Have you decided what days you're going to take off around Christmas?
Is it just me or does this seem bizarre, almost abusive? It's certainly unnecessary.
Below is an illustration from the testimony of Katherine
Zuleger of Wausau
, WI. President, Chicago Social Security Management Association, Executive Committee Member, National Council of Social Security Management Associations to the Senate Finance Committee on June 18, 2024 on Work and Social Security Disability Benefits (I can't help thinking that some of this looks like an illustration from a sex education textbook!):
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Government Executive has out a piece titled Martin O’Malley is on a one-year sprint to save Social Security. The title comes from Government Executive, not O'Malley. I'm sure that O'Malley hasn't claimed that he can "save" Social Security in any time frame, much less in a year.
The primary thrust of the piece is O'Malley's call for additional budget resources for his agency. However, there's also crowing about O'Malley's accomplishments as Commissioner. O'Malley has certainly changed the tone at the agency and has some important accomplishments in his first six months as Commissioner but I'm pretty sure that the main accomplishment claimed in this piece -- improvement in 800 number answering -- isn't much of an accomplishment.
Those on the inside can confirm or deny this but I think that the improvement in 800 number answering has been achieved by calling upon additional backup for the agency's Teleservice Centers (TSC's). The backup comes from the Program Service Centers (PSC's) whose primary responsibility is computing and paying benefits under Title II of the Social Security Act. This has gone on to some extent for many years. I've heard it referred to as "spiking," as in asking the PSC's to step in to handle overflow when there's a spike in call volume. It's not hard to improve 800 number phone answering if all you have to do is to shift the boundary for what's considered a "spike." Of course, the problem is that this causes degradation in the primary PSC workload of computing and paying benefits, which I have seen. Doing a better job of answering the phones is great but asking claimants who have already been approved to wait an extra month for the benefits they are owed isn't so great. Also, changing the spiking policies so that the PSC's give more help to the TSC's isn't sustainable. The payment backlogs will eventually become their own crisis.
Finding ways to make yourself look better comes naturally to a seasoned politician like O'Malley. It's not a bad thing for the agency. At the least, it gives members of Congress confidence that if they give the Social Security Administration additional operating funds that they will be well spent. There is another side to the coin, however. Some members of Congress can say "Look, it's what we've been telling you. Social Security doesn't need more operating funds. It just needs better management."
The Senate Finance Committee is holding a hearing at 10:00 today (June 18) on Work and Social Security Disability Benefits: Addressing Challenges and Creating Opportunities. You can watch it online. Here's the witness list:
From Job Incidence Numbers in Social Security Disability Claims: A Case Study and Analysis by Kevin Liebkemann, 44 J. Nat’l Ass’n Admin. L. Judiciary 15 (2024) .
... The case survey results suggest that the SSA’s current vocational evidence system is broken in ways that can hurt disability claimants. Some variance in VE [Vocational Expert] job incidence number testimony may be reasonable. However, survey results document that VEs frequently gave markedly different national job incidence numbers for the same job around the same time, which indicates that the VE’s methodologies employed were inconsistent and thus unreliable. Further, study of cases involving other frequently cited DOT job titles could help determine how widespread this problem is. Some courts have already taken notice of such discrepancies regarding VE testimony of job incidence for other DOT titles. ...
SSA does not currently have adequate rules or enforcement in place to protect the public from the problem documented in the study data, namely VEs giving extremely disparate job incidence numbers for the same DOT title. The study data and case review found that SSA ALJs accepted those disparate numbers. The SSA’s Office of Inspector General that is charged with searching for and reporting systemic weaknesses in SSA programs has not yet issued any investigation reports on the reliability of VE methodologies for determining job incidence numbers. ...
Talk about being elite and out of touch! Most people don't wait until full retirement age now to start their Social Security benefits. There's no sign that's changing. Blue collar workers can rarely go on working until they're 70. Their health won't permit it. I think that Mr. Tammy hasn't yet experienced any of the ill effects of the aging process. It's coming for you too, buddy, whether you believe it or not. The odds are high that even highly motivated white collar workers don't make it until 70. Private savings? Does Mr. Tammy know anyone with an annual income below $100,000? Apart from their homes, if they're lucky enough to have them, most Americans near retirement age have only modest savings at best.
