Mar 18, 2010

Senator Dorgan Wants Answers!

KQCD-TV in Dickinson, ND reports that Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) wants to know why Social Security has barely made a dent in its backlogs even after receiving an additional $2.5 billion.

I can give Senator Dorgan the answer more bluntly than Social Security will. The $2.5 billion has made a noticeable dent in the backlogs but mostly that money prevented things from getting much, much worse. Rapid improvement will cost much more money than the agency is getting or will get. Social Security's budget situation was so dire before Democrats gained control of Congress in 2007 that it is going to take huge sums of money and some time for the agency to dig its way out of the backlogs.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Inaccurate decisions,and possible bias.

Anonymous said...

Staffing is up but overtime is down. That means that an increase of staff of say 10% isn't resulting in an increase of total person-hours worked of 10%. The newer workers are going to do fine, most seem to have good skills but they take some time to be able to produce like a good veteran. That pulls overall productivity down as well but should be a short-term issue.

Anonymous said...

People are spending too much time reading this blog. LOL