Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal introduced the Public Servants Protection and Fairness Act, H.R. 4540, legislation to fix the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) for future retirees and provide meaningful relief to current WEP retirees. The bill ensures that public servants across the nation can retire with the security and dignity they deserve.
The legislation establishes a new, fairer formula that will pay Social Security benefits in proportion to the share of a worker’s earnings that were covered for Social Security purposes. This provision is coupled with a benefit guarantee ensuring no benefit cuts relative to current law for all current and future retirees. Current WEP retirees will receive $150 a month in relief payments. ...
“The WEP negatively affects nearly 2 million retired public servants across the country, including about 73,000 in Massachusetts,” said Chairman Neal. “Public employees like firefighters, teachers, and police officers should not miss out on the Social Security benefits they earned over decades of hard work. With this legislation, these valued members of our communities will have greater retirement security and peace of mind.”
Originally, the WEP was intended to equalize the Social Security benefit formula for workers with similar earnings histories, both inside and outside of the Social Security system. However, in practice, it unfairly penalizes many public employees. ...
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A Wisconsin woman is accused of hiding her mother's corpse to live off her Social Security money. ...
Officers arrived at [the mother's] home last Wednesday to do a welfare check after a neighbor called police. "She knew the lady and didn't see her for some time," ...
Officers found a note taped on Ruby's home that said, "Ruby has gone out of town to visit some friends of ours. Paula." Inside, they found a chair covered in Borax, as well as boxes of ammonia and bleach.
Days later, Paula Bergold confessed to her mother's death and that her body was in the home. Bergold said she found her mother dead in a chair — the one later covered in Borax — and didn't call authorities because she was worried about her finances. She told police she was living off her mother's Social Security income and investment.
When the body began to smell, Bergold placed her mother's body inside the tub. ...
... If a family member of a wage earner is eligible for OASDI [Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance] benefits and is not a U.S. citizen, he/she may need to meet a 5-year residency requirement. To fulfill the residency requirement, the beneficiary must establish a physical residence in the United States, while in a qualifying relationship with the wage earner, with the intent to reside for a cumulative period of at least 5 years. SSA uses the automated Regular Transcript Attainment and Selection Pass (RETAP) process to prompt benefit suspension for non-citizen beneficiaries who have not meet their 5-year residency requirement and have been outside the United States for longer than 6 consecutive months. ...
Of the 200 non-citizen beneficiaries we reviewed, SSA did not properly suspend benefits to 26 (13 percent). SSA should have suspended these beneficiaries because they had not met their 5-year residency requirement and lived outside the United States for longer than 6 consecutive months. Of the 26 beneficiaries, 23 met the criteria for the RETAP process to prompt benefit suspension. However, RETAP did not identify these beneficiaries for suspension. According to SSA, a RETAP programming limitation prevented these beneficiaries from being identified for benefit suspension. SSA employees omitted information from the remaining three beneficiaries’ Master Beneficiary Records required for RETAP to prompt benefit suspensions.
By not appropriately suspending benefits, SSA overpaid these 26 beneficiaries approximately $332,000. Accordingly, we project SSA overpaid nearly $29 million to approximately 2,300 non-citizen OASDI beneficiaries. ...Is RETAP a State Department database?
... SSA’s controls that identified potentially fraudulent iClaims were generally effective. However, the number of undetected fraudulent iClaims is unknown. Of the 70,173 potentially fraudulent iClaims OAFP [Office of Anti-Fraud Programs] identified, SSA determined 3,807 were fraudulent, 48,062 were likely fraudulent, 4,825 were not fraudulent, 11,289 were inconclusive, and 2,190 were pending. ...Almost 60,000 known cases where they can't tell for sure whether there was fraud or not. They admit that they have no idea how many unknown fraud cases there are. Still, they call that "generally effective"? What would ineffective look like? No, iClaims fraud is a big problem and Social Security doesn't have a handle on it.
... Administrative law judges (ALJ) decided 49,579 Appeals Council remand decisions from Fiscal Years (FY) 2016 through 2018. Appeals Council remands represent the modification of a prior hearing decision often because the ALJ applied the wrong law, additional claimant or other witness testimony was needed, the claimant did not receive a fair hearing, or the ALJ decisional rationale was insufficient.
SSA’s policy states that remands should be processed as a priority workload. Hearing offices are required to flag remands when they are docketed into the hearing office and assign them immediately to an ALJ for review. ...
Although remands should be processed as a priority workload, SSA does not define “priority” and does not have a processing time goal for this workload. Of the 49,579 remands processed in FYs 2016 through 2018,
In my experience, this is definitely a problem. I've never understood what's going on behind the scenes but remands often take longer to schedule than new request for hearing cases.Our sample analysis found some remands took longer to process because they were not always input immediately in the hearing offices’ master docket or the remands stalled in the Ready to Schedule, ALJ Review Pre-hearing, or ALJ Review Post-hearing stages. ...
- 22,144 were processed in fewer than 270 days,
- 10,043 took between 270 and 360 days,
- 5,191 took between 361 and 430 days,
- 7,179 took between 431 and 595 days,
- 4,717 took between 596 and 999 days, and
- 305 took 1,000 days or longer to process.
