The Commissioner of Social Security has sent a letter to the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee claiming that “service is better than ever” at Social Security. The letter includes selected statistics. The definitions and significance of some, if not all, of the numbers given are unclear to me.
As Mark Twain said, “Figures don’t lie but liars often figure” or, as WC. Fields is alleged to have said, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”
Commissioner Bisignano and many other agency leaders have sent a letter to Congressional leaders asking for additional funding for building repairs and maintenance.
From AL.com:
In May, the Social Security Administration announced it was switching the company that administers its Direct Express cards. Comerica Bank previously handled the program. It will now be handled by Fifth Third Bank, which merged with Comerica earlier this year.
The changeover started in June, though rollout will depend on when you started using your card.
New Direct Express card enrollees will automatically receive their cards from Fifth Third Bank. Existing account holders will receive their new cards later this year or early next year. Beneficiaries should continue to use their existing Comerica cards until they receive the new ones. Recipients will be notified with a letter before the cards are sent. …
Senators Bernie Moreno and Elizabeth Warren have penned an op ed in the New York Times recommending that the wage cap on the FICA tax that feeds into the Social Security trust funds be removed. This would prevent the trust funds from running out of money for many years into the future.
It’s no surprise that Senator Warren would express this opinion. What’s remarkable is that Senator Moreno would feel the same. He’s a Republican from Ohio. I wouldn’t say the dam is breaking but there’s a tiny crack in it.
The Washington Post has already run an editorial about the Moreno-Warren op ed. They’re aghast. It’s what I would expect from a newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos, one of the wealthiest people on Earth.
The Social Security Administration has posted the Caseload Analysis Report for its Office of Hearings Operations (or whatever they’re calling it these days) run on June 17. It reflects trends already apparent — falling numbers of ALJs, increased backlogs, increased use of overtime and a small use of “Agency Video Objections” which make me fear that the hearing process may be used for immigration enforcement.
The Social Security Administration is seeking attorneys to work in Employment Law and Program Litigation positions. They don’t say how many they expect to hire but they’re only accepting the first 200 applications for each type of job.
There are employees needed across the agency. Why are they hiring for these positions?
From the New York Times:
A federal judge on Monday barred the Trump administration from letting states query a centralized national database of citizens built for checking immigration status to screen their voter rolls, finding that the repurposing of the federal data to monitor voting violated at least three laws.
In a sharply worded ruling, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ordered the Homeland Security Department to stop permitting states to search the data, which also incorporates Social Security records. …
Judge Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, wrote that the executive order had resulted in a rush by agencies to “haphazardly” adopt a system that they knew was flawed and that would flag eligible voters along with those who might have registered illegally. She warned that states were already “actively” using it to potentially purge eligible voters ahead of an election. …
James Percival, the general counsel for the Homeland Security Department, responded to the ruling on social media, calling it the “latest example” of “how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist.” …
