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Dec 7, 2022

The Need Is Real

     From Lisa Rein writing for the Washington Post:

Top House and Senate Democrats on Tuesday called for a drastic boost in funding for the Social Security Administration to increase staffing, improve technology and expand other investments as the agency confronts a massive backlog in claims for disability benefits. ...

“Lawmakers in both parties are getting an earful at home about the backlog and poor customer service at the Social Security Administration, and are demanding answers on this and the disarray in its workforce,” Rep. Kevin Brady (Tex.), the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement. ...

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) decried the “unacceptable” delays facing disabled Americans “to even find out if they are eligible for benefits.”...

The push for a bigger budget comes as House and Senate negotiators race to agree on a bipartisan deal to fund the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year before a temporary budget expires Dec. 16. ...

It’s unclear, though, if Congress will agree on enough spending priorities to pass a new budget before the end of the year. That would leave Social Security and the rest of the government with a full-year stopgap measure at current funding levels. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is preparing for such a scenario with proposals for additional funding for several agencies over current levels. In Social Security’s case, the request would grant the full $800 million boost that the administration sought in the fall, according to an OMB document circulating Tuesday on Capitol Hill. ...


13 comments:

  1. I’m done. I have given up hope at this point. 23 people in my office when I started, 14 pre-pandemic. 10 retired or quit during covid. We hired 5 back. One has been fired, one has quit. 2 more are looking for something else already while they are actively training. Of the 4 trained employees we had left, 1 has successfully moved to another office and two other just put in their notice and won’t be back after the holidays. I’m it. Im overwhelmed and burnt out. I cannot do the job alone.

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    1. I wasn't in your office but I left during the pandemic be ause of current and future work issues. I make just a bit less money but no stress, not overworked, etc. It was a great job years ago but the stress of doing many people's work while doing my own was too much.

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  2. Full blown crisis! Nothing will happen.

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  3. If SSA offered me triple what I was getting paid when I left, I still wouldnt go back.

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  4. Major metro office here. Just lost another one today to another job- a disability law firm. Down to three claim specialists-two ssi, one generalist. One csr. We have two cs trainees, one csr trainee. And I mean, oldest trainee is 9 months, newest two weeks. Three management, though!!
    And still management doesn’t help with the daily nuts and bolts of the work. It’s quite amazing. If I didn’t have a young child….

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    1. I’m the original poster. We have 3 management too!!!! Lol.

      I’m a generalist also so I’m doing everything, ALL day, EVERY day. Which means things are falling behind rapidly.

      We actually couldn’t take 14 of our appts the other day - 14!!!

      I at the front desk, answering phones, taking claims, mentoring, training, oh and losing my mind!!!

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  5. Is upper management talking about these problems in the open? I see FO employees and non-managerial staff posting here...what are your managers telling you? From an attorney perspective, service declines have been very noticeable.

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  6. @5:17: It’s a bureaucracy. Of course they aren’t talking openly about these problems. In government, the first rule of crisis management is don’t acknowledge that there’s a crisis.

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  7. And for the life of me, I can't get a claims rep job, wanting to make the move from the N8NN to the role of a CR. But I'm also not in a metro area

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  8. I was a manager in OHO, and there were very few of us that were: 1) actually aware of what was going on; 2) didn't like it; and, 3) had the spine to do anything at all to let 1) and 2) be known outside our own minds.

    But even then there wasn't much to say or do. If you openly bad mouthed things you'd be internally checked or even disciplined, and everything was so top down if you chose not to take some action it wouldn't matter because your boss or their boss would be right there to just do it anyway.

    So what I did was take on as much crap as I could myself to shield my employees from it, advocate like hell in the close calls or bad call cases, and telegraph to them exactly what they had to do to stick around if that's what they wanted. And then tell every high level manager, LR person, etc. just how stupid and destructive these various policies were.

    Imagine it's largely the same at Operations.

    Anyhow, I was so successful at this that I left my management position and then left that God forsaken agency as quickly as I could.

    Good luck to all of you still stuck there. It really is that bad, and it'll take you getting on somewhere else (besides the VA maybe, lol) to really see just how bad SSA is.

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  9. @5:58 PM

    You had me until you said "one fired", then you broke my suspension of disbelief

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    1. Maybe it was a trainee still on probation. Those are the only ones I see let go.

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    2. It was a trainee and they fired them right before they hit the two year anniversary.

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