The AARP has published an interview it conducted with Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley. As you would expect from one with a political background, O'Malley touts his agency's accomplishments. I would certainly agree that the changes in how Social Security deals with overpayments are an accomplishments. However, the accomplishments in providing service to claimants have not been across the board. As a few workloads gets diminished, others increase. It's all you can do when you lack adequate budget resources.
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?
5 comments:
I think the SSA historians have a little museum set up at HQ, but I don't know that it has literal wax figures.
ChatGPT says Apfel was on the Austin City Council, but maybe that's an AI hallucination.
Bill Halter is my guess, but it was after he served as acting COSS that he was elected Arkansas Lt. Gov.
I'll have to look for that wax figure in the SSA HQ historical section, the next time I'm in the building. I've walked by it before but I didn't notice a wax figure.
So you think delaying the recoupment of US taxpayers’ money is an accomplishment?
His concepts means more work done more quickly. Quality will suffer. I see more and more simple mistakes made by employees that cause overpayments, but I also see a lack of willingness on many of the beneficiaries/recipients to properly report that impact their benefits.
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