There is finally agreement on an Omnibus Appropriations Bill to fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year. Social Security will get $13.2 billion for its operations. The FY 2021 appropriation had been $12.9 billion. The increase is not nearly enough to cover inflation. The agency remains on a starvation diet that assures that service will continue to decline.
Whatever lobbying efforts went into obtaining an adequate operating budget for the Social Security Administration were completely ineffective.
Individual members of Congress who declare their concern over the state of service at Social Security may be sincere but, in general, there must be nearly zero concern in Congress over the state of the service that the public is getting from Social Security.
The technology upgrades may need to be suspended and $$ used to hire and pay OT to catch up. What the SSA has done for the last 5 years is not working.
ReplyDeleteThis really is disastrous. There was a significant amount of people leaving the agency at all levels last year. The agency is hiring but I was on a national call where the quality of the people hired in the last 6 months was really called into question. It’s clear SSA can’t compete with other agencies and private agencies when it comes to recruitment and retention and an effective decrease in funding only makes this worse. People in the ROs and HQ are going to other agencies and new hires are resigning or being let go. Perhaps it’s the limited hiring authorities or perhaps the best of the best are going somewhere else with a better reputation and flexibility but the last 6 months have shown trainees resign at unprecedented levels, trainees struggle with their initial training and then struggle when they are on their own in the field. And Gs-13s in Support Roles are taking jobs at other agencies. The type of candidate at SSA isn’t what it was 5 years ago when most hires had masters degrees, or years of federal service in related fields. It just isn’t the same anymore and it’s killing the whole agency.
ReplyDeleteHey now, I'm a recent hire and I have a master's! Of course, I'm also looking to bail ASAP.
DeleteAgreed about the hiring issues. Normally it seems the recent hires are restricted to: recent college grads, veterans or people with disabilities.
ReplyDeleteThey each have their own drawbacks.
The agency cannot compete with the private sector when it comes to recent grads. too restrictive on telework, overall inefficiency and no room to move up.
Veterans usually take the position at SSA and then continue to apply to the federal agency they really wanted and then leave when they get it.
The people with disabilities usually require a lot of extra assistance. Unfortunately, that slows the process considerably.
It's overall just a difficult job to get "up to speed" on quickly for most people. It's not even that it's hard, its just complex and the systems we use are so ridiculous.
It will be a long time before the agency crawls it's way out of this mess.
And yet, that same House and surely the Senate have added an additional $2,000,000,000 (that's two billion dollars) ON TOP OF what Biden asked for the Ukraine conflict.
ReplyDeleteThese people aren't concerned with Social Security's service/mission if they aren't drafting/sponsoring/voting for/passing bills to increase SSA's budget. All the emotional words, etc. are just political theater. Where's the money?
And doesn't SSA's budget come out of the Trust Funds, so it doesn't cost anything in the budget?
ReplyDeleteI just had a minor problem with Medicare. They denied a claim because they had my employee insurance company as still primary after I retired. I logged onto my account on Medicare.gov, used their 24/7 live chat (with a real person). The problem was fixed in less than 10 minutes (19 seconds of which was getting an agent - I have a transcript). Lots of people in the USG hate Medicare, too, but at least it was easy to get in touch with a person there. 24/7!
9:02, Medicare and SSA are two totally different things. SSAs budget does not get pulled from the Trust Funds, but from the general government budget.
ReplyDeleteMyMedicare is handy for little things, but if you have a real problem you have to go through the phone system and it gets a lot more challenging. You were not talking to a person, but a bot. Check back to make sure the problem is actually fixed.
@10:31
ReplyDeleteSSA's administrative expenses are paid by the trust funds. There is the exception of expenses relating to SSI, which my understanding is, SSA can bill those costs to the treasury.
This is also confirmed on page 1099 of the bill, which states: "$13,202,945,000 may be expended, as authorized by section 201(g)(1) of the Social Security Act, from any one or all of the trust funds referred to in such section..."
@ 12:09 PM -- guessing your Masters wasn't in English
ReplyDelete