From a piece by former Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul for Townhall.com, a right wing website:
Even though my time as the Social Security Administration (SSA) commissioner has ended, the partisan attacks on the agency and my record have not. Just this week, U.S. Reps. John Larson (D-CT) and Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) continued to repeat false claims about my tenure as SSA commissioner. ...
On April 21, 2021, I sent a letter to Rep. Larson outlining the need for additional funding to make up for the budgetary and workforce challenges SSA was facing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rep. Larson and the House of Representatives ignored this request and as a result, SSA was forced to operate on a budget that was $900 million less than I requested. ...
The only solution to addressing the backlogs of unprocessed mail and other SSA services was to bring SSA workers back to the office. SSA informed Larson and his staff in August of 2020 we needed to start bringing union employees back to the offices involuntarily, but safely, to address workloads that couldn’t be done virtually, such as mail. Despite our warnings, on February 11, 2021, Rep. Larson and his staff objected to our putting a handful of employees in an office in Houston, Texas, to address problems similar to those noted in the recent SSA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report. Rep. Larson insisted I call him, despite the fact he refused to take my calls when I was seeking assistance in funding. ...
It is hypocritical that Rep. Larson now faults me for backlogged workloads when he and his union bosses at SSA stymied my efforts to address these challenges. ...
My office briefed Larson’s staff multiple times a week throughout the pandemic. If he had concerns with our response to the pandemic, he should have raised these issues to my attention or even offered to work with me to solve problems. His response then, as it is now, was to engage in political grandstanding and take his direction from the unions. Rep. Larson was the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Social Security the entire time I served as SSA commissioner. If he was so concerned about my management, why didn’t he hold an oversight hearing to address his concerns? He failed to hold a single hearing on the service challenges facing SSA. One might think he was negligent in his duties as Chairman and should resign, but I know he was afraid to allow real facts to come forward. For instance, he avoided my calls when I sought his support for funding and to get cooperation from unions. Rather than conduct meaningful oversight, Rep. Larson prefers to hide behind union talking points and issue uncontested press releases full of lies.
Blaming Larson for Social Security's operating budget is mostly ridiculous. Larson isn't even a member of the Appropriations Committee that has jurisdiction over the agency's operating budget. The real problem was primarily in the Senate which was then controlled by Republicans. However, it is possible that if Larson had held hearings about Social Security's service delivery problems that the agency's appropriation might have been increased.
By the way, why is Saul only now admitting that his agency was unable to provide adequate service and that the agency's operating budget was the main reason? I know that insulting people you need to work with isn't a good plan but being completely quiet in public about a severely inadequate agency budget isn't such a good plan either.
Also, by the way, I'm glad that Saul is no longer making any effort to obscure the obvious -- he's a highly partisan Republican. That's how he ran the agency. That's why he had to be fired. He never should have tried to hang on after Inauguration Day.
9 comments:
Every COSS since 2000 has run into the budget deficit problem annually. (OK, maybe one or two years out of 21 things were better, but the trend was always get less than asked for.) That's on the sitting President and the Congress, who are apparently OK with not giving the agency what they need for people but OK for hard money for IT (to fix things so people aren't needed) and to root out corruption (OIG).
And as head of the agency, who else shoulders the blame for the agency's performance? Leadership 101, you take the praise and teh blame, doofus.
"he's a highly partisan Republican. That's how he ran the agency. That's why he had to be fired."
So now the act of being a Republican is reason to fire people. You are more like them than you know, it shows when you write things like this.
“SSA informed Larson and his staff in August 2020 we needed to bring Union employees back to the office INVOLUNTARILY, but safely...”. The very fact Saul & SSA Management wanted to bring UNION employees back INVOLUNTARILY speaks volumes and corroborates Saul was a Trump Republican Partisan hack. [Emphasis added].
I will never get over the fact that this moron was teleworking from NY the entire time he was crusading against telework. That's leadership.
Author: "he's a highly partisan Republican. That's how he ran the agency. That's why he had to be fired."
Anonyomous @ 8:01 AM: "So now the act of being a Republican is reason to fire people. You are more like them than you know, it shows when you write things like this."
This is either really bad reading comprehension or an even worse strawman.
The "act of being a Republican" isn't necessarily grounds for termination when a new Democratic administration takes over.
The act of being a "highly partisan" Republican in a Democratic administration? Yes, that's grounds for termination.
Better Call Saul sounds bitter. Maybe he can cry in his beer with James Comey. Trump fired Comey basically for bogus political reasons. Why complain when it happens to a Republican? Karma.
Mr. Saul made vague threats to sue the administration to get his job back; he told us all to "stay tuned". I'm disappointed that he didn't update us as to how his lawsuit(s) are coming along in this piece.
To be fair this is not the first time Saul mentioned SSA not being allocated enough money.
I recall that Saul did send out a letter to employees about funding issues, while he was commissioner. This was some months ago when he said that budget problems were having a negative effect on service to the public during the pandemic and were causing severe cutbacks in overtime.
I'm assuming he put a similar letter on the SSA Website at the time as he used to post there fairly often. He may have also released it as a news item to the general public.
Does not sound bitter to me, he's just stating the facts.
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