After being nominated for the role by President Donald Trump in January, Frank Bisignano was officially appointed as the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) at the beginning of May. Under the leadership of the new SSA Commissioner, the agency has been making impressive progress with regards to the claims impacted by the recent Social Security Fairness Act. At present, over 99% of claims have already been processed, and the agency had been able to streamline a bulk of the claims through the use of automation.
A fraction of the impacted cases had to be adjusted manually by an SSA employee due to its complex nature, however, even these cases appear to have been updated relatively speedily.
Here are some key moments from the Social Security and Work & Welfare Joint Subcommittee Hearing with Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano.
Social Security Commissioner streamlines Fairness Act claims
On January 5th, 2025, the Social Security Fairness Act was signed into law and as a result, the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO) were effectively repealed. Due to the provisions of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO), many public sector employees — such as teachers, firefighters, and certain federal employees — had their benefits reduced or eliminated due to other pensions being provided to them by their employers.
Now that the Social Security Fairness Act has been signed into effect, a cohort of around 3 million of the public sector employees who previously had their benefits reduced or eliminated under the WEP or the GPO will now have their claims adjusted since their full benefits have now been restored to them. Whilst the vast majority of cases had been updated in a streamlined manner due to automation, a fraction of the claims had to be adjusted manually as they were more complex in nature.
At this point in time, 99.9% of the SSFA related cases have already been adjusted within a period of six months. The previous Biden Administration had estimated that these claims adjustments would take upwards of a year to be processed.
SSA Commissioner shares about progress at the agency
At the Social Security and Work & Welfare Joint Subcommittee Hearing, Commissioner Bisignano shared the following conversation with Chairman Smith in relation to the SSFA and the agency’s progress regarding claims adjustments:
Rep. Smith: “The last Congress, we enacted the Social Security Fairness Act that repealed Social Security’s Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset. Ensuring America’s seniors receive the benefits they are owed is dependent on implementing this law as quickly and orderly as possible. I’m encouraged by the progress your agency has already made in processing retroactive payments to the roughly 3 million affected beneficiaries and updating monthly benefits moving forward, a sharp contrast from the Biden administration’s claims that the transition would take upwards of a year – that is what they shared with me. Commissioner, what is the status of that effort, and what percentage of back payments have already been sent now, and what if any further guidance or collaboration do you need from this committee to ensure the proper and swift implementation of this law?”
Commissioner Bisignano: “Yeah, as of this morning – it’s a number I track every day –we’ve done 99.9%. We have 3,100 more payments to get out the door. That’s it. 3,100. I thought it was very important to demonstrate that we can act with urgency. We did this without delaying any other work in the agency. We got together, we talked about it. It was multiple meetings. We applied technology to move it forward in a manner, better than we thought. And I think it’s what you should expect from us.”
Furthermore, when asked by Rep. Rudy Yakym about the unclear policy regarding walk-ins at SSA field offices that caused some beneficiaries to be turned away if they did not have an appointed, Commissioner Bisignano stated the following, “The policy is to serve every American. We encourage an appointment. In fact, we have a schedule that in technology, we’re making that a broader, wider schedule. We also take phone calls in the field offices, and we brought a technology system in for the phones. That will get finished in August. And we accept walk-ins. A person drives 20 minutes to come see us, and we think we should serve them.”