From The Hill:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is asking Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Frank Bisignano to provide additional information about the wait times for phone calls, amid reports of discrepancies in data.
In a letter sent Sunday evening to Bisignano, provided exclusively to The Hill, Warren followed up on her meeting with the SSA chief last Wednesday, when, the senator said, she secured a commitment from Bisignano “that SSA would undergo a public audit by the Inspector General regarding your phone call wait time data reporting and that you would publish additional wait time data.” …
She asked Bisignano to provide data by Aug. 11, including on the total number of calls received; details about the calls taken by an artificial intelligence tool — including the percentage of calls dropped, transferred, or ended without resolving the issue; the same details about the calls taken by a human customer service representative. …
Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano has agreed to have the agency’s inspector general audit SSA’s performance data and to publicly report a broader list of data, Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Wednesday after meeting with the longtime financial services businessman who took over the agency in May.
SSA changed what data it reports publicly last month, removing many metrics on the agency’s phone line — such as current call wait times, callback wait times, the number of people waiting on hold and the number waiting for a callback — and processing times for some benefits.
“More accurate data is absolutely essential to oversight,” said Warren. “So we've gotten commitment to an independent audit of those data and much more transparency about the data that will be posted.” …
Of course, the IG will take many months to do anything and may shade its report since it’s no longer truly independent.
There's no word on the results but Senator Elizabeth Warren is reported to be meeting with Social Security Commissioner Bisignano sometime today.
Democratic Senators Wyden and Warren have written the Commissioner of Social Security asking for answers about the sudden reassignments of front line agency employees to answering 1-800 phone calls at about the same time that many metrics of agency functioning have been removed from public view.
From Politico:
A group of House Republicans is sounding the alarm over recent staffing cuts and plans for more cut-backs across the Social Security Administration — a target of the Department of Government Efficiency’s rampage across the federal bureaucracy.
In a new letter to President Donald Trump’s newly-confirmed social security chief, Rep. Nicole Malliotokis of New York and 14 other House Republicans are pressing Frank Bisignano to hold off on any further agency cuts that could “further deteriorate customer service that has been subpar in recent years.” ...
Republicans who signed the letter to Bisignano include Reps. Jeff Hurd of Colorado, Don Bacon of Nebraska, Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, Gabe Evans of Colorado, David Valadao of California, Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, Jen Kiggans of Virginia, Mike Ezell of Mississippi, Mike Turner of Ohio, Zack Nunn of Iowa and Mike Lawler of New York. Three Pennsylvanians were also among the Republicans who added their names to the missive: Reps. Ryan Mackenzie, Brian Fitzpatrick and Rob Bresnahan.
From Newsweek
Two Republican Senators voted against the GOP and President Donald Trump last week in favor of an amendment that would have reversed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts at the Social Security Administration (SSA). The vote took place late Friday night as the Senate voted on Trump's multitrillion-dollar tax breaks and spending cuts framework. …
On Friday, Republican Senators Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, both from Alaska, voted in favor of an amendment that sought to reverse "cuts to the Social Security Administration, which may include cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency or any other cuts to seniors' services." It failed to pass in a 50-49 vote. …
From The Hill:
Senate Republicans want Elon Musk to stop talking about Social Security, and the Department of Government Efficiency to leave it alone. …
They warn that Social Security reform is known as the “third rail” of politics for a reason: Any party that touches it is likely to get zapped come Election Day.
And Republicans fear that reductions in staff and field offices will boomerang on them, predicting constituents will grow frustrated if it becomes more difficult and time-consuming to address problems related to benefit claims.
They warn that Social Security reform is known as the “third rail” of politics for a reason: Any party that touches it is likely to get zapped come Election Day.
