Mark Warshawsky, of the right wing American Enterprise Institute, has written an op ed for the Baltimore Sun trashing Social Security's Commissioner, Martin O'Malley. Warshawsky blames O'Malley for asking for greater operating funds for Social Security. He says that the increasing number of people drawing Social Security benefits is large irrelevant to the agency's workload since it is mostly retirees who put little burden on the system. He says that the agency's real problem with getting its workload done is employees working from home and Social Security adding a new step in the process of disability review in 2019 and 2020. I don't know what new step he's talking about here. Of course, there's also the problem that in 2019 and 2020 O'Malley wasn't the Commissioner and Biden wasn't the President. Warshawsky goes on criticize what O'Malley is doing about overpayments and O'Malley's failure to adopt new regulations drafted while Republicans were in office to deny far more disability claimants. By the way, Republicans could have adopted those regulations but were no more eager than O'Malley to do so and for good reason. They're not justified by the data not to mention that all hell would break loose if they were adopted.
By the way, not to knock the Baltimore Sun, which is a fine newspaper, but I'm betting that the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal passed on this piece before the Sun finally agreed to publish it.
22 comments:
Warshawsky is a right wing tool
Baltimore Sun just got bought out by David Smith. It is a throwback conservative rag now. You can expect garbage "reporting" like this for the foreseeable future.
NOSSCR should respond to this absolute garbage piece.
SSA's woes are more due to lack of automation than anything else, we're 30 plus years behind. We're still doing stuff manually that should have been automated in the 90s.
Perhaps the "new step" Warshawsky talks about is the reinstatement of reconsideration in the 10 prototype states?
Bringing everyone back to the offices 5 days a week, is the right wing answer to all work problems.
“ He says that the increasing number of people drawing Social Security benefits is large irrelevant to the agency's workload since it is mostly retirees who put little burden on the system.”
What an absolute knob thing to say. If most of the workload is processing retirement applications, that leaves little time to do OTHER workloads. So I would say, yeah, retirees are VERY relevant. And that’s not an argument that they shouldn’t file, that’s just the facts. If the agency is processing millions of retirement applications with X number of employees, that X number of employees can’t get to other workloads because they are processing a majority of RIB applications.
I suspect that the "additional step" is return all Reconsideration level review to all jurisdictions.
Warshawsky is complaining about SSA "adding a new step in the process of disability review in 2019 and 2020"?!?! I wonder who was the Deputy Commissioner for Retirement and Disability Policy then?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-j-warshawsky-32215850/
And from June 2019 to July 2021, Saul was Commissioner.
So who's to blame here?
Does anyone have the stats on what percentage of cases denied on initial consideration are then granted at the reconsideration stage?
The author of that piece is a clueless ****. O’Malley is a disaster, but for none of the reasons brought up. Bringing back Carolyn Colvin set the tone, and he has been captured by the HQ Mandarins who have run the agency into the ground.
I think Baltimore was looking for a story to print that didn't involve murders and crime. Apparently, politics ragging on SSA are better articles for print?
@440 pm it's about 15% of reconsiderations that are approved for disability.
4:40, last year 15% of reconsiderations were awards and 85% were denied.
I agree with those noting that from the field office or PC perspective, retirement and survivor claims aren't that much easier than DI claims--still need to know PIA, WEP/GPO, auxiliaries, etc. Still need to deal with earned income for child in care benefits and early retirement. Although DI needs to be sent to the DDS, a lot of the other stuff is the same. It's SSI that seems tougher.
I have never seen someone be so right but for all the wrong reasons. O'Malley has been a disaster, but not because of this. First, he cancelled telework for a large contingent of employees like HQ and regional offices, but senselessly lets OHO and OAO telework full-time. This has devastated morale and production, and he refuses to address it. On the same coin, he is begging for more money and indeed received $100M more, but has blown it on trying to rent more space and furnish office equipment for return-to-office employees that do not want to be back in the office. He should be pouring that $100M into the 1-800 number and overpayments; the problem could be solved overnight.
So yes Mr. Warshawsky, O'Malley is wasting money and squandering resources. Just not for the reasons you state.
Here's a novel idea... The 15% approved at Reconsideration SHOULD havd been approved at Initial, but most cases are "unlikely" to be approved until the ALJ hearing. How about giving the claimant the OPTION to skip Reconsideration and go straight to the hearing? Or, is it measly a delay/"hope they go away" step?
The Sun is effectively "owned" by Sinclair Broadcast group and is now a paper version of Fox and NewsAmerica. I assume a political reasoning for 90% of what they publish.
Warshawsky has background with SSA - https://www.ssa.gov/ndf/documents/NDF%20SSA%20Executives20180822.pdf And his views are right wing given his home base, and as we all know, it's their policy to make SSA look bad however they can so they can complain and propose killing it to fix it.
One need to look no further for background and point of view of the article.
Wouldn't be SSA without the evaluations by a group of folks who know they could run it better than the people in charge.
RSI claims generally take less time than disability claims. But auxiliaries need to be contacted to file vs deferring them on disability cases. There's less post entitlement work for RSI claims and that work is usually less complicated than disability claims. But one still needs people to take and adjudicate the claims and do the post entitlement work.
My impression was that staff turnover and poor training were a major reason for any declines in productivity.
I’m sure these are just coincidences. Warsawsky’s positions overwhelmingly have the effect of resulting in cuts in benefits. He is closely associated with organizations that favor eliminating or cutting benefits, and which are heavily financed by rich weirdos who want to cut Social Security. Just coincidences, I’m sure.
And again, we see the oft repeated "fact" in the comments section of this blog that "most" claims are approved at the hearing level. A cursory glance at the so-called "waterfall chart" this blog reproduces every year proves that incorrect. For example, in fiscal year 2023, 39% of 1,881,964 claims were approved at the initial level. That is 733,965 claims approved. Upon reconsideration, another 15% of 488,880 claims were approved, for another 73,332 claims. Compare those 807,297 approvals to the 45% of 246,399 or 110,879 claims approved at hearing level. By a huge margin, most claims are approved at the initial level.
You can do away with telework but the fact remains that there isn’t enough staff to effectively handle the volume of work in field offices. The focus should be on better training and employee retention.
A social worker in Maryland penned a response to Warshawsky in the Baltimore Sun: https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/04/24/more-workers-needed-at-ssa/
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