"Emergency Clause" For Disability Determination

The budget crises that are causing many states to partially furlough their employees, including disability determination employees who make initial and reconsideration determinations and whose salaries are paid by Social Security, has led to the issuance of a new item in Social Security's Program Operations Manual Series (POMS) concerning the "emergency clause." The "emergency clause" is what Social Security is calling an agreement with a state to transfer some of that state's disability determination workload to Social Security for adjudication at the Office of Central Operations (OCO), Program Service Center - Disability Processing Branch (PSC-DPB), or Disability Quality Branch (DQB).

Unfortunately, Social Security has only very limited ability to help any state, so this may mean little. It may also make it more difficult for OCO, the PSCs and the DQBs to process their regular workloads. I am sure that Social Security realizes that this is borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, but they must feel that they have no choice.