Senators push Bisignano on DOGE’s SSA moves after ‘inadequate responses’
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s time in Washington is up, but a pair of Democratic senators aren’t done pushing for answers about the Elon Musk group’s undertakings at the Social Security Administration.
In a letter sent last week, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Ron Wyden of Oregon blasted SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano for providing “inadequate responses” to congressional inquiries about DOGE’s handling of data and related information security risks.
“Over the past fourteen months, we have repeatedly sought basic information about DOGE’s activities at SSA,” the Democrats wrote. “Your responses have either been unresponsive or later disproved by SSA’s own admissions.”
The litany of complaints from the lawmakers date back to Bisignano’s March 2025 Senate confirmation hearing, in which he pledged to Whitehouse “a total review” of SSA databases after the Rhode Island Democrat expressed concern over damage DOGE may have done and backdoors they may have left open.
The senators said a November 2025 request for an update on Bisignano’s promised audit led to a January 2026 reply that “offered the assurance that ‘SSA’s systems and data are secure and managed under strict security protocols, consistent with Federal and industry standards’” — only to be undercut days later in a court filing that revealed poor DOGE practices for handling personally identifiable information at the agency, violating a previous court order.
“Additionally, a DOGE staffer transmitted an encrypted file that DHS believed to contain the names and addresses of approximately 1,000 individuals drawn from SSA systems to DOGE affiliates outside the agency,” the letter stated. “To date, SSA has yet to determine with certainty what data was shared in either case.”
Whitehouse and Wyden also recounted a court filing that revealed DOGE communications with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results” in states, as well as a June whistleblower complaint that detailed an alleged DOGE plan to move 2.7 million people to the agency’s Death Master File as a way to trigger immigration enforcement actions.
SSA “refused to provide unredacted information related to” the voter-data complaint and Bisignano “failed to respond to the inquiries” that Wyden and Whitehouse made about the issues raised by the whistleblower.
“These admissions and whistleblower statements damage SSA’s decades-long history of protecting Americans’ sensitive information and discredit your past assurances to protect Americans’ data,” the senators concluded. “It is long overdue you provide the American people a straight answer.”
The lawmakers asked Bisignano to provide written responses to their questions — re-upped from previous letters to the SSA chief — by Friday.
The Social Security Administration did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
