The New York Times has a nice piece on the terrible service problems at the Social Security Administration. There’s nothing in it that would come as news to regular readers of this blog but it’s good to see any publicity given to the situation.
There’s also a piece on Yahoo Finance dealing with the Commissioner nomination and service at S.S.A.
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From the article:
“Many of the problems stem from austere administrative budgets imposed by Congress over the past decade. Since 2011, congressional cuts to the agency’s customer service budget total 17 percent after adjustments for inflation, and staffing fell to a 25-year low last year, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive research and policy organization. At the same time, the number of beneficiaries rose by 22 percent over the past decade.”
I’m shocked. From reading this blog and listening to Republicans in the last few years, I thought most of the problems were related to remote work. Well, I sure, now that we know the source of the problems, a bi-partisian fix is in the works. NOT.
Again from the article:
“The current budget battle in Congress could worsen the situation. The Biden administration has requested a $1.3 billion increase in the S.S.A.’s customer service budget for next year, while House Republicans have proposed a $250 million cut in that spending. Decisions about federal spending have been pushed into early 2024 under an agreement reached last month.”
Cue the Republican talking point:
“Further funding cuts were proposed earlier this year by Republicans as part of a broader budget plan they said was aimed at ‘reining in wasteful bureaucracy and enhancing oversight and accountability.’ ”
Bottom line: Republicans say government does not work and they are doing everything they can to keep it that way!
First, we are headed for a fiscal cliff; Second we need 10,000 more employees. Go figure that one out.
Since 2011 there have been two years that Republicans had control of the House, Senate and Presidency and two for the Democrats. There wasn't meaningful legislation passed in either set of years to change funding for SSA.
While budget may be an issue for SSA, poor management is a bigger issue in the hearing offices. Employees have been forced to make dual entries in two case processing systems since the now renamed (wonder how much the re-branding cost) national case processing system was introduced in "seed" offices in 2020. Then named HACPS was supposed to be the new web-based computer system that saved the day... so far the Agency has been unable to retire CPMS, thus employees are stuck with the mess of tracking cases in two systems.
Staffing - down, yes... workload, down yes... does hearing office leadership hire more staff - some, yes - then it takes an extended period of time to even provide formal virtual training...
Scheduling cases for ALJs to hear... receipts are at a probable all time low so there are fewer cases for ALJs to hear... What does leadership do? Hire senior judges that they are friends with to hear cases when there are low numbers of cases for regular ALJs to hear...
Give these people more money? They can't manage what they have... one poor decision after another, none of which help provide faster service to the public.
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