The Congressional Budget Office estimate shows that compared with current spending rates the spending bill due for a House vote Thursday [and which just passed] would cut federal outlays from non-war accounts by just $352 million through Sept. 30. About $8 billion in immediate cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid are offset by nearly equal increases in defense spending.Got that? Social Security got budget cuts that leave it barely functioning while defense spending went up.
Apr 14, 2011
Winners And Losers
From the Washington Post:
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6 comments:
It was all smoke and mirrors BS. Hardly anything really got cut and no where near the 33 billion they claimed. Obama and Congress are all lying frauds.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/deal-includes-86b-in-cuts-that-likely-would-never-have-been-spent/2011/04/12/AFFbG4bD_story.html?hpid=z1
A close look at the bill itself, however, shows that cuts known as “rescissions,” account for about $8.6 billion eliminated in the budget compromise. These, in effect, deal with money that existed only on paper, and might never have been spent.
In these instances, Congress cancelled nearly 100 very large IOUs that it had issued to government agencies — but which those agencies had never used. Then, Congress totaled up the value of those IOUs and pronounced all that money “cut” from the budget.
A closer look shows that some of the IOUs were unlikely ever to be cashed in.
The Education Department, for instance, had an IOU for $560 million — for a program that no longer exists. The U.S. Capitol had one for $15 million, for a building that was already built. The Treasury Department had one for $490 million, which it had already volunteered to return.
Well Social Security overtime has certainly been cut. Until last month, the Claims Authorizers and Benefit Authorizers had virtually unlimited overtime available: 8 hours on Saturday, 6 on Sunday, and 2 hours Monday through Friday.
Now for the last month we have had no overtime at all. Talk about going from one extreme to another!
The age of the pending cases has already started to creep up and I expect this situation to get much worse in very short order if overtime isn't restored.
After overtime was cut people started working credit hours but many are now up to the max of 24 credit hours and will start using that, taking off days of work. This will result in even less hours being worked and growing backlogs.
Now that there is a budget - read the tea leaves - if overtime is restored - there might be money ti hire ALJs. If usajobs lists SSA openings now, the agency is doing more than hiring/promoting from within, so that is another positive sign on possible backlog reduction.
"Now that there is a budget - read the tea leaves - if overtime is restored - there might be money ti hire ALJs. If usajobs lists SSA openings now, the agency is doing more than hiring/promoting from within, so that is another positive sign on possible backlog reduction."
Who in their right mind would think that SSA's budget is going to get increased for OT and hiring. The battle over the 2012 budget is going to make the 2011 budget battle look like a family picnic and both side are talking cuts.
A nice little lesson for the first poster about the difference between budget authority and actual outlays. Welcome to the real world. It's complex sometimes, and wishing it to be simple is just that...wishing.
Well it is simple in this aspect of it. SSA simply cannot keep up with it's workload without lots of overtime for the front line workers. Congress cannot wish the backlogs to go away, whether they want to spend the money or not. so they had better cough up the money for overtime or new hiring.
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