Social Security Funding Stays Low Until February 15

The House of Representatives has just adopted H.J.Res 102, a continuing funding resolution that will keep the government running through February 15, 2007, on a roll call vote. The resolution keeps Social Security funding at the same low level in effect since the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1. This means that Social Security will be operating for at least four and a half months under a budget that the Commissioner of Social Security has said would require ten days for furloughs for Social Security employees over the course of the entire fiscal year. The Commissioner does not have the relative luxury of planning how to use what is available now over the course of the entire fiscal year, but must deal with almost day to day limitiations on spending money. Purchases may be deferred and payments to vendors may be delayed slightly, but there is a real risk of serious problems at Social Security over the next two months.

In fairness, Commissioner Barnhart must share in the blame for this fiasco. She has spent over five years doing her best to convince Congress that she could bring dramatic improvements in productivity through the EDIB electronic file program and the Disability Service Improvement (DSI) reorganization. Congress ended up taking her seriously, even though EDIB has hurt productivity in the short run and few now believe that it will ever yield more than modest productivity gains and even though DSI will have almost no effect, either good or bad, on Social Security productivity until well into the future. The failure of Commissioner Barnhart to pull the promised rabbit out of the hat leaves Social Security painfully short of manpower for at least the next two months.