Right wing "thinkers" keep telling us that the key to all retirement problems in the U.S. is lowering the tax bills paid by wealthy Americans. It's what they're paid to write.
A statistical report from Social Security on performance at its Office of Hearings Operations:
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I wrote about the reach, and perhaps overreach, of Social Security's controls on fees for representation before the agency in 2021. I still think what I suggested at that time would be a good idea:
The Social Security Act says that fees for representing claimants must be approved by the agency. 42 U.S.C. §406(a)(1). The agency has interpreted this provision broadly. Its position is that charging a fee just to help a claimant file a claim or an appeal must be approved by the agency. As a result no one is providing these services for a fee apart from those offering contingent fee contracts for much broader representation. This leaves a large number of people to seek services that the Social Security Administration is unable to supply. Social Security should announce that that merely helping a claimant file a claim or an appeal is not the sort of representation for which fee approval is required. This would allow attorneys and H.&R. Block and whomever else to provide these services for modest fees. As an alternative, if the agency still wants to control these fees, the Social Security Act provides authority for the Commissioner to simply approve a maximum fee. ("The Commissioner of Social Security may, by rule and regulation, prescribe the maximum fees which may be charged for services performed in connection with any claim ...) The Commissioner could announce that the maximum fee to help file a claim is, let's say, $250 and the maximum fee for helping to file an appeal is $100. Those providing these services would not have to submit a fee petition. I will concede that this suggestion helps those with some money more than it helps the destitute but one would hope that even the poor could come up with the modest fees I'm talking about. It would also free up agency personnel to provide more help for poor claimants. If Social Security cannot itself provide these services to all who need them, why stand in the way of others providing these services for modest fees?
There's one thing about the interview that I can't figure out. At one point the interviewer mentions that O'Malley is the first Social Security Commissioner who has served in elective office. O'Malley corrects him saying "Second! I’ll show you the wax figure down the hall." Who was that other Social Security Commissioner who had previously served in elective office? Is the "wax figure" business just some odd figure of speech or some sort of reality?
From National Public Radio:
The thing that got Karen Williams into trouble was that she tried to do the responsible thing and bought a life insurance policy that would pay for her funeral. ...
Williams, who is disabled and doesn’t work, relied upon a little-known federal assistance program — Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, run by the Social Security Administration. ...
Williams, 63, thought her life insurance wouldn’t be used until after she died. She didn’t understand it had a cash value and that she could turn it in and collect $1,900. That was far less than the $10,000 in funeral expenses she bought the policy to cover when she died.
For Williams, the cash value of her policy along with the $260 she had saved in her checking account pushed her over SSI’s $2,000 limit on how much a recipient is allowed in savings and other assets. ...
That $2,000 asset limit hasn’t changed since 1989. If it had kept up over 51 years with inflation, it would be $10,000 today.
“I would have definitely went by the rules,” Williams says. “I didn’t know I was breaking them.”
The penalty was stiff: Williams was kicked off SSI, her primary source of income, and told by Social Security to pay back two years of benefits totaling $20,385. ...
“You’re telling me I owe you $20,000?” Williams remembers thinking in the Social Security office. “I can’t even pay my bills. … Where am I going to live?” ...
Ultimately, she sought out the help of Gregory Burrell, president and CEO of the Terry Funeral Home, an institution in West Philadelphia that has served Black families for generations.
Burrell let Williams turn the policy over to the funeral home.
“We see that all the time,” Burrell, a former president of the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association, the largest group of Black funeral directors, said of the confusion that caught Williams. “Unfortunately, people don’t know any better. And they’re stressing, and these insurance policies — they’re considered assets.” ...
Social Security is trying to worm its way out of the federal courts applying the new rule changing past relevant work from 15 years to 5 by saying in a footnote to a Social Security ruling that it expected the courts to apply the law in effect at the time of the administrative decision.
