An Overpayment Case

Sue Farrar

     Republican members of Congress equate Social Security overpayments with fraud. When I see Social Security overpayments they're mostly like the case of Sue Farrar, a woman whose $31,000 overpayment was entirely due to a mistake the agency made. Ms. Farrar was then faced with dealing with an agency which is increasingly becoming incommunicado, an agency which seems determined to leave her with no income. She only gets something like relief after the intervention of the news media. There is nothing unusual about Ms. Farrar's case. It happens every day all across the country with one exception. Normally, there is no media intervention.

Social Security's Leadership Taking The Blame

     Another newspaper piece, this one from Buffalo, blaming Social Security field office closures on the foolish, heartless Social Security Administration. The rational conclusion after reading this and other similar pieces is that Social Security must have terrible leadership. No mention is made in this piece of Social Security's limited appropriations. It's all about bad decisions made at Social Security.

     I really wonder whether this run of articles around the country on this subject is happening spontaneously or whether some group is promoting this.

The Blame Game Has Started And The Obama Administration Is Losing

     From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Cut services, close offices and eliminate government jobs.

That's been the Republican Party's battle cry for decades, but when it comes to the Social Security Administration, it's the Obama administration that's doing all the above.

For more than a year now, the Social Security Administration has rather quietly been trying to shift the public from obtaining walk-in services at its field offices to the Internet.

     There's no question about why Social Security has cut back on service. Republicans in Congress are blocking adequate operating funds for the agency. But look who's getting the blame -- the Obama Administration. Who should the Obama Administration blame for this unfairness? Themselves for not screaming bloody murder about Social Security's inadequate operating budgets. The blame game has started and Republicans are ahead.

Translating Consultant Speak To English

Today's Office Closure News

     Local officials in Northern Erie County, NY are so upset by the closing of Social Security's Amherst, NY field office that they're setting up a link to the nearest Social Security field office via Skype at a local government site. The site will only be open a few hours, one or two days a week but locals it's better than nothing. The Amherst field office had served 36,000 people a year.

     Meanwhile, the Salem News wonders why it is that Social Security gets more money each year and claims to be getting more efficient but is still closing field offices. They conclude that no one should be surprised because "It is the federal government, after all." The Salem News misses a few points. Social Security's budget hasn't been going up each year. It's been going down when you consider inflation even though the agency's workload has gone up dramatically because of the aging of the baby boom population but, hey, what are a few details like that?

What Happened In Augusta?

     Social Security closed a hearing office in Augusta, GA, leaving a building that the government is leasing vacant. The local paper is wondering about the waste of money.

Even The Wall Street Journal

     Even the Wall Street Journal is talking about Social Security being short-handed!

The Perils Of The Disability Trust Fund

     NBC has a story on the predicted exhaustion of Social Security's Disability Trust Fund and what may happen then. The author has tried to present all sides of the issue but misses one, the view that the Disability Trust Fund is doing better than predicted and will either require only a very small, very temporary rescue or no rescue at all. 

More Media Reaction To Hearing On Office Closures

Money Magazine
Daily Caller
Bankrate
Bloomberg Business Week

Press Attention For Senate Hearing

     Yesterday's hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Aging on the decline of service at Social Security has received plenty of media coverage.

• Michael Hiltzik in the LA Times
• Belleville News-Domocrat
• Federal Soup
• Associated Press
• Yahoo Finance
• Tallahasee Democrat
• The Fiscal Times
• Wealth Daily

SSA Needs Adequate Operating Funds To Prevent Improper Payments

     From Dean Baker writing for Huffington Post:

The media have been rightly focusing their attention on the long waiting lists for veterans seeking medical care, and even worse, the Department of Veteran's Affairs cover-up. ...

Unfortunately the VA system is not the only part of the government where essential services may be threatened by cutbacks. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has recently disclosed plans for a major downsizing that will result in the closing of many more of its field offices. The goal is to handle the bulk of Social Security's requests, questions, and complaints through the Internet....

Last year, the Washington Post ran a major front-page article over the fact that 0.006 percent of Social Security benefits in the prior three years had been paid out to dead people. Of course the Post never told readers that the amount in question amounted to less than one hundredth of one percent of benefit payments. Instead it highlighted the size of the mistaken benefits, $133 million, as though it had uncovered a momentous sum that the program was paying out in error. 

