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Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise to urge my colleagues to reject Frank Bisignano's nomination to be the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration.

The first 100 days of Donald Trump's second term have been filled with chaos and cruelty that have reached into every corner of American life. Perhaps no development has been as alarming to the elderly and other concerned Americans as the attacks of the Trump administration on Social Security.

Social Security has long been considered the third rail of American politics. It is simply too important to American workers who spent their lives paying into the program out of every paycheck for politicians to idly propose major changes that would harm the earned benefits of Americans. Yet Donald Trump and his billionaire allies have decided that they are simply immune to the concerns of American citizens. They are about to find out just how wrong they are.

Over the past several months, the Trump administration has attacked nearly every aspect of Social Security. First, it was Americans' sensitive private information protected by Social Security. Then it was scheduling field offices for closure across the country. Then it was eliminating phone service for many Social Security claims.

Worst of all, there is a widespread view among Donald Trump's top lieutenants, from Elon Musk to Howard Lutnick, that Social Security is just chock-full of fraudsters. The whiplash caused by day after day of all the disruption and chaos has resulted in bedlam at Social Security, and, in my view, it has put the earned benefits of millions of Americans in jeopardy.

Mr. President, I wish I could stand in the Senate today and say the cavalry is coming; the chaos will soon be over. But I am afraid that is not the case.

If Frank Bisignano is confirmed, he is going to bring more of the chaos, lies, and callous disregard for Americans who count on Social Security that the Trump administration has brought to the Agency through DOGE. That was front and center when the nominee came before the Finance Committee in March.

That was front and center when the nominee came before the Finance Committee in March. Just before the hearing, I received a very valuable statement from a whistleblower, a former senior official at Social Security. The whistleblower stated that Mr. Bisignano had been deeply involved in the DOGE chaos at Social Security. The whistleblower said:

I am concerned that the President's nominee to be Commissioner of Social Security, Frank Bisignano, will not temper the crisis but rather bolster it.

The allegations presented by the whistleblower center around Elon Musk's DOGE and their attempts to access Social Security databases that hold reams of personal, sensitive information of every single American. These databases represent the Fort Knox of Americans' personal lives-- bank account numbers, home addresses, work history, salaries, medical records. Trump's DOGE cronies wanted unfettered access to the databases. They are still fighting for that as we speak, after they have been blocked in court.

According to the whistleblower, Mr. Bisignano personally appointed his Wall Street friend Michael Russo to be the leader of the DOGE team at Social Security. According to the Washington Post, which independently verified the whistleblower's account:

After Russo had trouble persuading the career staff to expedite the hiring of a DOGE software engineer named Akash Bobba, ``Mr. Bisignano personally intervened . . . to instruct Social Security Administration staff to onboard Mr. Bobba and give him immediate access'' to the agency's private data systems. Bisignano did not address what role he may have had in helping Mr. Bobba gain access. Bobba and Russo did not respond to requests for comment.

That is a direct quote from the Washington Post newspaper.

My view is this is a remarkable statement that ought to alarm all Americans.

I asked Mr. Bisignano about his affiliations with DOGE before, during, and after his hearing. Each time, he disavowed the whistleblower's allegations. I viewed that moment as an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to come together, as we have done so often on a bipartisan basis, and get to the bottom of this before the Finance Committee reported the nominee to the full Senate. Unfortunately, my Republican colleagues didn't see it that way.

I started by asking the chairman of the Finance Committee for a bipartisan meeting with this whistleblower to evaluate their claims and seek additional evidence to determine if the nominee lied to members of the committee. The majority refused to hold that meeting or postpone the committee vote unless we agreed to hand over any information received from the whistleblower directly to the nominee and the Trump administration.

I just want to be clear on this point. This is a violation of Whistleblowing 101. That is because it allows the government to identify the individual blowing the whistle through a process of elimination. It jeopardizes the whistleblower's anonymity and safety, and I am going to have no part of that as the cochair of the Whistleblower Caucus with my friend Chuck Grassley. There is a long bipartisan tradition in the Senate of treating whistleblowers with great respect and deep care.

I am here to warn America now about a dangerous erosion of congressional oversight that will have a chilling effect on public servants who are thinking about coming forward and blowing the whistle when government Agencies are acting against the interests of the Americans they serve.

Mr. President, I fear that the events I have just described are going to cause public servants who want to do the right thing to put away their whistles. That is bad for good government, it is bad for congressional oversight of laws we delegated to the executive branch through our constitutional authority, and it is bad for Americans who expect their government to be responsive and transparent.

The double whammy of disrespect for Social Security and the Americans who count on its earned benefits, along with the culture of secrecy and lies that exist throughout the Trump administration, is a bad omen for what is ahead for Social Security.

Even if the Republican Party decides to pretend none of this is happening, Americans from Portland, OR, to Portland, ME--all of them-- are speaking out, literally, this weekend.

All Americans should be concerned that a nominee for a position of public trust like Commissioner of Social Security is accused of lying about his actions at the Agency, and that efforts to bring this important information to light are now being thwarted.

If Mr. Bisignano can get away with lying before he is even in place as Commissioner, who knows what else he will be able to get away with once he is in office? He could lie by denying any American who paid their Social Security taxes the benefits they have earned, claiming some phony pretense. He could lie about how sensitive personal information is being mishandled or, worse, exploited for commercial use.

I will close with this. I am going to have a lot more to say about the nominee and the Trump administration's disastrous record on Social Security. Today, I urge my colleagues to vote no on the cloture vote coming up to bring sanity back to Social Security and, in my view, safeguard the Senate's long and bipartisan tradition as a safe haven for government whistleblowers who want to speak truth to power.

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Mr. WYDEN. To respond to my colleague, who I have worked together with so often in such a positive way, this is an area where we just have a very significant difference of opinion.

The whistleblower was a senior official who worked for years at Social Security. I believe the information given was credible, documented now by the Washington Post reporter who surveyed some of the resources and the individuals who could confirm it.

What I want to do, because I have worked with my colleague so often, is to have a bipartisan process to resolve the matter. What the majority said was, if we were going to have a bipartisan process, we would take the information that the whistleblower gave and we would give it to the administration and anybody else. And it would breach the essence of Whistleblowing 101--what we have worked on for so long.

So I want it understood that I still wish we were doing this in a bipartisan way, as I have done for so long as the cochair of the Whistleblower Caucus. That would resolve it, and it would be done with the tradition of protecting whistleblowers, as we have done so often over the years and especially in the Finance Committee.

What I think is unfortunate is this is breaking the tradition that the Finance Committee has always done in terms of protecting whistleblowers, doing it in a fair way, and working together. I think we will regret it.

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