Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano will also take on the newly created role of Chief Executive Officer of the Internal Revenue Service,\u00a0the Treasury Department announced Monday.<\/p>\n
Bisignano, who was CEO of the payments multinational Fiserv before being confirmed as the head of Social Security in May, will continue leading that agency, which distributes monthly payments to more than 74 million beneficiaries.<\/p>\n
In an unusual arrangement,\u00a0Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent\u00a0will remain acting commissioner of the IRS, which has had multiple chiefs over the past year. Bisignano will be in charge of managing the IRS and overseeing its day-to-day operations, while reporting to Bessent, the department\u2019s announcement said. The arrangement means Bisignano would not have to go through Senate confirmation, allowing him to start working immediately.<\/p>\n
The appointment comes as the IRS, which has lost a sizable share of its staff under the Trump administration\u2019s quest to downsize the federal government, must put in place major tax changes from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act before the tax filing season starts in January. That involves writing new regulations, updating forms and technology and training the agency\u2019s customer service employees. Some outside experts and the Treasury\u2019s internal watchdog office have already questioned whether the beleaguered IRS will be capable of doing so in time.<\/p>\n
Also, Bisignano joins the agency in the midst of a\u00a0government shutdown. The IRS is using funds from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to keep all of its roughly 74,300 staffers on the job, according to its contingency plan. However, the plan only covers expenses through this Wednesday, and thus far there has been no indication of what would happen if the impasse lasts longer than that.<\/p>\n
At the IRS, Bisignano will \u201csharpen our focus on collections, privacy, and customer service,\u201d Bessent said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe IRS and SSA \u2013 two of the most public-facing and broadly impactful federal agencies \u2013 also share many of the same technological and customer service goals,\u201d the Treasury Department said in a statement. \u201cThis makes Mr. Bisignano a natural choice for this role.\u201d<\/p>\n
The White House praised the move.<\/p>\n
\u201cBisignano\u2019s immensely successful private sector career running payment processing and financial services companies makes him an invaluable asset for the IRS,\u201d Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. \u201cPresident Trump pledged to protect and preserve Social Security and cut taxes for working-class Americans. Frank Bisignano will help the Administration deliver on these pledges.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bisignano has promised to\u00a0improve customer service\u00a0and enhance technology at\u00a0Social Security.<\/p>\n
The IRS cycled through six leaders this year before Bessent was named acting commissioner in August. The agency has also had to contend with the loss of many staffers, as well as a highly controversial deal to share sensitive taxpayer data with immigration agencies, which now faces multiple legal challenges.<\/p>\n
Bessent took over from Billy Long, who was ousted from the full-time IRS commissioner role just two months after he was confirmed. Long, a former GOP congressman, auctioneer and tax adviser, said he was being named US ambassador to Iceland.<\/p>\n
The surprise shakeup occurred one day after the IRS largely rebuffed a request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to provide the last-known address for more than 1.2 million immigrants that the Trump administration believes overstayed deportation orders.<\/p>\n
The IRS, under Long\u2019s watch, only provided ICE with address information for about 47,000 people, because of longstanding taxpayer privacy laws that restrict mass data-sharing, according to court filings.<\/p>\n
The IRS lost more than 25,000 employees, or about a quarter of its workforce, to various\u00a0incentive offers, including the administration\u2019s deferred resignation program, and some layoffs, including the termination of several thousand probationary workers, according to a July report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.<\/p>\n
The downsizings did not affect this year\u2019s tax filing season, according to a separate\u00a0report released\u00a0last week from the inspector general\u2019s office. However, it raised red flags about the coming season, according to the same report.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expect workforce reductions to impact key processing programs and customer service going forward,\u201d the office wrote in the report. \u201cWe are concerned about how this will impact the 2026 Filing Season. Key IRS functions responsible for managing the filing season have lost 17 to 19 percent of their workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n
IRS leaders estimate they\u2019ll need to hire about 3,500 employees to meet the customer service goal on its toll-free telephone line, the office wrote. The agency\u2019s effort to expand the scanning and digital processing of paper-filed tax returns is delayed. Plus, the downsizing adds more challenges for the upcoming season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe One Big Beautiful Bill Act will require the IRS to make substantial changes ahead of the 2026 Filing Season, but the agency will have fewer Information Technology resources to timely update processing systems,\u201d the office wrote.<\/p>\n
Since Bisignano took charge at Social Security, he and the agency have repeatedly touted the customer service improvements already taking place at that agency.<\/p>\n
In particular, he said at a White House event commemorating the program\u2019s 90th anniversary in August that callers only had to wait an\u00a0average of 8 minutes\u00a0to speak to an agent on the phone during the prior month.<\/p>\n
However, the metric he cited does not truly show how long it takes to reach an agent, experts say. It does not account for the amount of time callers have to wait on hold to speak to a representative or receive a call back.<\/p>\n
The agency told CNN in August that it slashed all types of wait times by at least half in July, when it shifted 1,000 workers to answer the national 800 number.<\/p>\n
The Social Security Administration\u2019s acting inspector general has opened a review of the agency\u2019s call center wait times and its ability to deliver services to Americans.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0investigation\u00a0was requested by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has repeatedly voiced concerns about the agency\u2019s performance after a\u00a0Department of Government Efficiency-led reorganization.<\/p>\n
Several Social Security advocacy groups questioned whether Bisignano would be able to handle both jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cNaming Bisignano CEO of another crucial federal agency while he serves as SSA commissioner demonstrates the Trump administration\u2019s indifference toward the 70 million Americans who depend on Social Security,\u201d Max Richtman, CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. \u201cNever before has a Social Security Commissioner been asked to split his attention between two agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
CNN\u2019s Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this story.<\/em><\/p>\n For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at\u00a0CNN.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano will also take on the newly created role of Chief Executive Officer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1985,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983\/revisions\/1985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}