Unnecessary SSI Claims Slowing Process at Social Security

Walter Wouk writes in his VVAW blog that the Social Security administration is taking unnecessary SSI disability claims and that this is slowing down processing of claims and leads to delay in paying benefits when claims are approved because of the time spent doing an unnecessary windfall offset computation. The SSI claims are unnecessary because SSI is a needs based program. There is no point in taking an SSI claim if the claimant is clearly not poor enough to qualify for benefits. Wouk believes that many clearly unnecessary claims and being taken. He attributes this to a policy of taking unnecessary SSI claims in order to make service at SSA look better than it is. However, a better explanation may be that Social Security District Offices are given staff based upon the number of claims they take, giving local managers an incentive to take as many claim as possible to get as much staff as possible.