There is no reason to expect the opponents of Social Security to be any more honest in the future. Every mistake that the program makes will be highlighted. For this reason, it is not only essential that we minimize the instances where people don't get the benefits to which they are entitled; we should also be concerned that the SSA has the capacity to keep a lid on improper payments.

SSA is already tremendously efficient compared to its private sector counterparts. Administrative costs for the system as whole are just 0.9 percent of benefits. The administrative costs for just the retirement and survivors' portion of the program are 0.5 percent of benefits. Privatized systems in places like the United Kingdom or Chile have costs that are twenty times as high.

Trouble In Social Security's Backyard

     The Baltimore Sun is running a story on the huge backlog of cases awaiting a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) in the Baltimore, Maryland hearing office. The backlog is now up to 17 months. This has led to bankruptcies, people losing their homes and people dying before being approved. Social Security's headquarters are just outside Baltimore.

Glad To Have One Champion In The Media

     Michael Hiltzik takes on a conservative who tries to prove that paying Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits to children displays "contempt for the underprivileged" and that cutting these children off disability benefits is the "compassionate" thing to do.

Vision 2025 Gets Media Attention

Disability Facts

     An e-mail I received recently:

Dear Colleague:

We are proud to announce the launch of Social Security’s disability education and awareness initiative, “The Faces and Facts of Disability.”  Through this campaign, we hope to educate the public about the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program and dispel common misconceptions.  To learn more about the campaign, visit our Faces and Facts of Disability website at www.socialsecurity.gov/disabilityfacts.

Please help us spread the word.

As part of this campaign, we developed a series of outreach materials for groups and organizations, at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/disabilityfacts/materials.html, which includes fact sheets, newsletter articles, posters, social media content, PowerPoint slides, and  web widgets.  We ask that you use these materials, such as the web widgets below, which you can upload to your organization's homepage, to help promote the initiative.

     

In addition, we would also like you to support "The Faces and Facts of Disability" on Thunderclap at https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/11646-faces-facts-of-disability.  Thunderclap is a viral campaign tool that allows supporters to donate a Tweet or Facebook status update for a common cause.  All donated tweets and status updates will be posted by the supporters on Wednesday, May 28 at 1:00 pm, to achieve maximum effect -- creating a "Thunderclap" informs your networks about the SSDI campaign.

We hope you will join us in these efforts by sharing the “Faces and Facts of Disability” with your members and providing feedback for further enhancement for the campaign.

It is often said that knowledge is power.  By arming the public with facts about our disability program and telling some of our beneficiaries' stories, together we can empower people to draw their own informed conclusions about SSDI and the vital social support it offers.

Sincerely,

Maria Artista-Cuchna

Acting Associate Commissioner

    for External Affairs

Newspaper Attacks Social Security ALJ

     The Pennsylvania Record, a newspaper for lawyers, is attacking Social Security Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Charles Bridges for having approved the most Social Security disability claims over the last ten years.

Social Security's "Awful Inequities"

    Laurence Kotlikoff has a list of what he calls "awful inequities"in Social Security that outrage him. And he doesn't even mention the cap on the F.I.C.A. tax! How many do you agree with? I'd note that most of the "inequities" he talks about would end if dependent and survivor benefits were stopped. Do you think that would be a good idea? A politically plausible idea?

Cuts In Customer Service And The Future Of Social Security

     Michael Hiltzik writing about the cuts in customer service at Social Security, "revealed" by Mark Miler at Reuters (actually, I've been talking about these cuts for many years but it's good to see others paying attention):

It's no secret that if you really want to destroy a business, just hack away at its customer service. (Sears has been testing this axiom with considerable vigor.) The principle also holds true for government programs, which is why you should be very suspicious about the relentless budget-cutting at the Social Security Administration. ...

As Nancy Altman, co-director of the advocacy group Strengthen Social Security, told Miller, this is part of "a raging fight by conservatives to get rid of the government's footprint wherever possible." And since Social Security has long been in their cross hairs, it's unsurprising that a meat cleaver has been taken to its administrative budget. The budget request has been pared down in 14 of the last 16 years, Miller found. ...

The more those services deteriorate, the less faith people have fundamentally in Social Security, which is the strongest, most successful public program Congress has ever enacted. So when the program's customer services are slashed, think about who's really being served by the void that remains.

