March 25 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Social Security Administration on Tuesday faced a number of questions on Capitol Hill during his Senate confirmation hearing.
"I will make the agency a premier services organization," Frank Bisignano, the president's pick for SSA commissioner, said during his opening statement to the Senate's Finance Committee.
Bisignano, 65, has been CEO of financial tech company Fiserv since July 2020, during which stock price and company revenue reportedly more than doubled under his tenure.
He was nominated by Trump for the SSA job in December and is likely to be confirmed.
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On Tuesday, he was pressed on a wide range of topics by lawmakers related to improving customer service, false payments, calls to privatize the decades-old agency and his opinions on billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and its effort to obtain the private information of U.S. citizens.
"Fundamentally, Social Security is a payments-based, customer-facing program that delivers benefits to more than 70 million Americans each month," he stated.
Bisignano, who previously served as co-chief operating officer of JPMorgan Chase, America's largest bank, acknowledged Tuesday that Social Security provides "essential financial support for the retired and disabled" but that the current 1% payments error rate is, he said, "five decimal places too high."
He went on to say the administration will meet beneficiaries "where they wanna be met," which included in person, at field offices, on the Internet or over the phone as other fears swirl over changes to make limited access.
"I am going to do whatever is required to protect the information," Bisignano responded when asked by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., if he would lock Musk's DOGE employees from accessing personally identifiable information on American citizens.
Musk, the world's richest man, has claimed Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" and waged unsubstantiated claims of fraud amid fears that Republicans will make cuts to the long-existing social safety net.
The SSA in February announced it will eliminate at least 7,000 of its 57,000 member workforce.
Meanwhile, former SSA Administrator Martin O'Malley suggested earlier this month that he believes there will be a collapse of its payment system "within the next 30 to 90 days" and urged recipients to start saving in case of benefit interruptions.
"I think the answer is probably no," Bisignano said when asked by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., if he thought it was wise to cut a high number of workers from the SSA.
But his objective, he added, "is to come in and motivate the workforce we have" and to "get our job right the first time for the American public."
Bisignano told Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., that he would "commit to having the right staffing" for the agency and further claimed he had not given thought to privatizing the Social Security Administration.
However, he noted that his perceived job was to "ensure claims are processed in the manner they should be."
"I've only been given one order, which is to run the agency in the right fashion," he told senators in Washington.
