Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) today commended the Social Security Administration (SSA) for ending the year with fewer disability hearings pending than in the prior year for the first time since 1999. This reduction, Harkin said, is due in large part to a influx in funding. Harkin is a long-time advocate for individuals with disabilities and Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that funds the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) administrative budget.
“For over a decade, the Social Security Administration’s backlog in disability claims was far too high and growing, so I commend the agency for reducing this number. For those living with disabilities, waiting for benefits is a long, difficult process,” Harkin said. “I expect the SSA to continue to aggressively tackle this problem in order to eliminate this backlog completely, and will continue my work to ensure that the agency has the resources in order to do so.”
As Chairman of the Senate’s Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Harkin has provided substantial increases in funding to help SSA reduce the backlog in disability claims and improve SSA’s other core services.
Pages
▼
Oct 3, 2009
Harkin Hails Progress
From a press release issued by Senator Tom Harkin:
Now they are patting themselves on the back for what is really a trivial, almost insignificant improvement in a highly visible but only fractional portion of the backlogs in workloads that are sinking SSA. These politicans are such a joke.
ReplyDeleteIts all a shell game. The ODARs purposefully failed to receipt in cases before the end of the fiscal year in order to keep their numbers down. The real number of cases in the hearing pipeline is actually much higher.
ReplyDelete