The Social Security Administration is rarely the star of a political fight. Its mission is administrative, its reputation steady, its work often thankless.
But this week, the agency found itself squaring off against one of the Senate’s loudest progressive voices, Elizabeth Warren, after she accused SSA of “removing key data” and covering up dysfunction.
The SSA’s new commissioner, Frank J. Bisignano, responded with a 16-page letter and data report that did more than defend the agency — it called Warren’s allegations “fearmongering and reckless lies.”
The letter, dated September 16, was shared with Fox News Digital. In it, Bisignano not only rejected Warren’s claims but turned the transparency argument back on her. Under the Biden administration, he said, SSA reported just 11 performance data points on its public-facing webpage. Under Trump? Thirty. “These facts conclusively demonstrate that you are wrong in alleging a lack of transparency,” he wrote.
The statistics his office provided tell a similar story of improvement rather than decline. Average phone wait times have been cut nearly in half, from 29 minutes in 2024 to 16 minutes in 2025 — with August clocking in at just nine minutes.
Disability backlogs that hovered near 1.2 million last year are down to 907,000. Processing times have improved as well: disability claims fell from an average of 231 days to 217, while retirement and survivor benefits were delivered on time in 87 percent of cases.
Bisignano said these metrics reflect a broader shift toward a “digital-first” SSA, designed to serve Americans whether they pick up the phone, walk into an office, or log in online. “Constant monitoring of key performance indicators” is the cornerstone of this strategy, he explained.
What he rejected most forcefully, however, was Warren’s characterization of a cover-up. “The time has come to stop weaponizing Social Security,” he wrote. “The American people do not want a Social Security War Room. They want their leaders to protect and preserve Social Security, just as President Trump has promised.”
For Warren, the clash fits a familiar pattern: a high-profile Democrat accusing federal agencies under Trump’s leadership of mismanagement, secrecy, or corruption. For Bisignano, it was an opportunity to go on offense, contrasting SSA’s current numbers with those from 2024 and positioning the agency as not only transparent, but improved.
