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Jun 5, 2007

Schenectady Daily Gazette On Backlogs

Some excerpts from a Schenectady Daily Gazette article. No link is possible since there is no on-line edition of the paper. At the rate we are going every newspaper in the country will do a story along these lines.

Twenty-three-year-old Christina Doty waited three years to hear that she would be receiving a monthly check from the federal government for the rest of her life, and would never have to work again....

"It was hard to keep a job," recalled Doty, a Schenectady resident whose husband is also disabled. "With my education level, nobody wanted me. My bipolar disorder and anxiety made it hard for me to be around a lot of people. Standing for eight hours a day was painful."

Yet her application for Supplemental Security Income ... had been denied three times. She kept appealing, but the wait, which began in 2004, seemed interminable. ...

The Social Security Administration acknowledges that the wait is too long, and that they are trying to find ways to expedite the application process and reduce the ever-mounting backlog of cases waiting for a hearing decision. ...

"It's all too high," said Mark Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration.

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