Budget Changes Proposal In Works

From a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) (emphasis added):

The objective of our review was to address the requests of Congressmen John S. Tanner and John Lewis that we provide the Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives (Committee), with recommended management reforms for Social Security Administration (SSA) operations. ...

When examining SSA programs with significant improper payments or insufficient debt collection practices, we noted several overarching themes-or "causes"-for the vulnerabilities identified. ...

SSA reports that it has been significantly under-funded for a number of years. At the same time, its workloads have increased-through additional retirement and disability applications, as well as new congressional mandates (for example, processing millions of Medicare Part D subsidy applications and expanded participation in employee eligibility verification programs). Given the Agency's resource limitations, it made tough decisions in prioritizing its workload. However, in our opinion, such decisions have sacrificed stewardship activities and increased improper payments. ...

To help ensure SSA has the resources to perform this critical work, we support a legislative proposal to create a self-funding program integrity fund. This proposal was drafted by SSA and, as of June 2008, contained the following two elements.

Provide authority for SSA to expend a portion of actual collections of erroneous payments on activities to prevent, detect, and collect erroneous payments. Specifically, the proposal would establish permanent indefinite appropriations, subject to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) apportionment, to make available to SSA up to 25 percent of the actual overpayments collected during the base FY and make available to OIG up to 2.5 percent of the same collected overpayments.

Establish a revolving fund that would be financed from SSA's stewardship/program integrity activities' projected lifetime savings. That is, SSA would be permitted to deposit up to 50 percent of the estimated future lifetime program savings from processing program integrity activities such as (but not limited to) CDRs, SSI redeterminations, Cooperative Disability Investigation Units, and Special Office of the General Counsel prosecutions. The Commissioner would be authorized to fund initiatives that would yield at least a 150 percent return on investment within a 10-year time period. This proposal would link budgeting for cost-effective program integrity activities with their results. ...

The OIG has not performed any audit work to confirm whether funding shortfalls and diminished staffing levels have impacted SSA's ability to operate effectively.

The big story here is that Social Security is working on a proposal to partially exempt the agency from the budget process. That would be important. However, I cannot get over OIG admitting that it has failed to conduct any audit work to confirm whether Social Security's ability to get its work done has been affected by funding shortfalls and diminished staffing levels. I cannot imagine a non-political reason for turning a blind eye to what has long been a major issue.