Astrue Marginalizes Barnhart's Plans

I thought this point from today's hearing on Michael Astrue's nomination to become Commissioner of Social Security was so important that it was worth going back to get an exact quote. Senator Baucus asked Astrue about benchmarks for progress on dealing with Social Security's backlogs. Here is an exact quote from Astrue's answer: "Commissioner Barnhart has tried to do some very thoughtful things. Those are somewhat on the margins. Ultimately, a lot of this is brute force in terms of people, unless there's some radical change in the system." I suppose that standing alone one could read this as a call for "radical change in the system", but in context he was certainly not suggesting that radical change was necessary or desirable. The implication was clear that he did not think that anything other than a bigger operating budget and more personnel at Social Security was going to reduce the backlogs. This may help explain the report that Astrue has not bothered to contact Barnhart since his nomination. He may not be too interested in the approach she had been taking, which he considers to have been working "on the margins" rather than on the problem itself.