Improving Social Security's Service to Victims of Identity Theft Act

Floor Speech

I certainly support H.R. 5345, the Improving Social Security's Service to Victims of Identity Theft Act, and of course, this passed the Ways and Means Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support.

I think having a single person to deal with at the Social Security office is common sense, and it will enable a victim to unravel their problems a lot sooner.

I just want to make note of the fact that, like some other Social Security bills that are under consideration today, this bill does not fix the crisis that this Trump administration has inflicted on Social Security when it comes to data privacy and customer service. Thumb drives went into our central data computers by DOGE employees, people who had not been confirmed by any Senate or anything else, and our Social Security information was captured--captured indeed--on thumb drives.

Democrats are going to continue to fight to protect Americans from having their personal Social Security information politicized or bought and sold to the highest bidder or their Social Security benefits put at risk. It is very, very frightening, so frightening, Mr. Speaker, that as soon as our current Treasury Secretary was brought into office, I wanted to know what DOGE was doing and where the information was going. I don't think we have had any conversations of any substance regarding the location of that data.

While this bill will have a modest but meaningful improvement to Social Security's customer service to the victims of identity theft, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote for this legislation, I want them to think more deeply about what we need to do in the atmosphere that we are in now to protect Americans' Social Security data that was mined by DOGE.

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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank my colleague for introducing this very important piece of legislation. I am always happy, as are other Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee, for any initiative to protect our data, to protect and secure it, to protect people's privacy, and to streamline their ability to resolve their problem.

I would hope that the authors of this legislation and the chairman of the committee would recognize that this will mean that they will have to stop taking the appropriations away from the Social Security Administration. We have shut down scores of offices. Many people have been fired, and that data and AI will not resolve the issue of having a single point of contact or a person to deal with.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. It did pass out of committee with a strong bipartisan vote. I hope that there is bipartisan interest in protecting our data which, like I said, has been DOGE'd and stored somewhere in the cloud. I hope that this urgency around protecting data will continue to be a priority of the committee.

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