How They're Using The Economic Stimulus Money For The DDS's

Here are some excerpts from Disability Determination Services' Staffing Under The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

ARRA [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the economic stimulus bill] provided SSA an additional $500 million to process retirement and disability workloads. ARRA funds should help SSA address increasing disability and retirement workloads caused by the combination of the economic downturn and the leading edge of the baby boomer retirements. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2009, SSA expected disability and retirement claims to increase by 600,000 over FY 2008.

At the time of our review, $87 million of SSA’s ARRA funds for FYs 2009 and 2010 had been allocated for labor costs of DDS employees and additional overtime, including indirect costs. The labor costs included hiring 300 new DDS employees. The remaining $413 million was allocated to the Offices of Operations and Disability Adjudication and Review, as well as for health information technology (IT) research and activities to facilitate the adoption of electronic medical records in disability claims. ...