Full Ways And Means Committee Hearing On Social Security Backlog

I had openly wondered when we would get a hearing of the Social Security Subcommittee at which Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue would testify. It has been almost a year since he has testified before the Social Security Subcommittee, which is part of the Ways and Means Committee in the House of Representatives.

A hearing has finally been scheduled for April 23 at 10:00, but it is not before the Social Security Subcommittee, but before the whole Ways and Means Committee, raising this to a much higher level of visibility! Although no witness list has been issued, I think that we can presume that Commissioner Astrue will be testifying. The focus of this hearing goes well beyond the hearing backlogs. Staffing levels and adequacy of public service throughout the agency are the issue.

Here is an excerpt from the press release on the hearing:

In recent years, SSA’s workload has grown significantly due to the aging of the population and new responsibilities stemming from Medicare and homeland security legislation. Despite a productivity increase of more than 15 percent since 2001, the administrative funding SSA has received has been well below the level needed to keep up with this growing workload. From Fiscal Year (FY) 1998 through FY 2007, SSA received a cumulative total of $1.3 billion less than was requested by the President, and $4.6 billion less than the Commissioner’s own budget for the agency.

As a result, by the end of calendar year 2007, SSA staffing had dropped to almost the level in 1972 – before the start of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program – even though SSA’s beneficiary population has nearly doubled since that time.

Due to the combination of rising claims as the baby boom generation ages and prolonged underfunding, Social Security and SSI disability claims backlogs have reached unprecedented levels. More than 1.3 million applicants for disability benefits are currently awaiting a decision on their claim, and total waiting times often extend into years. In addition, as SSA tries to address the backlog crisis, the agency is forced to divert its limited resources away from its day-to-day operations in field offices and payment processing centers in order to try to manage the disability backlog. The result is an increase in long lines, delays, busy signals, and unanswered telephones, and growing concern about closures and consolidations of local field offices. Resource shortages have also forced the agency to cut back on program integrity activities, even though such activities have been demonstrated to generate considerable savings to the Trust Fund.

Under the President’s FY 2009 proposed budget, the agency would be able to make modest progress toward addressing the disability claims backlog, but service in the field would continue to decline. Moreover, proposals to assign additional workloads to SSA, such as expanding SSA’s role in verifying the work-authorization status of employees, would, if enacted and not funded in full each year, force SSA to shift scarce resources away from its core functions to carry out these new workloads.

In announcing the hearing, Chairman Rangel said, “We are alarmed by the deterioration in service to our constituents and the suffering of those who must wait years to receive benefits they desperately need. Despite its well-earned reputation for being a can-do agency, the Social Security Administration simply cannot do its job without adequate funding. We have been working on a bipartisan basis to address this problem, and will continue to do so until the disability claims backlog is eliminated and SSA’s capacity to provide high quality service to the public is restored.”