Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has done a report on Social Security's efforts to review Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) decisions. The report makes it clear that it is impossible for Social Security to target individual ALJs for review. The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) would have to be changed before Social Security could do that.
The APA is one of the proudest achievements of American legal thinking. Amending it to allow targeting of ALJs isn't going to happen. The APA is fundamental to American government. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have any interest in touching the APA.
The current ALJ hysteria was never about actually going after troublesome ALJs, but about discrediting the Social Security Program as a whole. If anything, this APA matter may stir up the hornets’ nest further, as conservatives cry foul at how government bureaucrats, teachers, and now judges, are untouchable, when their private sector counterparts would have been forced into submission long ago.
ReplyDelete(1) I am somewhat troubled by the SSA OIG reporting directly to Congress. No doubt legal.
ReplyDelete(2) Cover up? OIG agrees that SSA does not keeps the information by ALJ or hearing office. They may not ''keep a specific file with the data, but the relevant ODAR ... officies seem to know the relevant information about the ALJs and hearing offices, individual outliers, even if there is no specific written or electronic data file to be found in SSA. They know.