The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE) website contains a September 11, 2008 statement by the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA) on Social Security's appropriations situation. Oddly, the statement is not available on the NCSSMA website. NADE is an organization of the personnel who make initial and reconsideration determinations upon Social Security disability claims. NCSSMA is an organization of Social Security management personnel. Here are a few excerpts from the NCSSMA statement:
Due to budget constraints in recent years the amount of administrative funding the Social Security Administration (SSA) has received through the annual appropriations process has been significantly below the level necessary to keep up with the agency’s workloads. ...
As a result, the backlog of unprocessed disability claims has grown to unprecedented levels and the system is now in a state of crisis ...
The President’s proposed budget for SSA’s administrative funding for Fiscal Year 2009 is $10.327 billion, $582 million more than SSA’s enacted funding level for Fiscal Year 2008. This budget is a positive step toward improving SSA services. However, nearly $457 million of the proposed increase would be used to keep up with expenses such as increased rental costs, guard costs, and salaries. This document provides an overview of the areas where SSA is struggling with its workloads and details why additional funding is necessary above the President’s proposed budget to provide an appropriate level of service to the public. ...
As of August 2008 about 767,000 cases, a record high, were awaiting a hearing on an appealed claim, compared to about 312,000 cases pending at the beginning of the decade. Nearly 300,000 of these appeals are over 1 year old. Approximately 92,000 veterans have pending hearings. The President’s FY 2009 Budget Request projects that the hearings backlog will ease somewhat to 682,000 in FY 2009. The targeted processing time for a completed hearing in FY 2009 is 506 days, down only slightly from the targeted time of 535 days for FY 2008. This is still an increase of nearly 200 days over FY 2001. ...
Service delivery in Field Offices is deteriorating: ...
SSA has two classes of phone service: 800 Number and Field Office. The 800 Number had a busy rate of 7.5% in FY 2007 and handled about 59 million calls through agents and automation. At the same time over 60 million phone calls are directed to SSA Field Offices each year. In FY 2007, 45% of callers who eventually reached a Field Office by telephone said that they had received a busy signal or were told to call back at another time on an earlier call. Consequently, the actual busy rate is higher than 45%. ...
Staffing at SSA is close to its lowest level since 1972, before SSI was established; yet, SSA today has about twice the number of beneficiaries it had in 1972. According to SSA’s Budget Appendix for FY 2009, SSA’s civilian full-time staff employment for Fiscal Year 2009 will essentially remain unchanged, leaving it at this low level.
The Disability Determination Services (DDSs) have lost about 1,270 positions since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2006, as a result their staffing levels are down about 8.7%. The attrition rate in recent years at the DDSs has averaged 12.7 % versus 6.8% for Federal government employees. This has forced the DDSs to invest significant resources to train new staff. The DDSs will not be able to adequately address staffing losses either. ...
As of FY 2008, SSA has a backlog of 3,300 work years. This is expected to grow to 8,100 work years in FY 2009. Included in this shortfall are important workloads and services that are in addition to the processing of new applications, e.g., representative payee accounting, recording earnings, and dealing with overpayments. SSA also has a large backlog of unworked medical Continuing Disability Reviews and SSI Redeterminations due to the reductions in processing these workloads because of budget shortfalls. These unworked program integrity activities are costing taxpayers billions of dollars ...
The House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee recommended that an additional $100 million above the President’s FY 2009 Budget Request be provided for SSA’s administrative funding. The full Senate Appropriations Committee recommended that SSA receive an additional $50 million above the President’s FY 2009 Budget Request. It is unlikely that Congress will complete its work on the FY 2009 appropriations bills before the end of the year and a Continuing Resolution (CR) will be enacted to provide stopgap funding. A CR passed at FY 2008 levels would only cause SSA’s unacceptable level of service to degrade.
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