“It doesn’t help the president when you have somebody who clearly is not worried about whether or not Social Security benefits are going to be there for him” leading the effort to shrink the Social Security Administration, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), referring to Musk, the world’s richest person. …
Here's your early afternoon roundup of Social Security news:
By the way, if the response from House Democrats to the crisis at Social Security seems tepid to you, just what do you think that the minority party in both Houses of Congress can do? Seriously, what would you have them do? I can suggest one thing -- force a government shutdown unless the White House agrees to end the madness throughout the government -- but they're doing that. Expect a government shutdown next week.
From the Baltimore Sun:
… Martin O’Malley has been called to testify before the House Oversight Committee next month about an agreement he signed to allow some Social Security employees to work remotely through 2029.
O’Malley signed the agreement in late November, two days before leaving his Social Security Administration position.
James Comer, a Republican representative from Kentucky who serves as the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, wrote in a letter to O’Malley that his agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees to guarantee a minimum amount of telework for 42,000 Social Security employees through 2029 “will tie the hands of your successor at SSA for the duration of the next administration, and beyond.”
From The Hill:
A group of House Republicans is making a rare move that would force a vote on a bill to reform aspects of Social Security, stirring unrest in the conference.
The bill at the heart of the push, also dubbed the Social Security Fairness Act, seeks to do away with the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO), a proposal that backers on both sides of the aisle argue is long overdue.
The bill enjoys support from more than 100 House Republicans, and almost four dozen have cosigned the effort to use what’s known as a discharge petition to force consideration of the bill — and the strategy is rubbing some in the conference the wrong way.
“In a well-run Congress, no legislator signs a discharge petition if you’re a majority. That is a rule that is never broken,” Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) told The Hill. “And the fact that 47 of my colleagues signed a discharge petition shows that we have an utter lack of discipline.” ...
Republicans say the matter was a topic of debate in a conference meeting earlier this week. ...
Regardless of the House vote, it's very unlikely that this legislation will be voted on in the Senate.
...
The federal fiscal year ends on September 30. Without some sort of appropriation bill passed before then, there will be a federal government shutdown on October 1. Usually, a continuing resolution (CR) is passed which allows the government to keep functioning based upon the prior year's rate of spending. Every year "anomalies" are added to the CR allowing additional funding for some functions. The Biden Administration has sought an "anomaly" to give additional funding to the Social Security Administration. The CR which has been agreed to contains no "anomaly" for Social Security. This is not good for now and portends an inadequate regular appropriation. Social Security has been an agency which appears to have been disfavored by appropriators for many years.
As I've said before, I'm out there representing Social Security disability claimants. My firm is taking on new cases regularly. I'm only seeing a very few claimants with long Covid. I don't see any more problem with those few cases than with other Social Security disability claims which means there are severe problems.
The letter also said that a couple of more general changes should be made:
... SSA should allow appointed representatives to see all exhibits at the initial and reconsideration disability claim stages. ...
SSA should restore the “treating physician rule” so a claimant’s primary care physician or Long COVID specialist can have their medical opinion given the weight it deserves. ...
... Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and ranking member Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, sent a letter to Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O’Malley asking for information about how the agency is complying with the Biden administration’s March policy mandating safeguards for AI use. ...
Wyden and Crapo also warned O’Malley against overly relying on artificial intelligence as he seeks to chart a path out of Social Security’s customer service crisis, spurred primarily by a slow disinvestment in the agency by Congress, leading to the agency having its smallest workforce in 30 years amid the greatest number of beneficiaries in history. ...
Social Security is closing its field office in Newburgh, NY. Predictably, this is drawing opposition from local political leaders. The appropriations bill favored by Republicans in the House of Representatives would ban field office closures while failing to give the agency enough money to keep them open. How would that work?
Senators Susan Collins and Shelley Moore Capito have written the Commissioner of Social Security to express their concern that the Commissioner has announced the closure of Social Security offices on the afternoons of May 10 and May 24 to give stressed out employees a break.
