Yesterday's Hearing

     The hearing yesterday before the Labor-HHS Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee went about as I expected but there were interesting details.

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.

House Appropriations Hearing

     The written witness statement of Commissioner Martin O'Malley for today's hearing before the Labor-HHS Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee is already available. I think someone slipped up. They normally embargo these until literally the moment the witness starts speaking.

    The hearing, which is set for 10:30, will be available for viewing online.

Appropriations Hearing On November 14

    The House Appropriations Committee has scheduled a hearing on the Social Security Administration appropriation for 10:30 on November 14. Commissioner Martin O'Malley is the only scheduled witness.

Senate Budget Committee Hearing

     The Senate Budget Committee held a hearing yesterday on Social Security Forever: Delivering Benefits and Protecting Retirement Security. Here are the written statements before the Committee. 

• Martin O'Malley, Commissioner, Social Security Administration
• Rebecca Vallas, Chief Executive Officer, National Academy of Social Insurance
• Roger Boudreau, President, Rhode Island AFT/Retirees Local #8037R 
• Molly Dahl,  Long-Term Analysis Unit Chief, Congressional Budget Office 
• Shai Akabas, Executive Director, Economic Policy Program, Bipartisan Policy Center

This is from a news article on the hearing:

… The ultra-wealthy are avoiding nearly $2 trillion in taxes every 10 years," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said during a Senate Budget Committee hearing. "That is enough to keep Social Security whole till the end of this century."

"That's where we ought to go to start making progress," Wyden added. …

Senate Finance Committe Hearing Today

     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:

• William R. Morton, Analyst, Income Security, Congressional Research Service
• Susan B. Wilschke,  Associate Commissioner, Office of Research, Demonstration, and Employment Support, Social Security Administration
• Erin Godtland, Assistant Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security, United States Government Accountability Office
• Katherine Zuleger, President, Chicago Social Security Management Association Executive Committee Member, National Council of Social Security Management Association
  

Immigrants Help Social Security Trust Funds

     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 Subcommittee Schedules Hearing

    The House Social Security Subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for June 4 on The Social Security Trust Funds In 2024 And Beyond.

Creamy Or Crunchy?

     From Nextgov/FCW:

...The longer arc of this agency is a phenomenally dedicated, committed, compassionate culture. [SSA staff has] been traumatized by the increased volume and nine years of steady staff reductions, given the lack of any Congressional attention to our budget or even the decency of our own appropriations hearings, said [Social Security Commissioner Martin] O'Malley” ...

The SSI program “purports to be a program of last resort,” but “forces the poorest of people to jump through hoops, stand on their head and gargle peanut butter in order to qualify for it,” he told lawmakers at a recent hearing. ...

Congressional Hearing On GPO/WEP

     The House Social Security Subcommittee held a hearing on Tuesday on the Government Pension Offset/Windfall Elimination Provision in the Social Security Act that deal with cases in which a person is eligible for both Social Security benefits and a pension based upon earnings not covered by FICA. Two of the four witnesses called for modification of the formulas used to determine the offset and another called for its elimination. As things stand now, it's highly unlikely that anything will be done about this.

O'Malley Testimony To Senate Aging Committee -- And Note The Overpayment Changes

     Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley testified before the Senate Aging Committee today. Here's are some excerpts from his written testimony (emphasis added):

...Currently – due to the extended continuing resolution (CR) that we are under in FY 2024 – we have stopped all hiring, and our staffing levels have already fallen below where they were in April of last year. If we continue this path of no hiring, we will fall to a new all-time low of around 55,000 full-time permanent staff by the end of this fiscal year – nearly 11 percent lower than the roughly 62,000 full-time permanent staff we averaged from 2010 through 2019.

Similarly, the State disability determination services (DDS) were able to make some progress increasing their staffing levels in FY 2023, following years of record-high attrition and a historically low staffing level in FY 2022. But in FY 2024, the DDS have quickly dropped below last year’s staffing levels due to our pause in hiring given the funding level, which is leading to a severe setback in addressing a service delivery crisis. ...

Members may be surprised to learn that Social Security has now been reduced to operate on less than one percent of its annual benefit payments. This is extremely low – much lower than private insurance companies. For instance, Allstate operates on 19 percent of its annual benefit payments, and Liberty Mutual operates on nearly 24 percent of its annual benefit payments. ...

Under the current system, Social Security’s operating overhead, as a share of benefit outlays, has shrunk by 20 percent over the last ten years. ...

People who try to reach us by phone are now waiting on hold for 38 minutes or more on a dysfunctional 800 Number system. ...

Starting next Monday, March 25, we will be ceasing the heavy-handed practice of intercepting 100 percent of an overpaid beneficiary’s monthly Social Security benefit by default if they fail to respond to our demand for repayment. Moving forward, we will now use a much more reasonable default withholding rate of 10 percent of monthly benefits — similar to the current rate in the SSI program.

We will be reframing our guidance and procedures so that the burden of proof shifts away from the claimant in determining whether there is any evidence that the claimant was at fault in causing the overpayment. ...

