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internal revenue service
Defenders of Social Security Furious Over Trump Plan for Part-Time Commissioner
"Every American who has paid into Social Security should be outraged," said one Social Security advocate.
Oct 06, 2025
The Trump administration on Monday announced that Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano would also serve as a the chief executive officer at the Internal Revenue Service, in a move that was panned by defenders of the crucial anti-poverty Social Security program.
As The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that Bisignano would be filling the newly created position of CEO at the IRS, even as he retains his duties as Social Security commissioner.
According to the Journal, Bisignano "will report directly to Bessent, who will remain the formal head of the IRS as acting commissioner," and that he "will help implement the administration's vision for the IRS, which emphasizes upgraded technology and retreats from the heavier enforcement initiatives started under President Joe Biden."
Bisignano's appointment comes weeks after Billy Long, the previous IRS commissioner, got ousted from his job after working there for under two months.
Social Security advocates reacted to the move by condemning the administration for creating even more turmoil at the Social Security Administration (SSA).
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, slammed the administration for giving Bisignano added duties when he was already "unqualified" to serve as Social Security commissioner.
"Never in Social Security’s 90-year history has a commissioner held a second job," she said. "Bisignano’s new role will leave a leadership vacuum at the top of the agency, especially since Trump hasn’t even nominated a deputy commissioner."
Altman further accused the administration of "allowing Social Security to rot through sabotage and neglect" by downgrading the program's top role to part-time.
Richard Fiesta, executive director for the Alliance for Retired Americans, similarly emphasized that running the SSA was "a full-time job," and said that the Trump administration had already caused "chaos" at the agency by slashing longtime staff members.
"Every American who has paid into Social Security should be outraged," he said. "Americans pay for the workers and administration of the agency through their Social Security withholdings in every paycheck. We expect a full-time commissioner for our money. Instead, we’re now getting a part-time commissioner drawing a full salary from our Social Security taxes."
Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, described Bisignano’s appointment as "alarming news" and said it raises "major concerns."
Specifically, Romig warned about potential security breaches of Americans' data at both the IRS and SSA.
"We know that from the beginning they’ve been trying to bulldoze protections of the sensitive data that each agency holds," she wrote in a post on Bluesky. "Early this year, acting heads of both SSA and Treasury were both pushed out over data access"
She then pointed to reports that the Department of Government Efficiency has been working on a "data lake" that uses sensitive information from both agencies "to track and surveil undocumented immigrants" residing in the US.
"This unprecedented arrangement cries out for meaningful oversight to ensure that each agency adequately serves the public, conflicts of interest are resolved, and our most sensitive data are protected," she said.
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Over 70 Top Civil Servants Have Resigned in Protest Since Trump Took Office: Report
"This level of resignations in protest is without known precedent," said government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Sep 03, 2025
US President Donald Trump's second term has taken a massive toll on the American civil service, according to a new report by a government watchdog.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) on Wednesday released a report documenting dozens of instances in which government officials "have publicly resigned in protest after being asked to do something they believed to be illegal or in violation of their oath of office."
CREW noted that the resignations have so far impacted eight executive agencies and five independent agencies, and added that some of those who have resigned have served across as many as six presidential administrations.
"At least 19 of those who have resigned in protest have a decade or longer tenure at their agencies, with some nearing 40 years," explained CREW. "Every administration sees resignations, but this level of resignations in protest is without known precedent."
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been hit particularly hard by resignations and has already blown through four different commissioners in less than a year. This includes two acting IRS commissioners, Doug O'Donnell and Melanie Krause, who both resigned rather than comply with demands to hand over data on undocumented immigrants to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The report also examined the wave of resignations that has occurred at the US Department of Justice, beginning with Danielle Sassoon, the former interim US attorney for the Southern District of New York who stepped down after being asked to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Sassoon was followed out the door by six other attorneys who worked on the case, including its lead prosecutor.
Taken together, CREW has tallied 72 different government officials who have resigned in protest in just the first eight months of Trump's second term.
"The second Trump administration is sending a clear message to get in line or get out," commented CREW. "This approach to dissenters who refuse to obey orders that are illegal, unconstitutional, or unethical has chilling authoritarian characteristics, and stands to reshape the federal government in dangerous ways."
The most recent wave of resignations occurred last week when several top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stepped down over the firing of former CDC Director Susan Monarez, who clashed with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccination policies in the US.
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Getting Rid of Non-English Tax Help Is a Lose-Lose Policy
If you make it harder for people to file their tax returns accurately, they’re more likely to do it wrong, or not file returns at all.
Aug 24, 2025
When the thrash-metal band Stormtroopers of Death recorded “Speak English or Die,” its members went out of their way to remind listeners that they “didn’t really mean” what they were singing. By contrast, the Trump administration is apparently quite serious about making the US officially an English-speaking nation. The latest salvo in this battle is the possible elimination of non-English taxpayer services at the Internal Revenue Service. An August 15 letter from 25 Democratic Senators points out that such a move would fly in the face of the IRS’s mission and would make our already-growing federal budget deficits even worse.
Before US President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring English the official language of the US earlier this year, the country had never had one. Even England, which invented the language and used it for some time before Americans borrowed it, never felt the need to declare it the official language of the land. But Trump’s new order changed all that, directly revoking a Clinton-era EO entitled “Improving Access to Services for Persons with Limited English Proficiency.”
If “improving access” sounds like a thing our government should be fostering when it comes to paying taxes, that’s because it is—and until this year, both elected officials and tax administrators have been fully in support of this sensible goal.
Since its inception in 1996, the Taxpayer Advocate Service (which was created by Congress to represent the interests of American taxpayers in their dealings with tax administrators) has identified the inability to “serve non-English speakers at first contact” as a critical problem of tax administration that could only be remedied by making taxpayer assistance available in multiple languages.
While Trump’s executive order wants us to “freely exchange ideas in one shared language,” forcing non-English speakers to use Google Translate in claiming their Qualified Business Income deduction won’t achieve this goal.
After Congress created a National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service in 1995, the commission’s recommendations were heavily focused on transforming the IRS into an agency focused on customer service, and (as last week’s letter from Democratic Senators to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent points out) prompted the IRS to retool its mission statement to a single-sentence focus on “helping [American taxpayers to] understand and meet their tax responsibilities.”
Seen through this lens, making tax filing easier for non-English speakers is a blazingly obvious goal to pursue, and to their credit IRS leaders have consistently supported this goal. As recently as 2022, it stated that “wherever possible, it’s important to interact with people in the language of their choice and in their community through IRS employees who share similar life experiences.”
But even if the IRS’ own mission statement didn’t demand it, non-English tax assistance would still be important simply because it makes good fiscal sense: If you make it easier for people to file their tax returns, they probably will do so and do it accurately. And if you make it harder for them to do so, they’re more likely to do it wrong, or not file returns at all. This is why it’s well established that money spent on taxpayer service and administration more than pays for itself in increased tax collections.
There’s no question that the IRS’ non-English tax assistance is being used: Former Commissioner Charles Rettig says that there were “nearly 90 million visits to non-English pages on IRS.gov” in 2021, a number that has surely grown since then. This is a clear success story for tax administration: People needed non-English language help to file their tax returns, and they got it.
The Trump administration now seems bent on stripping these gains away in the pursuit of a goal they surely won’t achieve. While Trump’s executive order wants us to “freely exchange ideas in one shared language,” forcing non-English speakers to use Google Translate in claiming their Qualified Business Income deduction won’t achieve this goal. Making it harder for non-English speakers to file their taxes would only result in lower tax compliance, less government revenue, and less trust in the Internal Revenue Service.
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