From Yahoo News:
As Republicans start laying out their proposals for what spending to cut next year, Social Security Administration employees are warning that their budget could mean longer wait times and potentially dire circumstances for beneficiaries.
In a letter to the House Appropriations Committee, the American Federation of Government Employees — a union representing hundreds of thousands of government employees — said that the GOP's proposed funding levels would "devastate the agency's ability to serve the American public."
Republicans on the committee released their Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill last week, including a $183 million cut to the Social Security Administration.
The union warned that the already underfunded agency could see its standing issues, like long wait times for accessing benefits and long lines at its offices, only worsen. As of June 2023, the average wait time for callers to Social Security's customer service and information number was a little over 43 minutes, per the Social Security Administration's data. ...
I think that we should not worry too much about what the House Appropriations Committee is doing now. The bill they're working on is absurd for many, many reasons that go way beyond Social Security. I'm not sure the bill could get a majority vote in the House of Representatives. It's a non-starter with the Senate and the President. A government shutdown would be a far superior outcome. Nothing like that bill is going anywhere.
I see three possible outcomes:
- Republicans eventually decide to vote out an appropriations bill based upon the previous agreement between the President and the Speaker of the House. Differences are sorted out between the Senate and House and the President signs the bill. We don't seem to be heading in this direction.
- There's no agreement on a Labor-HHS appropriations bill (which includes Social Security's administrative budget) and we see endless continuing resolutions for the entire fiscal year. This hurts Social Security but there are worse possibilities. I think this is the most likely outcome but what do I know?
- There's no agreement and the House of Representatives is so dysfunctional that it can't pass a continuing resolution so there's a government shutdown. This would be politically disastrous for Republicans but, hey, if you're a Republican members of Congress from a district that Donald Trump carried by 30 point in 2020 (like most House Freedom Caucus members), what do you care? Your constituents expect you to be as obstreperous as possible. They're in the "Keep Government Out Of My Medicare" camp.
Nobody seems to care about SSA's funding and customer service. The only folks who care are front line staff.
ReplyDeleteThe senior managers of SSA are checked out working at home full time. Generating emails to notify staff in the field about the stresses field staff go through.
The senior managers will not pick up a finger to help or do anything to improve the situation.
As a SSA employee I have gone above and beyond regularly, only to be reprimanded or disregarded by management over employees who move more work to make the office #s look good. The managers do not concern themselves with quality of work.
I cannot not stress myself out any longer if congress and SSA managers do not care.
Cut it even more.
ReplyDeleteIt needs to completely and totally fail so it can be remade.
Katie Porter seems to care:
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/katieporteroc/status/1621228212096499712?s=20
@10:18
ReplyDeleteExactly. All levels of leadership in the agency need to be canned. I can count on one hand the amount of front line leadership I’ve encountered that will actually help with claims, and that’s after years of being with the agency. Having an extra body taking claims or processing appeals helps the whole office get more stuff done. The other 99% of front line leadership do nothing but hide in their office all day pretending to be in important meetings and doing absolutely ZERO production work. Z-E-R-O. But they have plenty of time to watch the phone widget and send out Skype messages about “needing people to log in to phones to help” or “needing people to go work a walk-in window.” Yet they will absolutely not take a single phone call or work a window themselves. The leadership in my office has all but specifically stated that doing the actual claim/production work is beneath them. There is a LOT of contempt for agency management, from the field level to the executive level. Operations staff are often told “we see you, we hear you, we know how stressed and busy you are” and those same “leaders” will do NONE of the work to actually help their employees. Their tone deaf messages fall on deaf ears because operations employees see through their bullshit.
As an FO manager I've been scolded for helping phones and reception because it interferes with my ability to instantly respond to the nag messages from ADO and RO. But some of those nag things are about appointment availability and claim status. Newsflash, if we were not helping there would be even less time available for employees to do those things. Instead of firing off an email you can look at the DW01 and see development is current.
ReplyDeletei predict outcome 3. The GOP House is totally dysfunctional and basically a circus of clowns looking for media attention to top each other in how outrageous they can be. There is no interest in actually governing and McCarthy is a pawn of the right wing nuts. No budgets will pass and the GOP will engineer another shutdown.
ReplyDelete@11:27 Don’t forget, not all FO management had systems access to production work. Some inputs are not allowed based on profile. But I do see your frustration. And I hear you. Lol.
ReplyDelete