Congresswoman Kathy Castor's bill to impose time limits for holding hearings on Social Security disability claims has generated a good deal of media interest. Here are some excerpts from a story in the St. Petersburg Times:
The tens of thousands of people stuck in the national backlog for Social Security disability benefits might disagree, but the agency's top official argues progress is being made in ending the crisis.
The progress is hard to see in the Tampa Bay area, however, where the caseload is among the highest in the nation and an office sits empty awaiting the hiring of a much-needed judge.
The most recent figures indicate that 761,042 people are waiting across the country for hearings to address their claims. In the Tampa hearing office, the number is 14,524, the highest in the state.
The situation prompted Rep. Kathy Castor, a Tampa democrat, to propose legislation this week to break the backlog. Castor's bill would require that a hearing be held between 60 and 75 days from the date it is requested, and that a final verdict be given no more than 15 days after the hearing. ...
"Hiring new judges is a step in the right direction, but you still have to hire the staff in order to help them," said Robert Gutierrez, a South Florida lawyer who has been representing disability clients for 16 years. ...
Linda Fullerton, co-founder of a national grass roots organization called the Social Security Disability Coalition, is not impressed.
Fullerton, who lives in Rochester, N.Y., said she waited for a year and a half to get her benefits. When the wait devastated her finances, she got angry enough to start a cyberspace group that now numbers 3,000 members, she said.
"There is blood and destruction on the hands of both the Social Security Administration and Congress," she said in an e-mail to the Times. "Both have been systematically killing and devastating the lives of the most vulnerable citizens of this nation for decades."
2 comments:
Ms. Fullerton speaks the truth re: blood and destruction and Social Security.
Perhaps we should look into a war crimes trial for atrocities committed by the U.S. Government against its own citizens.
She outght to put the government's money where her mouth is. Instead of time limits condition money to SSA on employing support staff instead of contracting out so that we ALJ's can do the job we are paid to do. In the more than 25 years I've been doing this we have never been so understaffed and staffed by such incompetent people! Oh and another thing, let's require the people hired to be able to read and write a coherent sentence!
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