Ways And Means Committee Schedules Hearing With Commissioner

     The House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee and Work and Welfare Subcommittee (which has jurisdiction over Supplemental Security Income) have scheduled a joint hearing at 2:00 on March 21 to hear from Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley.

    Whoever scheduled this can't be much of a sports fan. March Madness, y'all! Can't wait to get my brackets busted.

On The Way Out The Door

     In one of her last acts as Acting Commissioner of Social Security, Kililo Kijakazi issued an apology for her confused testimony before a Congressional committee that badly understated her agency's problem with overpayments of benefits.

    By the way, does anyone have an idea where Kijakazi is headed now? Back to a staff job? On to a new position?

Support For Updating SSI

     From a press release:

In the latest sign of strong momentum for U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH) bipartisan legislation to fix the Social Security Income program, the executives of the eight leading banks in the United States endorsed the SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act. The legislation ... is the first bipartisan, bicameral bill to increase SSI’s asset limits and ensure disabled and elderly Americans can work and save for emergencies without putting at risk the benefits they rely on to live.  

During the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee’s annual hearing with the big bank executives, Brown described how SSI’s outdated eligibility rules lock beneficiaries in poverty and that his bill – co-sponsored by BHUA Committee member Sen. Rounds and already supported by JP Morgan Chase – would raise the asset limit. When asked if the executives would join in supporting the bill, each of them confirmed they supported the measure. ...

Introduced in September 2023, the bill is also endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Microsoft, Transunion, the Kroger Company, the Food Association, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, AARP, Bipartisan Policy Center, The Arc, National Association of Evangelicals, Faith and Freedom Coalition, Jewish Federations of North America, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, American Academy of Pediatrics, Autism Society of America, CEO Commission for Disability Employment, Cure SMA, Coalition on Human Needs, Justice in Aging, Muscular Dystrophy Association, National Down Syndrome Society, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Prosperity Now, Social Security Works, and nearly 300 other local and national organizations.  ...

Brute Force Needed

    At yesterday's House Social Security Subcommittee hearing all of the members were struggling under the illusion that agency management could seriously address agency backlogs. I have my own ideas for what the agency could do but I'm not under the illusion that they would seriously address backlogs. More money is the only thing that will work; "brute force" as former Commissioner Astrue described it when the agency was in a backlog situation not as serious as the current one.

Congressional Hearing

     The written materials submitted by witnesses at today's House Social Security Subcommittee are now available online. They're mostly predictable and uninteresting to me. I didn't have the time to watch but please post your summary if you did.

Social Security Subcommittee Schedules New Hearing

      The House Social Security Subcommittee has scheduled a hearing on “One Million Claims and Growing: Improving Social Security’s Disability Adjudication Process” for October 26.

Yesterday's House Social Security Subcommittee Hearing

     Here's a media account of yesterday's House Social Security Subcommittee hearing on overpayments. As I expected, GOP members beat up on the Acting Commissioner, whose name they seemed unable to pronounce, probably because they'd never seen her before. When there's a problem, it's far easier to blame someone than to examine the root causes of the problem. Democratic members, of course, defended Kijakazi and expressed outrage over the agency's funding, among other things.

House Hearing On Overpayments Today

     The Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing at 2:00 this afternoon on Protecting Beneficiaries from the Harm of Improper Payments. Here's the witness list:

• Dr. Kilolo Kijakazi, Ph.D.
  Acting Commissioner, Social Security Administration (SSA)
• Ms. Tonya Eickman
  Program Audit Division Director, Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General (OIG)
• Ms. Elizabeth Curda
  Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security, U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)

     If your focus is on protecting beneficiaries, wouldn't you want to hear from an affected beneficiary? Instead they're calling in witnesses from Social Security's Office of Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office, agencies which have inaccurately conflated overpayments with fraud and which have favored unremitting efforts to recover overpayments. No, it looks like the focus will be on beating up on Kijakazi. I'm not sure that in general there's that much to beat up Kijakzi on anyway but blaming her for the overpayment issues is wrong. This mess has been brewing for decades.

Social Security Subcommittee Schedules Hearing On Overpayments

      The House Social Security Subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for October 18 on “examining how the Social Security Administration can better identify improper payments before they occur and provide beneficiaries with adequate notice when they occur.”

Congressional Hearing Today

     A press release:

There will be a Hearing of the Committee on the Budget 

On: Wednesday, July 12, 2023, 10:00 AM 

In: Room SD-608. 

To consider: "Protecting Social Security for All: Making the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share"

Witnesses

---

1. The Honorable Phillip Swagel, Ph.D.
   Director
   Congressional Budget Office
    
2. Mr. Stephen C. Goss
   Chief Actuary
   Social Security Administration
    
3. Ms. Kathleen Romig
   Director of Social Security and Disability Policy
   Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
    
4. Ms. Amy Hanauer
   Executive Director
   Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
    
5. Dr. Andrew G. Biggs, Ph.D.
   Senior Fellow
   American Enterprise Institute