When the Wall Street veteran Frank Bisignano goes before Congress on Tuesday as President Trump’s pick to lead the Social Security Administration, he will confront questions about how he would run an agency suddenly in the grips of upheaval.
In recent weeks, the billionaire Elon Musk has zeroed in on the agency, which is charged with the staid but critical work of providing retirement, survivor and disability payments to 73 million Americans each month.
Mr. Musk has claimed that vast numbers of Americans are fraudulently drawing benefits from the agency, an assertion experts say is demonstrably false. Over the objections of longtime career civil servants pushed out of the agency, the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency has moved swiftly to scrutinize its internal databases, deploying at least 10 staff members inside, including a longtime confidant of Mr. Musk.
At the same time, the acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, a former midlevel manager, has made a number of head-spinning moves. On Friday, he threatened to shut down the system used for all of the Social Security Administration’s work in response to a judge’s order — only to back down hours later.
The churn has alarmed many older and disabled Americans who rely on Social Security payments and worry it could become harder to gain access to them.
“It’s a lot of confusion, frankly a lot of chaos,” said Bill Sweeney, the vice president for government affairs at AARP, which represents older Americans. “People are terrified of what’s happening with Social Security. There’s a level of anxiety about this among our members that Congress, policymakers and the administration needs to take seriously.”