From a letter from AARP to Congressional leaders:
AARP has great concerns that SSA will be unable to maintain customer service at current levels, deficient as they are, without funding above the current funding level under a continuing resolution. Hence, we believe the Congress should provide an anomaly for SSA that is no less than the anomaly requested by the Administration, $14.1 billion. AARP does appreciate that the Congress provided some additional funding for SSA for FY 2022, but that amount was $847 million less than the President’s FY 2022 Budget request and was far less than the amounts needed to cover uncontrollable increases in its fixed expenses. The Acting Commissioner correctly predicted on April 28, in the FY 2022 Operating Plan the Congress requested, that the $13.341 billion in funding provided in the FY 2022 omnibus would result in “longer lines and wait times in our field offices, and growing backlogs as we work through increased claims.”
The added burden occasioned by the pandemic did not help matters, but a steady erosion in SSA’s administrative funding over the past decade is the primary reason for the rapid decline in customer service. Between 2010 and 2021, SSA’s operating budget shrank by 14 percent even as the number of beneficiaries grew by 22 percent to more than 70 million Americans. The latest available SSA data shows that disability processing times have skyrocketed to an all-time high of 198 days – nearly three times longer than just a decade earlier. SSA also reports that callers to the national 1-800 number today are waiting about 31 minutes, or about ten times longer than callers waited in FY 2012. And, more importantly, the average disability claimant today will likely wait more than 2 years for a final hearing decision while their health worsens – tragically, more than 10,000 people die every year while waiting for a decision.
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