I understand what the Commissioner has done. Social Security's staff morale could certainly use a shot in the arm and giving extra time off is one way to do that. However, the biggest factor in producing poor staff morale is relentless workload pressures. By closing the offices the workload pressures got a little worse. This seems counter productive to me.
From The Hill:
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) argued with a Social Security official over claims of backlogs in a Wednesday hearing about post-pandemic teleworking policies.
Boebert asked Oren “Hank” McKnelly, an executive counselor for the Social Security Administration, if the administration monitored its employees’ output and hours if workers are logging on from home.
McKnelly assured Boebert social security employees are “subjected to the same performance management processes” whether they are teleworking or working from the office. ...
“We have systems in place that our managers use to schedule, assign and track workloads,” McKnelly said, adding that if employees work virtually, they must be responsive to various forms of communication.
Boebert continued, asking the official why the backlog of social security applicants has increased from 41,000 to 107,000.
“We’ve been historically underfunded for a number of years now,” McKnelly fired back, to which the congresswoman disagreed.
McKnelly said in the past 10 years, the administration has seen an increase of more than 8 million beneficiaries and experienced the lowest staffing levels ever at the end of fiscal 2022.
“That’s a math problem,” he said. “If you have those workloads increasing and you don’t have the staff to take care of those workloads, you’re going to have the backlogs that you’re talking about, representative.” ...
From a press release:
U.S. Senators Ron Wyden, D-Ore.[Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Social Security], Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio [Chairman of the Finance Committee's Social Security Subcommittee], and Bob Casey, D-Pa., urged the Social Security Administration (SSA) to provide additional information on the scope and magnitude of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries who had their benefits suspended and were assessed an overpayment due to receiving Economic Impact Payments (EIPs)[a pandemic program]. ...
Between April 2020 and July 2021, these payments were disregarded as countable resources for 12 months for purposes of SSI eligibility. In August 2021, SSA announced that EIPs would not be counted toward eligibility and payment amount for SSI purposes indefinitely. However, SSA suspended benefits and assessed overpayments to individuals receiving SSI benefits because of the stimulus payments.
Senator Wyden previously raised this concern with SSA in two separate hearings in 2021, and the agency responded stating they had updated its policy guidance for SSA staff. However, recent reporting has shown that SSI beneficiaries continue to receive overpayment notices because of the EIPs.
To understand the scope and magnitude of beneficiaries affected, and the actions SSA has taken to resolve such suspensions and overpayments, the senators asked the SSA Acting Commissioner to provide the following information:
1. The number of individuals who had their benefits reduced or suspended because of the EIPs during the following periods:
a. March 2020 to July 2021;
b. August 2021 to December 2022; and
c. January 2023 to September 2023.
2. Of those individuals identified in Question 1:
a. The number of individuals whose benefits were reinstated without an appeals hearing.
b. The number of individuals whose benefits were reinstated due to an appeals hearing.
c. The number of individuals whose appeals are pending.
d. The number of individuals who appeals were denied.
3. A list of the agency’s past and ongoing actions to address people who received overpayment notices resulting from EIPs?
4. The number of claimants who were denied SSI benefits because of the EIPs.
5. Whether SSA has required each beneficiary impacted to file an appeal.
From this blog on May 22, 2022:
“Serious Concerns” About IG
From the Washington Post:
… The acting commissioner [of Social Security] “has very serious concerns about the issues raised by The Washington Post about the inspector general’s oversight of this program,” Scott Frey, chief of staff to Kilolo Kijakazi, said in an interview. Kijakazi has scheduled a meeting with her senior staff on Monday “to discuss how to proceed,” Frey said. …
A spokesman for the Senate Finance Committee, which also has jurisdiction over Social Security, said the committee is “evaluating a number of steps” in response to the article. …
An extreme reduction in productivity has been signaling for months that something is wrong at OIG.
And, of course, that Inspector General is still on the job.
Back in 2015 Martin O'Malley was running for President. He didn't get very far but he did take these positions on Social Security:
