The Social Security Administration’s internal watchdog has bit it, again, for shortchanging beneficiaries, this time as employee and advocacy groups are pushing for the removal of its political appointees.
A report from the agency’s inspector general’s office is replete with complaints about the agency failing to make people whole. ...
Just as money is a problem for those who didn’t get Social Security checks, money is one reason the agency can’t get the checks out on time, according to Web Phillips, an analyst and consultant with the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
Social Security has too much to do for its staff and resources, said Phillips, who worked there for three decades. “This is being driven by the availability of resources,” he said. “It’s not that there are bad people who don’t care. It’s just that they have to triage the work that they’ve got.” ...
The inspector general’s reproach was issued just two days after two federal employee unions, the Association of Administrative Law Judges and the National Council of SSA Field Operations Locals (Council 220), declared no confidence in President Trump’s Social Security appointees. That same week, Social Security Works said Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul and Deputy Commissioners David Black and Mark Warshawsky should be removed “immediately.” Council 22 also urged their removal. ...
Time and again, the inspector general’s report said “we found no evidence,” or similar wording, to describe Social Security’s repeated failures to appropriately address the problems of underpayments ...
Rep. John B. Larson, chairman of the House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee, called the report’s finding “alarming.” ...
“Underpayments are just as important as overpayments,” said Larson (D-Conn.), “and SSA leaders need to pay as much attention to preventing and correcting underpayments as they do to overpayments.” Next month, his panel will examine reasons for the errors and ways to fix them.
Speaking as “the Republican leader on Social Security,” Rep. Tom Reed (N.Y.) promised to hold SSA accountable. “It’s not fair that in some cases the SSA pays people less than they’ve earned, and the SSA needs to do better,” said Reed, the subcommittee’s ranking minority-party member. ...
“SSA’s misplaced focus on overpayments rather than on all improper payments (including underpayments),” [Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works] wrote by email, “is the result of decades of Republican leadership that’s focused on preventing people from getting the benefits they’ve earned.” ...
Dec 30, 2020
Ramping Up The Heat On Saul
From Joe Davidson's column at the Washington Post:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Why do you need to make everything political. These problems didn't start with Trump or Saul. They go back years and multiple administrations both Republican and Democrat as well as multiple commissioners. I bet you weren't blaming Obama or his appointees when things were just as bad under him (I mean the agency in general. I know the whiny employees think things are awful now because they might be expected to do their jobs). I really think you are better than this. Surely, you recognize how politicizing things that have occurred for years under multiple administrations makes you look. Or, do you really believe the SSA was doing a fantastic job under Obama? Before the virus caused chaos, it appeared Saul was trying to fix some problems such as badly needed IT upgrades, staffing issues (yes, taking away telework so offices would be staffed), etc. Folks on one side of the political spectrum don't seem to want problems fixed. They are so blinded by their political animus that they can't even acknowledge when the other side is trying to do something good. And all bad things are the other sides fault, even if they existed under the previous administration (Obama's so-called "cages" at the border are a good example). How about we all just try to focus on solutions and leave politics out when its not really politics that is the problem. Can we do that for a change?
Operations needs more people--full stop. OGC, at least in the regions, needs more staff. OAO seems fine; must be as they just gave something like 30% of all their 12 attorneys a 13 promotion a little while back. OHO is overstaffed for a couple more years so they can withstand whatever hiring nonsense comes its way.
But Operations, specifically the FOs and DOs and WSUs and really badly the PSCs and TSCs, needs a good many more employees. All the abuse and metrics and flashy (not so) new tech and whatnot can't fix what is simply an underresourced component.
@ 9:13 I voted for Obama twice. He promised to try to fix Social Security but did nothing. His excuse was a Republican held Congress. But he got Obamacare passed so what is the excuse with the SSA.
Also, Astrue ended around 2013. So Obama had from 2013-16 to appoint a new SSA commish but did not. Obama did appoint Andrew Eanes as Deputy Commish. But his background did not scream disability but only a friendship with Obama. So he was a gutter ball.
Unfortunately, politics play a big part of the SSA. As an independent, I am equally appalled at both parties inaction in fixing Social Security. They both have kicked the can down the road for others to fix. It is a mess.
The powers that be have run the agency into the ground. This is not hyperbole. I have been with the agency for over 30 years and have never seen anything like the chaos unfolding now. The reality on the ground is so, so much worse than anyone on the outside can possibly imagine. The agency is on the verge of complete and total institutional failure.
