[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 74 (Monday, May 5, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Page S2747]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     NOMINATION OF FRANK BISIGNANO

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am pleased to supplement the 
remarks of our distinguished leader with respect to Social Security.
  Rhode Island has I believe the largest participation per capita in 
Social Security in the country. Social Security is what brought 
American seniors out of poverty and into a distinguished and fair 
retirement, and it really matters that we defend it and that Social 
Security remain unbroken.
  The threat is pretty clear. The President keeps talking about 
imaginary fraud. Why would you talk about imagery fraud in a system 
unless you have some motive?
  It wasn't just him. Elon Musk talked relentlessly about fraud in the 
Social Security system. The Secretary of Commerce went a mile out of 
his lane to add a shot at Social Security being riddled with fraud. 
Then the President went to the other end of the building there, stood 
at the rostrum of the House, and lied to the American people, flat-out 
lied to the American people about Social Security fraud. He let Elon 
Musk call it a Ponzi scheme as well.
  This is a battering ram of misinformation and disinformation, and it 
doesn't happen without a motive. The motive here is to degrade public 
confidence in Social Security.
  At the same time, you sent what I call your little ``Muskrats''--you 
sent your ``Muskrats'' into Social Security to disrupt its operations. 
So you have the rhetorical attack happening over here, and then you 
begin to have Social Security fail because you broke it and get what 
has been referred to as an interruption of benefits--an interruption of 
benefits.
  Then you also have your private equity people and your tech bros over 
there so that when the interruption of benefits happens, they can come 
in and swoop to the rescue of the problem that the administration 
caused, and next thing you know, what have you got? Privatized Social 
Security, with private equity guys and tech bros running the show 
because thousands of the employees who know how to run the Social 
Security Administration have been forced out.
  That is the concern, and it is a very real concern.
  I want to give Mr. Bisignano good marks for saying that he is not 
going there. He said that he will not privatize the Agency--will not. 
He said that under his leadership, the Social Security Administration 
will remain a government Agency and remain an Agency that is run for 
the benefit of the American people and benefit recipients.
  Now, the problem is, I find nominees' statements hard to believe up 
against the power of that pressure from the White House and from Musk 
and from the Secretary of Commerce and from whoever else is trying to 
accomplish the Republican extremist goal for decades of getting rid of 
Social Security. So I was a ``no'' vote in committee. I am going to be 
a ``no'' vote out here.
  I hope very much that I am wrong, but I also hoped very much that 
Secretary Rubio would stand up for Ukraine and that he would be an 
anchor, as Secretary of State, to defend Ukraine against the predatory, 
brutal, criminal war crimes of Vladimir Putin. But what we have seen 
instead has been the ``Putinization'' of our strategy to Ukraine, and 
the Secretary of State has been entirely complicit in it, from all the 
signs that I see.
  So when you have somebody who says one thing and, in the case of 
Secretary Rubio, who actually lived it--he was actually an ardent 
advocate for defending Ukraine. Then you get into Trump zone, and 
suddenly all your principles disappear, all your commitments disappear, 
and you just become a tool of the Trump political operation. I have 
seen that too often, so I am going to vote no.
  We need, as a Senate, to send a clear message that Social Security is 
inviolable; that it is a promise amongst us all, as Americans, to 
protect our seniors, to protect ourselves when we get to that age; and 
that no one will be allowed to break it.
  And one of the things I am going to ask is to make sure that we go 
into Social Security's databases and make sure that those ``Muskrats,'' 
when they went in there, didn't do any permanent damage, didn't set off 
mines to go off later, and didn't leave backdoors for the information 
to be exfiltrated out to private sector folks for whom it is as good as 
gold.
  I will say one last thing, and that is Mr. Bisignano said he would 
work with me on the benefits cliffs, where you are fine with full 
benefits, and then one little thing happens, you miss one little mark, 
and there is a complete crash. There is a better way to deal with it. 
Benefit cliff smoothing is a technical thing. He promised to work with 
me. I intend to hold him to that promise.
  My friend Mr. Cornyn, the Senator from Texas, has been patiently 
waiting. So I yield the floor to him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

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