Astrue Says SSA Has Been Bled Dry

From CQ Weekly (subscription required) (emphasis added):

Next month the Social Security Administration plans to begin what is, for that agency at least, a veritable hiring binge. It will be offering jobs to 150 administrative law judges, who will be responsible for deciding when sick workers are too disabled to return to work.

Such staffing expansions ordinarily don’t register more than a blip within the vast federal bureaucracy. But the effort over the next year is expected to reveal whether the Social Security system is equipped to deal with an anticipated crush of baby boomers in their 50s and 60s who suffer from chronic diseases and serious workplace injuries.

The system isn’t up to the task right now. The fresh hires are being added to a cadre of about 1,000 hearings judges, and the newcomers’ task is explicitly to begin whittling down an imposing pile of nearly 750,000 applications for disability determinations — some of which have been sitting in the agency’s in basket for more than three years — that is twice as large as the workload the agency faced a decade ago. ...

“I’m not aware of a systemic problem that greater resources would not significantly address,” said Albert R. Wynn of Maryland, who is among the most vocal House members in favor of expanding the Social Security system’s legal staff. “I don’t want to shorten the hearing process or what people are entitled to. It’s very difficult for a person in a disability situation.”

Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which would take the lead in writing any legislation to change the Social Security system, was more direct addressing the situation last year, blaming the Bush administration for imposing domestic spending cuts that compelled Congress, in his view, to underfund the Social Security Administration. The tone is prompting Social Security’s top official to focus on short-term.

“The message coming from Congress loud and clear is: Get the backlog down, process cases on time and maybe we’ll think about these other issues later,” Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue said in an interview. ...

Each year from fiscal 2000 to 2007, Congress appropriated less money for the Social Security Administration’s administrative accounts than the president requested, according to the Social Security Advisory Board, an independent panel. Spurred by the disability backlog, Congress gave the agency $150 million more than President Bush requested for fiscal 2008, which is how Astrue can afford his hiring binge.

“They started bleeding this agency dry in the Clinton administration and it persisted in the Bush administration,” Astrue said. ...

Astrue worries about the effects disabilities are having on the system’s long-term costs, noting findings that show that since 1985, the amount of Social Security’s total spending consumed by disability benefits has increased from 10 percent to 17 percent.

“An increasing percentage of the American public is on the rolls,” Astrue said. “It’s a number I wish Congress and others would look at.”

It is only after an appropriations bill has been passed that Astrue is willing to talk this way. We will soon see his budget request for fiscal year 2009, which will tell us whether he really has gotten the message.

Note also that Astrue cannot talk about how his agency has been bled dry without also expressing a desire that fewer people draw Social Security disability benefits. Other than his father, I wonder how many Social Security disability claimants and recipients Astrue has ever met.