Congressman Brian Higgins (NY-27) today met with senior Social Security Administration officials with direct oversight over Social Security hearing office operations to discuss the SSA’s plans to address the egregious backlog of Social Security cases in the Buffalo Hearing Office region. ...
“The Social Security Administration has taken the first step, but has only scratched the surface of the egregious backlog problem in Western New York,” Said Higgins. “It is crucial that we now continue to build on this start and in order to eliminate the backlogs that exist now and ensure that Western New Yorkers never have to deal with backlogs like this in the future,” Higgins said. ...
“The SSA knows that it can and must do better for Western New Yorkers whose lives have been put on hold while they await a decision on their Social Security cases,” Higgins said. “This is not a matter we will let go unchecked simply because the SSA has made a step towards solving the problem.”
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Jun 27, 2008
Meeting About Buffalo Backlogs
I keep posting about this, because the papers in the Buffalo area keep running articles. If every Congressman put this kind of pressure on Social Security, things would change. From the Amherst, NY Times:
When will the American public and Congressman understand that you get what you pay for. Congress is unwilling to go far enough over the President's recommended budget allocation to make a meaningful dent in any of the workloads growing at the Social Security Administration. This crisis was years in the making and it will take years to correct because it takes years for newly hired SSA employees to become proficient. Not only are backlogs growing but mistakes are being made because there are too few employees to have people specialize any more. Without that specialization it takes an extremely talented employee to know how to do all the jobs in a field office (or at ODAR for that matter)
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