Defining Deviancy Down

      The Washington Post has an article on the emails from Social Security to beneficiaries touting the passage of the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Only at the end does it mention how wildly inappropriate the emails are. Apparently, they regard this as something only of interest to “left-leaning” groups.  It’s much the same with USA Today, CNN and NBC News. Apparently, the New York Times has taken off for the long weekend and hasn’t noticed the emails at all. By Sunday or Monday it may just be old news to them.

Happy Independence Day

 

Outrageous Abuse Of Social Security For Political Purposes

      I have trouble believing it but apparently Social Security sent out this e-mail yesterday to many Social Security benefits recipients. It didn’t go out to all of them. I’m on retirement benefits and I did not receive it. 

     This is wrong. It’s probably illegal. It’s misleading. The “Big Beautiful Bill” contains no provisions touching on the work done by the Social Security Administration.

Happy July 4th!

 

Taking A Hard Line On Ending Paper Checks

      From Emergency Message EM-25040 released yesterday:

… Effective immediately, the agency will comply with the relevant legal authorities in initial claims by removing references to an option to receive a paper check and directing people who insist on a paper check to apply to Treasury for a waiver.

In compliance with the law and enforced by the recently released EO, the following changes supersede current instructions in GN 02402.001and GN 02402.005 and are effective as of the date of this publication.

1. Updates to GN 02402.001

a. Section C bullet 4 is no longer applicable and has been removed. Effective immediately, technicians should no longer offer a temporary paper check option while waiting for Treasury contact regarding enrollment in electronic funds transfer (EFT) .
b. Section C bullet 5 should read:

“As of March 1, 2013, Title II beneficiaries and Title XVI recipients must select a form of electronic payment or if they allege a qualifying exemption, then apply for a waiver. Treasury is responsible for reviewing the request and making a determination. Instruct the individual to contact the U.S. Treasury Electronic Payment Solution Center at 1-800-967-5042. Currently, SSA cannot accept a waiver application or approve a waiver request. Treasury will contact the individuals directly once they make a determination.”

c. Additionally, field offices are no longer required to maintain a list of financial institutions in their servicing area. …

      This will be much harder to implement than it sounds.

Can We Trust Social Security’s Numbers?

From USA Today:

… Over the last several weeks, the agency has stopped making public 34 real-time performance metrics about things like how long they will have to wait to reach a live person on the phone, and how long applications for new senior benefits or social security benefits take to be approved. The metrics have been used for years to show how time-consuming it can be to reach a live person at certain locations or through the national 1-800 number, and as an accountability measure for the agency.

Instead the webpage now emphasizes how quickly problems can be resolved online, and says the "average speed of answer," which excludes callback wait time, is 19.2 minutes.

USA TODAY reporters called Social Security's 1-800 line multiple times over several days and found the wait times to be consistently over an hour. Multiple times they did not reach a live person before the line disconnected with no warning. …

Concerned that the information now available on the website didn't match what her staff was hearing from constituents, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's staff began conducting its own test of the 1-800 number, making hourly phone calls from June 12 through June 20. 

In a letter Warren sent to Bisignano late on June 25, she called the results of her office survey "deeply troubling." Compared to the number available online, wait times averaged nearly an hour and 45 minutes and often exceeded three hours.

Data from the office survey showed that in 50 calls, more than 50% were never answered by a human. The majority ended when the caller was placed on hold and then the call dropped.

Of calls that were answered, 32% had wait times exceeding two hours. The average wait time was 102 minutes. …

  Jen Burdick, supervising attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, said they haven't seen a reduction in call times.

"Social Security attorneys and paralegals from our office call SSA dozens of times every day. We are uniformly finding that we can't get placed into the queue, either because of system outages, phone disconnects, or AI chatbot issues.  When we do get put into the queue, wait times seem to be up from last year ‒ sometimes more than an hour.  …

     I’m fully expecting no further Congressional hearings on Social Security in this Congress but Commissioner Bisignano could still be subpoenaed to testify about this issue before a Social Security Subcommittee controlled by Democrats in 2027 even if he’s no longer Commissioner. 

Widespread Resurrections Reported But They’re Now Economic Zombies Instead

       From the New York Times:

The Trump administration has backed away from a maneuver in which it sought to classify thousands of living immigrants as dead in a critical Social Security database, part of a strategy to pressure them to self-deport.

In April, the Social Security Administration placed roughly 6,300 migrants whose legal status had been revoked on its “death master file,” a vital data set that gets distributed to banks, lenders and other financial institutions. …

[N]ow the Social Security Administration has reversed course, taking them off the list in a process known internally as being “resurrected,” according to S.S.A. and White House officials.

Instead, the Social Security numbers of the 6,300 migrants are being flagged as “unverified” in a system typically used by financial institutions to check the numbers. The website generates that response when a person’s Social Security number, name or date of birth do not match the agency’s records. That classification is typically used when a Social Security number may be fraudulent, erroneous or mistakenly associated with someone. …

The new approach was spearheaded by Frank Bisignano, the new commissioner of the agency who took over in May, according to an administration official. It comes after the initial decision to put migrants on the death list generated enormous controversy within the agency. At one meeting shortly after the decision was made, senior level S.S.A. officials had voiced widespread “policy, legal and data integrity” concerns about the approach, according to an email summarizing the meeting viewed by The New York Times. …

Social Security To End Enumeration At Birth?

      Whitney Wimbish has written a piece for The American Prospect predicting that the Social Security Administration will end enumeration at birth, the current process that almost automatically assigns a Social Security number to every child born in the U.S. Instead, parents would have to go through some application process. The point would be to prevent assigning Social Security numbers to the children of  non-citizens. 

     This could happen but there are obvious obstacles. Social Security isn’t remotely ready for the workload. Parents would be frustrated by the process. It’s all unconstitutional anyway. The 14th Amendment clearly says that virtually all children born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens. 

     The Supreme Court has said the courts can’t issue nationwide injunctions. Great. There are thousands of Social Security attorneys around the country ready to adjudicate this in every district in the country for the Equal Access to Justice Act fees. Easy money. By the time this issue is finally before the Supreme Court, the Trump Administration will wish it had been dealing with a nationwide injunction.