Senator Tom Harkin has sent out a press release indicating that the Labor-HHS Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee (Harkin chairs the Subcommittee) has reported out an appropriations bill. This bill covers Social Security's administrative budget. Here is the relevant language from the press release:
The longer that Social Security's hearing backlogs stay at its current level, the less likely it is that anything will ever be done to dramatically diminish them. If you have tolerated a situation for ten years, what is the rush about doing something about it?
Social Security Administration (SSA) — $10.4 billion is included for the administrative expenses of the SSA, $50 million over the President’s budget request and $632 million more than FY 2008, to continue efforts to reduce the backlog of disability claims. SSA reviews current disability cases to ensure beneficiaries remain eligible for Social Security.This is not good news. The Chairman's mark in the House of Representatives was only $100 million over the President's proposed budget. Advocates are pressing for $11 billion, which would be $650 million over the President's proposed budget but probably still not nearly enough to begin a speedy turnaround of the mess at Social Security. It is far from clear that the amount in either the House or Senate bill would be enough to prevent things from getting worse at Social Security. Certainly, neither bill would make things significantly better.
The longer that Social Security's hearing backlogs stay at its current level, the less likely it is that anything will ever be done to dramatically diminish them. If you have tolerated a situation for ten years, what is the rush about doing something about it?
5 comments:
Well, did you write the Appropriations committee asking for a higher number?
Things are tough all over in the budget and these guys only have so much oil to apply to the squeakiest wheels.
AFGE endorses Democrats on the presumption that they are well aware of the dire straits of SSA and will increase funding to a sufficient level. The Democrats have controlled Congress for nearly 18 months and have done squat. SSA is doomed.
I would think that getting anything above the president's request is more than "squat" since he has been regularly vetoing any appropriations bills above his requests. Without a veto-proof majority, he's still the major impediment to doing more.
Schumer is proposing a $ 500 million replacement of all Medicare cards to prevent identity theft. If they can find $ 500 mil for that, they can find the same for SSA--they just don't want to.
They want SSA to fail so they can blame the Republicans and score points with the clueless voters.
Schumer has not found $500 million anywhere. There's a difference between authorization and appropriations. One says what they'll give you if they could pay the bills, and the other actually pays the bills.
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