From a press release issued by Andrew Saul:
"I want to provide an important update about the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) processing of Economic Impact Payments (EIPs) under the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act.
At each turn over the last 12 months, immediate delivery of EIPs has been, and remains, a top priority for this agency. ...
Since the time that discussions began regarding issuance of EIPs in the ARP Act, weeks before passage, we have worked tirelessly with our counterparts at IRS to provide to them the information they need to issue payments to our beneficiaries. Despite the fact that Congress did not directly provide SSA funding to support our work on EIPs, we have provided countless hours of assistance to IRS consistent with the laws that establish how we may use the Trust Funds that every American counts on us to protect. ...
SSA discussed with Treasury and IRS, both before passage and after enactment of the ARP Act, that the Social Security Act does not allow the agency to use our administrative appropriation to conduct work on any non-mission provision or program. Accordingly, we were not authorized to substantively engage Treasury or IRS prior to the ARP’s passage. Instead, upon passage, we were required to pursue a reimbursable agreement with IRS because we received no direct appropriation through the ARP Act. From the outset of discussions, we kept congressional staff apprised of the hurdles this approach would create for SSA, and we have continued to update them on our progress with IRS as we completed the required interagency agreements.
Once we were free to move forward, we aggressively worked with Treasury and IRS to issue payments. As a result of our efforts, we successfully signed the reimbursable agreement and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) less than one week after passage, on March 17. That process often takes weeks or months to complete, but we got the job done in a matter of days. A few days later, on Monday, March 22, SSA sent initial test files to IRS. IRS confirmed testing success on Wednesday, March 24. Production files were delivered to IRS before 9 AM on Thursday, March 25 – more than a week sooner than we were able to provide a similar file to IRS during the first round of EIPs. ...
Doing it a little faster than last time doesn't sound like an achievement to me. Of course, it's faster this time because you have the experience of having done it before. I don't understand the statement that "we were not
authorized to substantively engage Treasury or IRS prior to the ARP’s
passage." Really, why not? Social Security cooperates with many other agencies all the time. What is this obsession with not using appropriations for non-mission programs? That doesn't seem to have prevented a ton of other data matches. Also, why was the agency having active discussions with Treasury and the IRS at a time when it supposedly wasn't allowed to "substantively engage" with them? That doesn't make sense. Why couldn't the MOU have been negotiated prior to passage of the bill and signed immediately after passage? Passage of the bill wasn't a cliffhanger. Why would it take even a week to negotiate a new MOU anyway? This had been done before. Just dust off the MOU you used previously and use essentially the same language. You don't have to re-invent the wheel.
I'd like to hear the IRS and Treasury side of what happened.
Yeah, there's definitely more to this story. Even if SSA didn't do anything illegal here, it doesn't sound like they tried very hard to get this work done.
ReplyDeleteSaul: "we have provided countless hours of assistance to IRS consistent with the laws that establish how we may use the Trust Funds"
Translation: "We did the absolute bare minimum the law requires in order to avoid blame."
Legitimate question, does SSA try to use this defense with FOIA requests? I'm familiar with the relevant bits of the Social Security Act to my work, but is there anything saying SSA can't do anything outside their defined role?
ReplyDeleteI've always just sort of taken it for granted the agencies are free to communicate with each other in general (short of maybe some privacy restrictions).
I honestly don't think Saul was trying to delay here. I think this is more about the dysfunction that a two year hiring freeze and mismanagement throughout the agency hath wrought. Of course, all this is directly attributable to him and his cronies, which is all the more reason to fire them. It would almost be better if this was intentional, since it would be a lot easier to fix.
ReplyDeleteAs a beneficiary,Saul or his representatives should have communicated problematic issues with the public when the American Rescue Plan Act was passed. Yet ssa.gov simply states the IRS is reviewing the tax provisions of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.
ReplyDeleteThis episode smells fishy,like it's political or incompetence to me. I'll be glad to see a democratic SSA commissioner and deputy.
Must be a conspiracy, because a simple explanation is just too reasonable.
ReplyDeleteLike wow.. slow down the conspiracy train here. SSA is obliged by law to spend Trust Fund money on only mission related activities or on activities required by law. Things that are not within that scope need a specific appropriation or a funding source. Funding sources include MOUs, MOAs and some other mechanisms where an organization that wants something from SSA agrees to pay for it and to conditions regarding how that information may or may not be used, how long it can be kept and how it can be disposed of. EIPs are not mission related - just because beneficiaries and recipients can get an EIP doesn't make getting an EIP an Agency Trust find money spendable mission. And absent an appropriation to fund the activities needed to provide the data to the IRS, you need an MOU or similar in place to "pay" for the staff and resource time spent on this activity so the Trust Funds are held harmless for the activity.
ReplyDeleteThe "substantially engage Treasury" is key, because SSA likely was in contact with Treasury and IRS. THey talk all teh time. Likely an existing or past MOU for something similar was identified as the candidate for EIP and would become boilerplate for this one, staff working out details like hours, costs etc and ensuring that the boilerplate has already passed muster with the legal groups on both sides as well as the accountants on both sides so once the law was passed, these preliminary actions could become formal and move quickly. But that informal activity would be limited, pending passage of the law. Once teh law passed, that groundwork would be blown into the MOU needed to do the work.
I've had data exchange MOUs take months back when SSA was part of HHS and you had to get approval up the foodchain before it could go over and go down the other. It got better once we were independent but it still isn't necessarily easy. That's why using one as a template helps, plus this was likely fasttracked.
In other words, boyz and girlz, just because you don't understand something, why things couldn't be done in advance doesn't mean foot dragging - it means you don't understand SSA's processes to do non-Trust Fund work. I mean, OMG, why didn't SSA think of starting to negotiate the MOU sooner? They must be brain dead idiots, right? No, it means you don't understand the way the agency is funded and the restrictions that govern how it uses it resources. Doing tha work before the law was passed and the assurance of an MOU in place, it would be illegal.
So move along, nothing to see here.
@ 3:26 SSA has a bunch of stable geniuses who should never be questioned.
ReplyDelete@3:37 - you make my point. What you lack in fact and information you make up in imagination. Limitation on Administrative Expenses is boring and bureaucratic and the law. It controls what the agency can and cannot do and how things have to be done. Making it a conspiracy or a plot or acting like you know better don't change the facts.
ReplyDeleteKeep it simple. Money in the trust fund does not belong to SSA, it belongs to the people who have paid into OASDI their whole lives. SSA has a fiduciary responsibility to use that money only for its designated purpose of paying SS benefits. Anything else requires another pocket to dip into.
ReplyDeleteThis is a DI beneficiary. The fact members of the house ways and means committee had to issue an ultimatum validating this late/delayed payment issue as credible proves it's not a conspiracy theory.
ReplyDelete@8:20
ReplyDeleteSorry, it is clear you didn't actually read the letter.
The headline and the actual content, if you had actually read it, aren't accurate. Go ahead, read it and your claim on conspiracy fails on it's face. There is no "ultimatum" and they cannot threaten because Congress screwed up.
It just means that in the rush to get the law passed, the need for an appropriation for SSA to do the work was left out. Hence the need to follow existing law on how SSA resources are spent.
The letter stated - “We urge the IRS and SSA to move with all deliberate speed to quickly issue these payments to Social Security and SSI beneficiaries – and we urge the IRS to work with the RRB and VA to pay those beneficiaries expeditiously as well.”
That's all the politicians could say on this given the fact that the staff of that committee and the SSA sub-committee knows full well how the appropriations process works for SSA. Had an appropriation been provided, this release would have been much louder and accusatory and demanding. It isn't.
So again, move along, nothing to see here.