What Do You Think?

      This is a comment that I allowed to be posted yesterday concerning agency employees saying they were afraid of reporting misconduct:

Doesn't make sense. The agency has an increased emphasis on catching and stopping fraud. My office has been eagerly assisting such efforts. No one is afraid. We wake up motivated each day.

     To my eye that last sentence looks like something that a paid shill came up with, or, perhaps more likely, AI wrote it. I decided to post it since it wasn’t clear. There are others which are far more obvious, even humorous examples, that I quickly blocked

     What do you think I ought to do about these? Allow them to post so there’s a vigorous debate? Reject them if they don’t ring true to me even though I may reject a few genuine comments? Muddle through as best I can? Allow the most ridiculous examples with some attached commentary so you can be amused or angered by them?

Social Security Employees Are Afraid

 

New POMS Section On Relations With Attorneys

Poms

      Social Security has issued an amended section in its POMS manual dealing with disclosures of information to attorneys and others representing claimants before the agency. I see nothing really new here but it certainly deserves close scrutiny. The section still says “Entities may not be appointed as representatives.” This causes severe problems for law firms representing claimants. I don’t think the agency appreciates how difficult the problems are. Perhaps they do and are happy to cause the problems. At least they realize that it’s normal for attorneys to have legal assistants and paralegals working with them.

What’s Going On Here?

 

    From WFLA:

A Florida woman has been stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare for years since the death of her husband, when the Social Security Administration informed her that she, too, was dead.  …

While SSA eventually corrected the error, Mercer’s troubles persisted with other government agencies.

After getting pulled over for speeding, Mercer learned the Department of Motor Vehicles also believed she was dead, with her license showing the officer a “deceased” error. SSA then had to inform the agency that Mercer is still alive.

But her troubles didn’t end there; the Internal Revenue Service also believes she’s dead. First Coast News reported that she hasn’t been able to file her taxes in six years because of the ongoing issue. …

     I have to guess that Social Security didn’t properly resurrect this poor woman and has never corrected the mistake but I don’t know the ins and outs of the Death Master File. Can anyone guess what has happened?

EAJA Awards For 2025

      The Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) shifts the costs of attorney fees to the federal government if the agency loses in many cases. For Social Security EAJA fees are awarded in almost all cases won in the federal courts or remanded from them, but not those resolved administratively.

     The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) produces an annual report on EAJA awards. Here’s a table from the report for 2025:

Agency	# of Awards Reported	Total Amount Reported
Social Security Administration	8,447	$ 53,220,859.93
Department of Veterans Affairs	6,834	$ 53,527,169.71
Department of Homeland Security	40	$ 11,025,985.33
Federal Trade Commission	1	$ 3,046,291.94
Department of the Interior	10	$ 1,785,233.00
Department of War	35	$ 1,388,437.86
Department of Agriculture	12	$ 1,301,602.26
Environmental Protection Agency	4	$ 1,220,000.00
Department of Commerce	4	$ 1,013,000.00
Department of Justice	3	$ 287,569.00
Department of Health and Human Services	5	$ 232,499.00
Department of Housing and Urban Development	5	$ 168,475.00
Department of Energy	1	$ 140,003.20
National Labor Relations Board	2	$ 105,539.00
Department of Labor	1	$ 76,190.47
Department of Transportation	1	$ 51,762.00
Railroad Retirement Board	1	$ 7,330.60
Totals	15,406	$128,597,948.30

     It’s worth mentioning that the attorney representing the claimant who receives an EAJA award does not get to pocket both the EAJA fee and the fee coming out of the claimant’s benefits. The lower amount must be refunded to the claimant.

What An Idea

The real Elvis Social Security card

      From The Daily Beast:

President Donald Trump may be considering a flashy upgrade to one of the government’s most mundane documents—after a visit to Graceland left him impressed by Elvis Presley’s taste for gold.

During a tour of Presley’s famed Memphis estate on Monday, Trump, 79, was shown a collection of the late singer’s personal belongings—including a gold-colored Social Security card that appeared to spark an idea to beautify the blue-and-gray paper card first issued back in 1936. …

As the guide paraded the customized item, she made clear to the president that the card was only for show.

“The gold metal Social Security cards were not officially issued by the government,” she explained, describing it as a “novelty item” popular at the time because standard paper cards would often wear out.

That didn’t stop Trump from floating a revival.

“Good idea,” he replied. “Maybe we should do that again.” …

Congressional Hearing On Social Security Financing

       The Senate Budget Committee held a hearing yesterday on Social Security: A Discussion on the Facts and the Path Forward. It doesn’t look as if there is anything interesting coming out of this.

     It’s not this Committee or the witnesses at the hearing but I’m always surprised at the number of policymakers and commentators who think that Social Security’s long term, perhaps now medium term, funding problems are some riddle that can be solved by some brilliant person with no one feeling pain. The reality is that you can cut benefits significantly or you can raise taxes significantly or some combination of the two. Even then Treasury will probably need to lend money to the Social Security trust funds for at least a few years. At this point Republicans want benefit cuts but want to find a way to make Democrats politically responsible for the cuts while Democrats want higher taxes but are worried about the backlash. Few, if any, are interested in compromise. I predict no benefit cuts nor tax increases; just Treasury funding for well into the future.

Cap Couple’s Benefits At $100,000 Per Year?

      From a Washington Post editorial:

With the federal government $39 trillion in debt and running deficits larger than during the Great Depression, there’s no reason that the largest federal spending program should be sending six figures in annual benefits to rich people. Yet that’s exactly what Social Security is set to do.

Starting this year, the Social Security benefits formula gives the very highest-income couples who retire at age 67 over $100,000. While few will receive that now, their numbers will only increase as time goes on and the formula, which raises benefits faster than consumer price inflation, keeps boosting payments.

Though it won’t fully address the program’s long-term sustainability, capping benefits for the richest seniors would help restore sanity to a program millions of Americans depend on. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is proposing what it calls the “Six Figure Limit” to ensure that no couple who retires at the normal age receives over $100,000 in annual benefits. …