Looking To The Conference?

Here is an excerpt from the Congressional Record. This was during the House of Representatives debate on the Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill, which includes funding of Social Security's administrative budget:

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. MCNULTY. Thank you, Chairman OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise to enter into a colloquy with the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee, Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, today my goal is to draw attention to the backlog of applications for disability benefits at the Social Security Administration. Today, more than 1.3 million Americans are awaiting a decision on their disability cases. SSA is staffed with dedicated, hard-working employees, but due to staffing shortages at the agency, some applicants for disability benefits must wait as long as 3 or 4 years before receiving a decision ontheir case. Many of these individuals are severely ill or injured, cannot work or have little or no income or access to health care. American workers pay into the Social Security system with the promise that if they become severely disabled, Social Security will be there for them. Today we are falling far short on that promise. This situation is a direct result of the understaffing of the Social Security Administration in recent years. Other important programs under the Labor, Health and Human Services bill have also been underfunded. Given these competing needs, I greatly appreciate the chairman’s efforts and the committee’s effort to include additional funding for SSA in this year’s bill. Nonetheless, I believe we should strive to do better in conference.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I share the gentleman’s concern about the Social Security disability claim backlog and the hardship it has caused. Under the President’s request for SSA, the disability backlog has gotten worse. The funding increase we’ve included in this bill will keep that from happening and will protect SSA from staffing declines that the agency has seen in recent years. I would make the point that despite the fact that we were left in a considerable mess with all of last year’s domestic appropriation bills not passed when we took over, we still made SSA a priority and included $148 million over the 2006 funding level. In the bill we are debating today, we have included over $401 million above the 2007 level and $100 million more than the presidential request. Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to work with the gentleman and others, such as Mr. ARCURI, toward increasing the amount for SSA in the conference and in future years.

Mr. MCNULTY. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say to Chairman OBEY that, DAVE, I approached you on this earlier in the year. Your response was immediate and positive. You have provided the additional funding. We hope to get more in conference. But what you have done is going to accrue to the benefit of thousands and thousands of Americans who have been waiting a long,
long time for these decisions. On their behalf, I thank you.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman. Mr. WALSH and I both are concerned about the problem, and we will be happy to work with you.

Okay, so what was going on there? Obey is the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. McNulty is Chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee. McNulty was getting Obey on record in this "colloquy" as saying that he will work to get Social Security more money once the appropriations bill gets to conference, that is, once the Senate passes its version of the bill and the House and the Senate get together in a conference committee to work out their differences. Social Security's budget can come out of conference very different from what either the House or the Senate passed, but additional funding coming out of the conference committee is merely a possibility -- and the President is threatening to veto the bill.