The House Appropriations Committee has finally posted numbers on the cuts for various agencies under the final continuing resolution that will fund agencies through the rest of the fiscal year (FY). These numbers show no specific cut for the Social Security Administration other than a 0.2% cut being imposed across the board on all civilian agencies.
If I understand correctly, this means that Social Security's operating budget for the rest of the fiscal year will be the same as for the last fiscal year, less 0.2%, which would be about a $23 million reduction, at a time when Social Security's workloads are increasing dramatically. The Republican appropriations bill would have reduced Social Security's funding by $125 million from FY 2010, not counting recissions in funds already appropriated for construction of a new national computer center. The President's bill would have given Social Security almost a billion dollars more than FY 2010.
The bottom line is that under this level of funding, Social Security can probably avoid furloughing employees -- and I would guess that to have been the only goal shared by Democrats and Republicans -- but backlogs will grow and service will deteriorate. I am curious to know whether any overtime will be possible for the rest of FY 2011. Social Security has been getting a lot of its workload accomplished using overtime. No overtime would be very bad news for Social Security. Also, we need to know to what extent Social Security will have to freeze hiring for the rest of FY 2011.
Funding for Social Security's new national computer center is more precarious than anyone, including Republicans, would like. That money will have to be painfully squeezed out of the budget each year until it is finished.
Update: That 0.2% reduction in funding must not have been applied exactly evenly. According to the actual bill, Social Security's reduction was $26 million, not $23 million. More importantly, $75 million in funds previously appropriated to Social Security for information technology, telecommunications hardware and software infrastructure was rescinded. This is on top of the $200 million in rescissions for the national computer center. We already knew about that one.
This is going to be a mess to manage. Social Security is on a path towards administrative collapse.
If I understand correctly, this means that Social Security's operating budget for the rest of the fiscal year will be the same as for the last fiscal year, less 0.2%, which would be about a $23 million reduction, at a time when Social Security's workloads are increasing dramatically. The Republican appropriations bill would have reduced Social Security's funding by $125 million from FY 2010, not counting recissions in funds already appropriated for construction of a new national computer center. The President's bill would have given Social Security almost a billion dollars more than FY 2010.
The bottom line is that under this level of funding, Social Security can probably avoid furloughing employees -- and I would guess that to have been the only goal shared by Democrats and Republicans -- but backlogs will grow and service will deteriorate. I am curious to know whether any overtime will be possible for the rest of FY 2011. Social Security has been getting a lot of its workload accomplished using overtime. No overtime would be very bad news for Social Security. Also, we need to know to what extent Social Security will have to freeze hiring for the rest of FY 2011.
Funding for Social Security's new national computer center is more precarious than anyone, including Republicans, would like. That money will have to be painfully squeezed out of the budget each year until it is finished.
Update: That 0.2% reduction in funding must not have been applied exactly evenly. According to the actual bill, Social Security's reduction was $26 million, not $23 million. More importantly, $75 million in funds previously appropriated to Social Security for information technology, telecommunications hardware and software infrastructure was rescinded. This is on top of the $200 million in rescissions for the national computer center. We already knew about that one.
This is going to be a mess to manage. Social Security is on a path towards administrative collapse.
4 comments:
I'm not as sanguine. The CR itself puts the LAE at $10.775 billion, which is only $100 million more than the original draconian CR. It looks like a repeat of the SSA subcommittee's odd calculations of the amount of their original cuts. Can anyone explain how $10.775 billion is only a 0.2% cut off of FY2010?
They need to appropriate enough money for overtime for "front line" workers in the Field Offices and PC's. Or else find money to hire more workers. SSA just has too much work to do away with overtime and expect the work to be done on a regular workday.
The proposal to jettison the SSI program is the only thing that could save the agency at this point. SSI is an incredible drag on SSA resources. It is little acknowledged outside of the field offices, and virtually unknown to the general public what a complete fiasco the program has become. I have worked in it for over 30 years and it is virtually unfixable. Get rid of it and free up the resources to do what SSA is supposed to do--take care of Social Security.
Get rid of SSI.
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