Yes - a part of the problem is that we haven't received an adequate appropriation since 2010. But many, many of the problems the agency has faced over the past 4 years have been self-inflicted, and driven by ideology and general mismanagement.
Entire components are being gutted and experienced people are walking out the door without any sort of meaningful succession planning. The SES ranks are thinning so quickly that I don't know how they will keep up. The outright hostile attitude of SSA's senior management towards its own employees is playing a huge part in this.
If you think things are bad in operations or OHO, you should see the components from which the agency has been diverting resources in order to channel them to Operations.
The longer this continues, the harder it's going to be to dig out of this hole.
Started with the agency in mid-70s. Things got bad under Reagan and never recovered. Democrats as well as Republicans have agreed to the slow death by a thousand cuts, but it's the GOP who makes that an art. Prior to independence, HHS called the shots and SSA leadership was pretty apolitical. Callahan was acting and a short timer. Apfel (first confirmed COSS after independence) and his minion, Halter, were eh. Massanari was from the inside and acting. Barnhart was a stalwart GOP member, we did a lot of planning but had to deal with 8 years of Bush setting goals. McMahon was Acting but actually pretty GOP for an insider. Astrue killed a lot of SSA morale and programs to bring about leaders from the ranks. Made a point that program knowledge depth wasn't that important. Colvin is a Dem to her core, but was hamstrung by Obama's failures. No one working at SSA likely views the Obama years as good ones, as they weren't. Add a congress that was led by the GOP and it was hell.
It's always been political since Reagan. Neither party can be proud BUT the GOP is the one who wants to kill the programs, so there's that. The focus on OPs is a GOP led initiative. And getting fellow travelers into the agency's ranks at lower management levels does happen and pay benefits.
28 years in SSA as an SSI Claims Rep then SSI TE. Now retired.
There was a specific workload and diaries for SSI Underpayments. In the past, one of these underpayment diaries never got old; it just changed dates every month. Somehow that was how the programming worked. So that workload would continue to be pushed to the back burner. Some of these "underpayments" had been pending for 10 years.
Fast forward to one of the government shutdowns. We were limited on the workloads that we were allowed to work on. Underpayments were one of them. Management agreed (finally) that I could now review these underpayments for correctness and resolve them. Turned out that more than half of the underpayments were invalid and not justifiable with any evidence. Yes, these underpayments were created by employees who didn't know how do to their jobs correctly. Also, it was possible to manipulate the system to push the diary date forward so the case is no longer old. Even while the underpayment remained unresolved. Hopefully that changed after I retired.
I sent a few cases back to the employees who created the incorrect underpayments to fix, but again, those cases were pushed to the back burner. When I retired a few years ago, some of these underpayments diaries still existed.
I, too, retired a couple of years ago, after spending nearly 30 years with SSA. I could not agree more with the remarks made by @4:49 and @7:35 above. They are both spot-on.
As a practicing rep I am seeing much trouble at the beginning of a claim and extended periods of up to four and a half months or more to get electronic claims transferred over and worked by state DDD. I'm also noticing that I am largely being ignored and unprocessed by the agency as rep for at least four months or more in cases from the last couple of years. Almost like there is now an unstated policy that representation should not be allowed until after a denial. I'm also seeing more clients give up or disappear into obscurity during this initial period since the pandemic started. I think one of the reasons there are fewer hearing level cases is due to delays and roadblocks now at the early end of the process. I question the political spin on why the workload is down at the hearing level. I think it is primarily due to the agency falling apart and not the need or demand for the program. I'm guessing privatization is as always the ultimate goal of the ruling class in this country. Democrats certainly have not fought for the program while republicans want it dead. I suspect more tacit ideological agreement between our two party elite than difference on this.
One of my jobs in the dark ages was as a CO SSI underpayment reviewer, Underpayments of over $2k were held for CO review. Got good at reading SSIRDs and figuring out what caused the UP and if it seemed OK or needed more documentation. As an SSI only trained CR in CO, I understood how and why these things got created; inexperience, systems didn't work as they ought, incompetence with more obscure policies, just plain mistakes Later, the limit was "raised" to $5k. I'd say half the UPs were in error. But due to workloads, there did seem to be a mindset of pay the people, it's SSI for crying out loud and we'll deal with any payment issues later. Guess later never comes?
Post a Comment