Full Obama Budget Proposal Out

I have criticized the current and former Commissioner of Social Security for not requesting a higher budget for the Social Security Administration. Almost every time I do this, I get one or more comments saying that I am off-base, that all budget requests for all executive branch agencies must be approved by the President, that the Commissioner of Social Security cannot legally do what I suggest. That would be true for all or almost all other executive branch agencies, but not for Social Security. The President has released his full budget proposal for fiscal year 2010 (which begins on October 1, 2009). Take a look at this excerpt from the budget for Social Security:

As directed by Section 104 of P.L. 103-296, the Social Security Independence and Program Improvements Act of 1994, the Commissioner of Social Security shall prepare an annual budgetfor SSA, which shall be submitted by the President to the Congress without revision, together with the President's request for SSA.

The Commissioner's budget includes $11,949 million for total administrative discretionary resources in 2010. This represents $11,842 million for SSA administrative expenses and $107 million for the Office of the Inspector General. In addition, the Commissioner requested $750 million for replacement of the National Computer Center.

There may be practical reasons why the Social Security Commissioner will not communicate a budget proposal to Congress that really reflects what the agency needs, but there is no legal barrier.

The Obama budget for Social Security's operating budget (the Limitation on Administrative Expenditures or LAE) is $12.081 billion which is slightly higher than Astrue had requested. I should say that I find these budget proposals are confusing, so it is possible that I have misinterpreted something. It had been previously reported that the Obama budget for Social Security's LAE would be $11.6 billion. As I read the budget proposal, the difference between what had been reported previously and what this document says is additional allocations for improving program compliance. These additional allocations are expected to save money, so they will not really cost what they seem to cost. Again, I would appreciate any help that any real budget expert can give me.

The budget proposal says that Social Security's Full Time Equivalent (FTE) employee total was 60,744 in FY 2008, 63,469 in FY 2009 and projects it as 65,114 in FY 2010 under this budget proposal, which is about what we had heard. This is not nearly enough to significantly reduce the backlogs at Social Security or to significantly improve service. I am quite sure of that.