Social Security’s top official says the fastest way to protect the program is to stop paying money to people who shouldn’t get it.
Quick Take
- Commissioner Frank Bisignano called eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse the “first solution” to protecting Social Security.
- Official projections show the retirement trust fund can pay full benefits only until 2033.
- After that date, the fund could cover just 77 percent of scheduled payments without changes.
- Bisignano also pointed to fixing outdated technology and recordkeeping as part of the fix.
Commissioner Names His Top Priority
Frank Bisignano, who leads the Social Security Administration, told Fox Business that cutting fraud, waste, and abuse is the first step toward saving the program. He said the agency is also overhauling its technology, operations, books, and records. Bisignano framed this as basic housekeeping that any well-run business would tackle before anything else.
SOCIAL SECURITY’S HIDDEN INSOLVENCY COST@SocialSecurity could face insolvency by 2032 or 2033, triggering automatic benefit cuts that could average 15% to 28% depending on the projection.
A Penn Wharton Budget Model expert warns that federal budget rules could make massive…
— Erik Hoffmann (@TheErikHoffmann) October 23, 2026
His comments echo what he told the Treasury Department back in June, when the 2025 Trustees Reports came out. Bisignano said Congress, the Social Security Administration, and other stakeholders share responsibility for eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse to protect the trust funds. That statement shows this isn’t a one-off sound bite. It’s a position he has repeated consistently as commissioner.
The Numbers Behind the Urgency
The 2025 Trustees summary lays out a stark timeline. The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, which pays retirement and survivor benefits, can cover 100 percent of scheduled payments only until 2033. After that, if nothing changes, incoming money would cover just 77 percent of promised benefits. That’s an automatic benefit cut for tens of millions of retirees, not a hypothetical.
Congressional Research Service summaries use slightly different figures, citing a combined trust fund depletion date of 2034 and an 81 percent payable rate. Those differences come from measuring separate funds together instead of looking at retirement benefits alone. The gap between these numbers isn’t a contradiction. It’s just two different ways of slicing the same underlying problem.
What Fraud Reduction Can and Cannot Fix
Government-wide fraud losses run into the hundreds of billions of dollars a year across all federal programs, according to federal watchdog estimates. That’s real money, and nobody disputes that cleaning up improper payments matters. But Bisignano’s public remarks don’t offer a dollar figure for how much fraud reduction alone would do for Social Security’s specific shortfall. The commissioner identified a priority, not a calculated solution.
That distinction matters because Social Security’s funding gap is structural. Fewer workers are paying into the system relative to the growing number of retirees drawing benefits. Fraud and administrative errors make the problem worse, but they didn’t create the basic math problem driving the 2033 deadline. Fixing leaks in a boat helps, but it doesn’t change how fast the boat is sinking if the hole is big enough.
A Familiar Pattern in Washington’s Playbook
History offers a useful comparison. The last time Social Security faced a similar crisis, in the early 1980s, the Greenspan Commission didn’t rely on fraud crackdowns to close the gap. Lawmakers raised the retirement age, started taxing benefits for higher earners, and adjusted payroll tax rates. Those were hard, politically costly choices that Congress made because administrative fixes alone couldn’t cover the shortfall.
That history doesn’t mean fraud reduction is pointless today. It means voters should expect cleanup efforts to be one tool among several, not a replacement for tougher decisions ahead. Conservative voters especially tend to support rooting out waste first, before any talk of tax hikes or benefit cuts. That instinct is sound. It just needs to be paired with honesty about scale.
Modernization Efforts Already Underway
Social Security has been publicly touting recent cleanup work, including corrections to millions of records as part of a broader database overhaul. Supporters see this as proof the agency is finally taking accountability seriously after years of outdated systems. Critics want to see independent audits confirming these fixes actually reduce improper payments, rather than just updating paperwork. Both reactions are reasonable responses to a very large bureaucracy.
The real test will come from the Social Security Administration’s own inspector general and independent government auditors, who can verify whether recovered funds flow back into the trust funds or just trim administrative costs elsewhere. Until those numbers are public, Bisignano’s “first solution” stands as a credible starting point, not a finished plan. Americans deserve both the cleanup and the follow-up math.
For now, the commissioner has set a clear marker. Fix the leaks first, then tackle the bigger financing questions Congress has avoided for decades. Whether that order of operations buys enough time before 2033 remains the question every worker and retiree has a stake in answering.
Sources:
foxbusiness.com, ssa.gov, congress.gov, home.treasury.gov