     It may be time to start talking about the latest right wing gambit to hurt Social Security. It goes something like this: "We'll give your agency more money but on the condition that you only spend the money on an enormous effort to find the vast criminal conspiracies that we know must be cheating the government out of billions of dollars." Of course, there are no vast criminal conspiracies so all the Social Security Administration can do is to spend a lot of money chasing down small time crooks while service to the millions of honest Americans who rely on Social Security continues to go to hell. The right wing will trumpet the existence of small time crooks as proof that Social Security is inherently corrupt while heaping scorn on the Social Security Administration for not finding the vast criminal conspiracies that exist in the imaginations of the right. It catches some small time crooks who deserve to be caught but the end result damages Social Security.
     I've got no problem with stepped up efforts at detecting fraud at Social Security so long as the agency can give good service to the public. I've got a problem with simultaneously cutting service at Social Security while spending a lot of money chasing down a few crooks. That's nuts.

The Battle Over Service

     From Reuters:

The loudest battles over Social Security are about potential benefit cuts like the recently vanquished "chained CPI" proposal. But another, less noticed fight has been going on for years. It's aimed at undermining Social Security through systematic budget cutting by Congress of the operating budget of the SSA, the agency charged with providing customer service to the public.

The SSA has received less than its budget request in 14 of the past 16 years. In fiscal 2012, for example, SSA operated with 88 percent of the amount requested ($11.4 billion).

"It's part of a raging fight by conservatives to get rid of the government's footprint wherever possible," says Nancy Altman, co-director of Strengthen Social Security, an advocacy group. ... 

The cutbacks have sparked a broad deterioration of services as demand rises with the aging of the population. ...

Budget cuts have forced sharp reductions in SSA staff and field service offices. Nationwide, staff is down to 62,000 from a peak of 70,000 in the 1990s. Since fiscal 2010, the agency has consolidated 92 field offices into 46 offices and has closed 521 contact stations (mobile floating service facilities that set up shop in other government offices).

Visitors to field offices waited more than 30 percent longer in fiscal 2013 than in 2012. Busy signals on the SSA's toll-free customer assistance line (800-772-1213) doubled in fiscal 2013 over the previous year. ...  

Altman argues that the SSA has an obligation to provide paper-based and one-on-one services to customers who want them.

"The Social Security population still has a significant percentage that likes to get paper checks, and to be able to go in and talk to someone. They're not that comfortable putting their financial information on Internet. Our view is that people are paying for these services and should be able to get them."

Disability Shaming

     I don't think I've ever seen a newspaper article dealing with disability that is as rancid as the one in the New York Post today. The article tells us that Kevin Simpkins is a New York city firefighter. On November 1, Simpkins was driving a fire department van when he was T-boned by another vehicle. Simpkins pulled the driver from her vehicle moments before it was engulfed by flames. The fire department plans to give Simpkins an award for bravery for what he did after the crash. Simpkins tried to go back to work after the accident but lasted only a week before he went out complaining of neck and shoulder injuries. He has filed a claim for disability benefits but it's not clear whether he's seeking temporary or permanent benefits.

     See anything remarkable about Simpkins story? I don't. He was involved in what was obviously a serious car crash. I don't have any problem believing that Simpkins received significant injuries. At this point probably no one, including Simpkins, knows how long it will take him to recover from his injuries or what residuals he may have. His return to work for a week before realizing he couldn't handle it is nothing rare. That sort of thing happens all the time. What's the problem with Simpkins filing a disability claim? 

     Why did the New York Post think it appropriate to try to shame Simpkins for filing a disability claim? They have a few reasons. Simpkins had tested positive for marijuana in the past and was suspended by the fire department for a week. He wasn't supposed to have been driving the van because he had been barred from driving fire department vehicles because of the positive marijuana test. However, there's no allegation that Simpkins was intoxicated at the time of the crash. Otherwise, Simpkins had had a conversation with a neighbor where he suggested that he wasn't all that happy with his fire department job. Also, Simpkins is black and has been involved in a lawsuit against the Fire Department alleging racial discrimination in hiring. That's it. 

     Marijuana may be legal in New York and other states within a few years at the rate things are going. There's no evidence that marijuana had anything to do with this accident. Simpkins wasn't supposed to have been driving that vehicle but that has nothing to do with how seriously he was injured. What difference does it make that Simpkins had some conversation with a neighbor suggesting that he thought he could do better than working at the Fire Department or that Simpkins had filed a discrimination lawsuit? The issue is the severity of Simpkins' injuries. Is the New York Post planning to investigate every city employee who files a disability claim to try to find something derogatory to publish? Will anyone filing a disability claim seem pure enough to the New York Post?