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Mar 24, 2009

Furloughs And Social Security Disability

The testimony of Social Security's Inspector General to the House Ways and Means Committee includes the sobering news that five states have furloughed their employees who perform disability determination work for the Social Security Administration. Those five states comprise 15% of the national workload. Here is the list of states affected:
  • California
  • Connecticut
  • Maryland
  • Massachusetts
  • Oregon
This is happening even though these furloughs do nothing to help state budget shortfalls. 100% of the costs of these employees are paid by Social Security. It appears that state governments are mostly interested in the appearance of fairness to all of their employees. The furloughs actually worsen the economies of the states involved by reducing the paychecks of state employees unnecessarily and delaying payment of disability benefits.

This must be addressed by legislation. States should not be allowed to take money under ARRA and do this.
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3 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:59 PM, March 24, 2009

    Where's the logic?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous7:47 PM, March 24, 2009

    WHAT? This is incredible. If there is a better argument for pulling the DDS's back into the federal structure, I can't think of one. I'm looking at the list of states and they are not the Southern jurisdictions I expected. I certainly hope someone in the SSA SubCommittee is aware of this and looking into it. My Blue Dog guy needs a call about this.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous1:05 AM, March 25, 2009

    How is it that the States have so much power to do as they please to ostensibly try to project fairness to their own statewide employees? Federalize these DEs, or change the regulations so SSA can have some darn authority over these matters.

    ReplyDelete