The Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing at 10:00 EDT today on "Social Security During COVID: How the Pandemic Hampered Access to Benefits and Strategies for Improving Service Delivery." It will be possible to watch the hearing online. Grace Kim, Deputy Commissioner for Operations will be the witness for the Social Security Administration.
One might have expected that the Commissioner would be the witness for Social Security. Leaving aside the question of whether Andrew Saul is legitimately serving as Commissioner, there would be a major problem with him testifying. The hearing would quickly devolve into angry accusations by Democrats that Saul has behaved in an inappropriately partisan fashion as Commissioner followed by spirited counter accusations of something -- I don't know what -- by Republicans. That might be useful in its own way but I expect that it was obvious to all that this only distract from Social Security's current situation.
I hope to hear detailed information about the agency's dire service delivery problems as well as news about reopening plans. It would be nice if some improvements in relations with employee unions could be announced. It may be too much to hope for but Social Security really needs a supplemental appropriation to help it get through until the next fiscal year, which begins on October 1.
SSA does not care about how they treat their employees. It is an unprofessional work place in which the so called management crew only cares about and knows how to crunch numbers and do very little work. I think it's great that the current president is trying to change that. But, lots of things need to change at SSA because it is as poorly run as any federal agency. And, that's because of poor management at all levels.
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