But Democrats remained unconvinced, continuing to raise many of the same concerns that burned Mr. Visignano during the three-hour Senate confirmation hearing in late March.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat in Massachusetts, opposed Monday's confirmation, with concerns that Visignano would simply “rubber stamp” the Trump and Musk agenda. “He will keep them slashing their services and keeping their threatening profits,” she said from the Senate floor. “It's going to hurt people everywhere — from seniors who rely on monthly checks now to parents of children with disabilities supported by Social Security, to all Americans who pay for later programs.”
Considered a turnaround expert, Visignano has held positions at several Wall Street marquee companies, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. He won $100 million in 2017. More than 2,000 times the salary of his company, First Data Corporation, at the time, employees more than 2,000 times more than 2,000 times more than it was later merged with Fiserv.
Despite calling him “basically a Doge guy” in a February interview with CNBC, Visignano appeared to be distanced from recent changes that occurred within the Social Security Agency during the March nomination hearing.
That characterization was challenged at a hearing by Oregon Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden, who issued a statement saying he was from a whistleblower. Citing the letter, Wyden said Mr. Visignano personally intervened to acquire key staff involved with the agency, including those approved in the middle of the night. Senate Republicans quickly dismissed these concerns and said he worked on the claims in hearings and in writing.
“He said he is currently not playing a role in the SSA and was not part of the decision-making process led by proxy committee member Lee Dudek on the operation, personnel or management of the SSA,” Senator Crapo said in a statement.
In Dudek's case, the appointment caps a chaotic run. This began when Musk's Doge team arrived at the agency.
Dudek, a former fraud advisor for Social Security Administration, has not risen much to the role of proxy committee, overseeing the agency's agency for around 570 million employees. Dudek was given the position when former representative Michelle King suddenly left after denied Doge representatives accessing sensitive private data about millions of Americans.
During Dudek's brief tenure, the Social Security Administration announced plans to cut 12% (7,000 employees) from staff and issued a strict new policy that was quickly rolled back.
In April, government agencies began using some of the agency's closely guarded data systems as tools for immigration enforcement. This is the most controversial move for the Trump administration for SSA and will avoid it from its mission as a social insurance program.
Over the past two months, there have been several other eye-opening moves. At one point, in response to the judge's order, Dudek threatened to shut down the system used for all social security office work. He also cut contracts to Maine in retaliation for the governor's spitting in with Trump. That movement has returned too.
Employees in the agency describe the environment as a chaotic morale. This is already tense as it expands among thin staff.
The General Committee of the U.S. Government Employees Federation and local units representing Social Security Workers said in a statement that “we are grateful for Visignano's pledge to “run the institution the right way” as far as it implies a course revision starting in January.”
Alexandra Bellson Reports of contributions.