Bill Small of Rocky Hill got a jolt this past March when the Social Security Administration (SSA) notified him in a letter that it had overpaid his wife, Bess, during two decades of disbursing her monthly benefit. And so, now that he and his wife are 85 years old and she has been diagnosed with dementia, the SSA is demanding that he repay a total of $38,192 on her behalf. ...
The retired Air Force colonel, who during a 28-year career piloted multiengine military aircraft all over the world and served in Vietnam, says the government admits it made a mistake and that he and his wife of 63 years are blameless. He asked in June that the SSA waive its demand for repayment.
But on Wednesday, an SSA representative told him during a personal conference in Hartford that his request is being denied. ...
Small said he still hasn’t received an explanation of what specific error by the SSA resulted in the overpayment, as well how it happened and when it began. (He said he doesn’t know how long the overpayments were happening, but if they spanned the entire 22 years, they would have averaged around $145 a month to reach the $38,192 total.) ...
“To approve the waiver of an overpayment we must be able to determine that the individual is without fault in causing the overpayment, and repayment would cause an undue hardship,” Kevin Reino, an SSA public affairs specialist in the agency’s regional office in Boston, said in describing the SSA’s general policy. ...Years ago I had a case that might have been a little like this. The client had been an employee of the New York City transit system. Years before he retired somebody at Social Security had made a mistake. The city had sent the agency a reel (I said it was years ago) containing data on employee wages. Somebody at Social Security had run the reel twice, double crediting wages for all those employees. The mistake was only discovered many years later. The mistake resulted in a large number of former New York City transit workers being overpaid by Social Security. I argued that the original award certificate determining the primary insurance amount was res judicata and that there was no basis for reopening it. The Administrative Law Judge bought it and the overpayment was wiped out. At least in that case, we knew why the overpayment had happened. Often, it's almost impossible to get an explanation of how the overpayment occurred. In this woman's case, I'll take a guess that Social Security didn't properly coordinate this woman's wife's benefits with her retirement benefits based on her own earnings.
At the July hearing, he yelled at his attorney and an administrative judge and threatened future physical violence, the complaint says. Salem police responded and Carlsen was allowed to leave without arrest after he was escorted out of the hearing room. Carlsen live-streamed his actions, according to prosecutors.
The National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year with a conference in New Orleans. The first NOSSCR conference was held in New Orleans 40 years ago. I was among the 75 or so who was present at that first conference. NOSSCR asked me to write a something about my involvement in NOSSCR. Here’s what I wrote:
I had the good fortune of hanging out a shingle to practiceSocial Security law just before NOSSCR’s first conference. Without NOSSCR I don’t think I would have made a go of it.I started work for what was then the Bureau of Hearings and Appeals (BHA) as a staff attorney in February 1978. While I found that I liked the field of Social Security law, I did not like working for the federal government or anybody else for that matter. I opened my own law office on the Tuesday after Labor Day in 1979.While working at BHA was an excellent way of learning Social Security law, I realized as I was preparing to leave the agency that I had learned nothing about how to practice Social Security law. There was no one locally to learn from since no other attorney in the area did much Social Security work. I also discovered that I would now be a small business owner. That was a real shock.After I submitted my letter of resignation to Social Security, I talked with another staff attorney whom I had met in training. He worked in Atlanta. He told me that there was a new organization forming of attorneys who represented Social Security claimants. He didn’t know much about it but he gave me the telephone number of a Georgia attorney, Rudolph Patterson, who was involved in the effort.Rudolph was gracious when I called. He told me how to join NOSSCR and told me the newly formed organization would be holding its first conference in New Orleans that November. He sent me copies of the first two or three issues of NOSSCR’s newsletter. I pored over them. Even though my finances were tight, I decided that I had to go to the first NOSSCR conference.I still regret one thing about that first NOSSCR conference. Rudolph invited pretty everyone to dinner at Antoine’s the night before the conference was to begin. Because of another commitment, I took a late flight and didn’t arrive in time for that dinner. I’ve been able to dine at Antoine’s since but I still regret missing that dinner on Rudolph’s dime.I couldn’t afford to stay at the conference hotel, the Royal Orleans, so I stayed at a barely adequate place on St. Peter Street a few blocks away. I remember walking over to the Royal Orleans at about 8:00 on the first morning of the conference and seeing bars open and serving drinks to customers. I knew that I was definitely not in Raleigh! At that time, you couldn’t even buy a mixed drink in a restaurant in Raleigh.I was impressed by many things once the conference beganbut most by the obvious hunger for knowledge that everyone was exhibiting. Even though we were in a city that afforded endless temptations, almost everyone stayed for almost every minute of every presentation. This was the case for NOSSCR conferences that followed for at least several years.Even though people at that first conference were meeting for the first time, there was almost instant camaraderie. In addition to meeting Rudolph for the first time, I met people like Nancy Shor, Steve Babitsky, Bob Crowe, Jim Brown, Carl Weisbrod, Steve Horenstein, Cliff Weisberg, Mike Glancy and Lyle Lieberman, all of whom became friends. I have learned so much from them over the years.At that first NOSSCR conference I noticed that I had something to contribute. While I knew nothing about practicing Social Security law or running a law office, I had picked uptechnical Social Security knowledge that was in short supply in the early days of NOSSCR.I couldn’t afford to attend the second NOSSCR Conferencebut for many years thereafter I didn’t miss another one. They were cherished opportunities to learn, to network with other Social Security attorneys and to contribute what I could.Those conferences and phone calls with other NOSSCR members were opportunities to feel less isolated professionally. I was used to working at BHA with other staff attorneys and ALJs but I was now by myself. While there are dozens of other Social Security attorneys in North Carolina now, at the time there was just myself, another attorney in Charlotte who was somewhat seedy and a few fine legal services people such as Mike Glancy. Other young attorneys in private practice in Raleigh at the time doing personal injury and workers comp didn’t understand the challenges I was facing nor did I understand theirs. I think I might have eventually given up without NOSSCR because it would have just been too lonely.In retrospect, joining NOSSCR and going to that first NOSSCR conference were the two best moves I’ve made professionally. NOSSCR has meant and continues to mean a lot to me. I hope I’ll be there for the 50th anniversary NOSSCR conference in 2029 and even the 60th in 2039.Keep this organization strong. It’s needed now as much as ever.
