Today, Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08) delivered the following remarks during a joint subcommittee hearing with the Commissioner of Social Security, Frank J. Bisignano.

As prepared for delivery

Thank you to Chairman Estes and Chairman LaHood for hosting this joint subcommittee hearing, and thank you, Commissioner Bisignano, for appearing before us today. We are already seeing improvements at the Social Security Administration under President Trump compared to how little Democrat leadership accomplished at the agency.

Under the Biden Administration, the SSA hit record high wait times for both phone service and initial disability determinations. But under the Trump Administration, phone wait times are improving, and the initial disability backlog has less than one million pending claims for the first time since 2023.

That’s because Republicans are focusing on direct front-line service delivery. Now, the SSA is serving more Americans better, and with fewer employees. And they have done it by stopping wasteful spending, and redirecting resources and personnel from administrative headquarters and instead out to operations in the field in order to better service beneficiaries directly.

Democrats were in deep denial over how their policies led to terrible price increases that deeply hurt Americans, especially seniors. They said it was transitory. They said it was the war in Ukraine. They said it was price gouging. It was the fault of everyone but the Democrats in power. And so their denial even resulted in claiming “credit” for an automatic cost-of-living adjustment. But that adjustment wound up pushing seniors into higher tax brackets, resulting in having to pay taxes on benefits they’d never had to pay before.

So once again, Republicans are cleaning up the mess. President Trump promised tax relief for seniors, and under The One, Big, Beautiful Bill, Republicans deliver. In fact, we go further than many Americans expected, by offsetting the tax liability for seniors with an additional $4,000 guaranteed deduction for Americans over the age of 65, for an even wider range of income – without even limiting it to Social Security.

Democrats are going to use this hearing for political theater the way they always do when Social Security comes up. Lately, they’ve taken swipes at DOGE and common sense steps to reduce waste, streamline and automate processes, and combat fraud under the new Administration. Why would anyone object to these changes?

As a result of these common sense steps, the SSA is already doing better than under Biden and leveraging automation to process cases faster and more reliably. Just as the millions of seniors who had been affected by the WEP and GPO and who are now receiving increased payments as a result of the SSA’s use of automation to implement the Social Security Fairness Act instead of processing each case manually.

That hasn’t discouraged Democrats from spreading disinformation. Despite Democrats’ claims, DOGE hasn’t had improper access to sensitive senior information, just ask the Supreme Court who affirmed the SSA DOGE team’s ability to carry out its work of improving the SSA’s systems.

I wish they would instead work with Republicans to find real solutions that will deliver for the seniors who suffered so terribly under their one-party control of Washington. I wish they would vote to provide tax relief for seniors. But so far they have refused to do so. Republicans will continue to fight for our seniors, all the same.