I wrote earlier that I didn't think that Social Security was getting out of this problem with a simple footnote.
Here's a quote that may be of interest:
It is in the general true that the province of an appellate court is only to enquire whether a judgment when rendered was erroneous or not. But if subsequent to the judgment and before the decision of the appellate court, a law intervenes and positively changes the rule which governs, the law must be obeyed, or its obligation denied. If the law be constitutional . . . I know of no court which can contest its obligation. It is true that in mere private cases between individuals, a court will and ought to struggle hard against a construction which will, by a retrospective operation, affect the rights of parties, but in great national concerns . . . the court must decide according to existing laws, and if it be necessary to set aside a judgment, rightful when rendered, but which cannot be affirmed but in violation of law, the judgment must be set aside.
Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that in United States v. Schooner Peggy, 5 U.S. 1 (1801). You don't have to go back that far to find the same principle applied. Try Bradley v. Richmond School Board, 416 U.S. 696 (1974). Want a case where this was applied to Social Security? See Hicks v. Califano, 600 F.2d 1048 (4th Cir. 1979). That one is especially applicable because it was a case arising from the initial adoption of the grid regulations.
There won't be that many cases where the difference between 15 years and 5 years is outcome determinative, I don't know why Social Security wants to fight over these few cases. Get it over with and accept the voluntary remands.
For that matter, apply this at the Appeals Council. Don't apply res judicata to cases affected and grant reopenings within the two and four time periods allowed by law when requested.
From The Hill writing about Tuesday's hearing before the House Social Security Subcommittee on future funding of Social Security benefits:
“The immigration surge, we project from 2021 to 2026, will result in about $1 trillion in additional revenue” over a ten year period, Dr. Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) told lawmakers during a Tuesday hearing. ...
Republicans — including former president and presidential candidate Donald Trump — have increasingly pointed to immigration as a drain on social safety nets for the elderly in recent months, including Social Security and Medicare.
Top budgetary experts bucked those claims during Tuesday’s panel as they argued immigrants could have a positive impact on Social Security. ...
Rep. Ron Estes (R-Kan.) pressed [Stephen] Goss [Social Security's Chief Actuary] on whether the SSA accounted for the “impact of illegal immigrants” in their yearly report.
“Absolutely, we always have,” Goss responded. “The bottom line really is that immigration of any form is actually a positive in the realm we are now where the birth rates in the country are as low as they are.” ...
Isn't it obvious that illegal immigrants help the Social Security trust funds? They contribute but can't get anything in return. Of course, this won't be obvious if you believe that illegal immigrants are just "given" Social Security benefits as soon as they arrive but, of course, that's a myth believed only by the credulous.
Social Security will publish two Rulings in the Federal Register tomorrow on How We Apply Medical-Vocational Profiles and How We Evaluate Past Work.
Here's a footnote from the first of those Rulings:
We will use this SSR beginning on its applicable date. We will apply this SSR to new applications filed on or after the applicable date of the SSR and to claims that are pending on and after the applicable date. This means that we will use this SSR on and after its applicable date in any case in which we make a determination or decision. We expect that Federal courts will review our final decisions using the rules that were in effect at the time we issued the decisions. If a court reverses our final decision and remands a case for further administrative proceedings after the applicable date of this SSR, we will apply this SSR to the entire period at issue in the decision we make after the court’s remand.We'll see how this plays out but I doubt they're getting out of this problem with a footnote.
From Customer Wait Times in the Social Security Administration’s Field Offices and Card Centers, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:
From tomorrow's Federal Register:
We published in the Federal Register on April 18, 2024, a final rule to revise the time period we consider when determining whether an individual’s past work is relevant for the purposes of making disability determinations and decisions under our rules. The preamble of that final rule cited an effective date of June 8, 2024. This rulemaking defers that effective date to June 22, 2024.
From Customer Wait Times in the Social Security Administration’s Field Offices and Card Centers, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:
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| April 2024 numbers. From Social Security. Click on image to view full size. |
Gail Ennis is finally resigning as Social Security’s Inspector General after an investigation determined that she tried to obstruct inquiries into her behavior.
