The hearing yesterday before the Labor-HHS Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee went about as I expected but there were interesting details.
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| Robert Aderholt, Subcommittee Chair |
Robert Aderholt, the Chair of the Subcommittee, spoke first. He said he was happy that Commissioner O'Malley had already come to his office to discuss the agency's appropriation. He said that less than half of agency heads did this, which I find surprising. He also said that this was the first House Appropriations Committee hearing on Social Security in a decade. I knew it had been a long time but that's even more than I imagined. Note to future Commissioners, including Acting Commissioners: Meet with Appropriations Committee members on as regular a basis as you can.
Aderholt went quickly into Republican talking points which basically amount to pressure to force an end to telework and a demand that the agency manage its way out of its service delivery problems. In particular, he didn't like the amount of overtime at Social Security and thought that it was being abused by employees. Maybe there are problems with overtime but if it there are, it's just the normal sort of management issue that you find at any large entity. It's hardly responsible for any work backlogs, nor is telework. Just about every entity employing white collar employees allows telework. If you don't allow it, you have a hard time holding onto your employees or hiring new ones.
The other Subcommittee members divided along party lines in predictable and somewhat depressing ways. My limited experience with Congressional hearings in past decades was that they were nowhere near as partisan as this.
There were many questions along the lines of “Can’t you use AI so you can give better service inexpensively?” The Commissioner’s answer was basically “We hardly have the money to maintain the systems we already have so we can’t possibly afford new AI contracts.”
It grated on me that Commissioner O'Malley kept saying he had "turned around" Social Security. He's a politician so you expect some hyperbole but saying that the agency has been "turned around" is over the top. O'Malley has done a good job in the short time frame he's had but actually "turning around" the agency was impossible without more time and more money.
In the end, I hope I'm wrong but I would be surprised to see any additional money for Social Security coming out of this Subcommittee.
Republicans will get a chance to see whether a Trump appointee as Commissioner can manage the agency out of its service delivery problems. I don't have high hopes of anyone even being nominated for the position for many months, if not years, into the future. Given the quality of the man Trump appointed in his first term in office, I'm not expecting a transformational leader.
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This is what O'Malley has been telling employees for months since he was appointed: the money just isn't there to hire new staff amid the lowest staffing levels in over 50 years. SSA has found ways to cut corners and attempt to answer calls more quickly, process more claims in a shorter amount of time, and improve wait times in offices. But without more staff or a massive contract with AI designers, it's going to get worse before it gets any better. You've mentioned in your blog before that O'Malley has taken all the low-hanging fruit that he could to improve small change, but it will take an Act of Congress to make any recognizable change in service delivery. The best we can hope for in this new administration is they will cut costs where they can, eliminate waste, and hopefully use the remaining budget to implement AI or hire more bodies. Admittedly, if they cut telework, I expect a large portion of the already over-worked (see original comment on overtime) workforce to exit and find other agencies or private companies that will allow telework. This will only worsen the staffing issue at SSA. I expect they will push for more online service options which have been slowly rolling out, and then they'll possibly start to close many field offices around the country.
SSA Operations has depended on overtime for at least 40 years, to manage caseloads. There is little to no abuse of overtime, as managers closely watch what is done on premium hours.
Actually in PC7 overtime has been severely cut since early October. There has been a corresponding increase in backlogs.
Favorable ALJ decisions after court remands , these already take 6-9 months after the ALJ decision to process the award to payment.
Without overtime, that situation is getting worse.
SSA employees rely on overtime pay to make ends meet but to say there is no abuse is not true. Employees at times don’t work on certain workloads such as overpayments knowing full well that it is a priority. Management has no other option but to give overtime in order to get these cases done.
The problem with service delivery is simple: We never have time to do it right but we always have time to do it over. We count one widget several times so it looks like we are making progress but in reality the progress is an illusion. Stop counting widgets and start counting results
The GOP guys underscored a few minute instances of abuse with overtime. As Charles rightly says: happens everywhere, easy to fix.
Are the GOP guys okay spending brand new money on opening large, expensive downtown federal buildings? Hiring more security guard, janitors, utilities folks, and others, and buying office furniture, janitorial supplies, microwaves, etc...? Or are they interested in cutting costs, getting more production, and improving service? If so, then telework is the answer for anyone who can do it.
And when you consider those Court Remands in particular, it is not just the 6-9 months after the ALJ decisions, (in my experience more like a year minimum) but those are cases where because they went to District Court, the application dates can be three or four years ago. It is a disgrace that these cases, in particular, are not prioritized for immediate processing and staff provided to do so. The eight total staff in the Unit responsible that I am told by their management are all they have are not enough
compared to training new staff and giving them health insurance and other fringe benefits, overtime can be efficient. It lets the more experienced staff do harder work at quieter times. Of course SSA still needs to hire new people and get them ready for when the older staff quits or retires, but overtime gives the experienced staff a chance to get their work done when they're also needed to train the new folks. And the Rs telework argument is just dumb--they don't seem to understand that if a lot of people prefer to use the phone or internet to communicate with SSA, there's a bunch of work that doesn't need to be done at the field office. But they don't care about that, or care that telework helps with retention. They just need something to say to explain why they underfund the agency.
So the hearing consisted of the main culprits responsible for SSA's problems (the congressional Republicans who refuse to sufficiently fund SSA) proposing unworkable solutions while declining to fix the problem they created and perpetuate...with O'Malley diplomatically pointing that out them.
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