The Social Security Administration today announced the first potential group of selected participants for its new electronic Consent Based Social Security Number (SSN) Verification (eCBSV) service. The agency will roll out the service to these users in June 2020, and plans on expanding the number of users within approximately six months of the initial rollout. ...
Social Security is creating eCBSV, a fee-based electronic SSN verification service, to allow select financial institutions and service providers, called “permitted entities” and including subsidiaries, affiliates, agents, subcontractors, or assignees of a financial institution, to verify if a person’s SSN, name, and date of birth combination matches Social Security records. Social Security needs the person’s written consent and will accept an electronic signature in order to disclose the SSN verification to the permitted entity. eCBSV returns a match verification of “Yes” or “No.” eCBSV does not verify a person’s identity. ...
... On November 28, 2018, the Unites States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit concluded in Hicks v. Commissioner of Social Security that our current redetermination process violated constitutional and statutory protections for individuals who challenged the agency’s redetermination process. Pursuant to the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Hicks, the courts are remanding affected cases to the agency to provide new hearings and decisions. The courts have also ordered us to reinstate benefits pending the outcome of the new redetermination proceedings. We refer to this sub-set of individuals as Hicks cases. ...
Individuals who had their cases remanded from Federal court for new proceedings will receive a letter from the Appeals Council. The letter will address their new hearing to consider their medical condition. …
Affected individuals will also receive separate notices, which will be available in the Online Retrieval System (ORS), explaining how we will comply with the district court’s order to reinstate benefits until we make a new decision and how we will schedule a phone appointment. …
A Former Social Security Administration employee in Birmingham is accused of creating underpayments to more than a dozen beneficiaries who’s loved ones had died.
LaTanya Hatter is charged in a three-count federal indictment alleging fraud and identity theft.
Court records show Hatter used her position as a Benefits Authorizer at the Social Security Administration field office in Birmingham to create Automated One Time Payments causing nearly $150,000 to be electronically deposited into her account or the bank accounts belonging to friends or family members. ...
A Chula Vista man who worked for the Social Security Administration was sentenced Aug. 30 to eight months home detention for embezzling $65,118.
Nam-Phong Hung Le, 37, has paid all the money back which is part of the reason why he was placed on three years probation in U.S. District Court.
Judge Janis Sammartino ordered Le to pay an additional $34,890, which is a judgement found against him that relates to the fraud. He will have to pay for electronic monitoring of his house arrest.
Le worked as a technical expert in the Social Security Administration office in El Cajon and later in the downtown San Diego offices.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Hill asked for a 1-year sentence in prison, saying money was taken from six people’s Social Security accounts, including several who were deceased and whose payments should have stopped. ...
A federal employee union local in New York on Wednesday filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of violating a court ruling blocking the key provisions of three controversial workforce executive orders.
The American Federation of Government Employees Local 3369, which represents Social Security Administration workers in New York, argued in a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that the White House, Social Security Administration and the Federal Impasses Panel effectively used the collective bargaining process to do an end-run around an injunction against the orders.
In May 2018, President Trump issued three executive orders that sought to shorten the length of performance improvement plans to 30 days, exempt adverse personnel actions from grievance proceedings, streamline collective bargaining negotiations, and significantly reduce the number of work hours and activities that union members can spend on official time. U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in August 2018 blocked the key provisions of the orders, finding that they collectively “eviscerated” federal workers’ collective bargaining rights.
In July, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Circuit Court for the D.C. Circuit overturned that decision on jurisdictional grounds, but the injunction remains in place as the court weighs whether to rehear the case with all 11 judges.
The complaint argues that the Social Security Administration’s actions in negotiating a new contract with AFGE constitute a successful effort to “circumvent” the injunction prohibiting the government from implementing the executive orders and claimed that the impasses panel exceeded its authority by acting as an implementation arm of the Trump administration, rather than an independent arbiter of labor-management bargaining disputes. ...
