Congressional Hearing Set For March 24

From the House Ways and Means Committee:

Congressman John S. Tanner (D-TN), Chairman, Subcommittee on Social Security, and Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA), Chairman, Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, today announced a joint hearing on the Social Security Administration’s (SSA’s) large backlog in disability claims and other service delivery declines, including backlogs in program integrity activities. The hearing will take place on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 in the main Committee hearing room, 1100 Longworth House Office Building, beginning at 10:00 a.m. ...

In recent years, SSA’s backlog of claims for Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits has reached unprecedented levels, with more than 1.3 million Americans currently awaiting a decision on their case. The problem is particularly severe at the hearings level, where the backlog has more than doubled since 2000 – from about 310,000 to more than 765,000 – and the average waiting time is now almost 500 days.

These backlogs have resulted from years of underfunding as SSA’s workload increased due to the aging of the population and additional responsibilities given to the agency. Resource shortages have also led to service delivery declines in other areas. SSA has significantly cut back on program integrity activities such as continuing disability reviews and SSI redeterminations, even though these activities have been demonstrated to generate considerable savings, as much as $10 in program costs for every $1 in administrative expenditures. In addition, service to the public has declined in SSA’s field offices, as noted in a January 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and the backlog problem is of such severity that GAO included it in its biennial “high risk” list of federal programs.

In the past two years, Congress has provided additional funding to begin to address these problems, and SSA has begun to implement a plan to eliminate the hearings level backlog by 2013. However, the agency continues to face new challenges. Disability and retirement claims are increasing due to the economic downturn in combination with demographic changes. From FY 2008 to FY 2009, initial disability claims are projected to increase by more than 12 percent and retirement claims by more than 8 percent, and both are expected to increase even further in FY 2010 and FY 2011.

Finally, two provisions designed to increase access to professional representation for disability claimants are scheduled to expire during the 111^th Congress; and legislative proposals have been offered relating to the disability determination process, such as changing how claimants give consent to release medical records.