Gruber Passes

      Theresa Gruber, who was Deputy Commissioner for Hearings Operations, has passed away at the age of 54. No cause of death is listed.

     Gruber had been the subject of an article in the Washington Post on July 12 of last year. The article revealed that Gruber had displayed "significant anomalies" at work over the course of at least a year, including slurred speech in which she "appeared intoxicated,leaving meetings without notice, slouching in her chair and aggressive behavior.” Shortly thereafter, Gruber left her position.

These Aren't "The Good Old Days" At Social Security

      A former Social Security employee can't believe how bad service is at his old agency these days. By the way, I was around in what he supposes were the "good old day" and service wasn't all that great even then. It's deteriorated tremendously since then and is just unbelievably bad now.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Former Social Security Employee

      From the History Channel:

... Ruth Bader married Martin David Ginsburg, whom she had met at Cornell, shortly after receiving her bachelor’s degree in 1954. She had her first child, Jane, in 1955. At the time, she worked at a Social Security office in Lawton, Oklahoma, near where her husband, who was in the U.S. Army, had been posted. She had been rated for a GS-5 job, but when she mentioned she was pregnant, she was given a GS-2 job as a typist. It was her first experience with on-the-job discrimination because of her gender. While working in the Social Security office, she also became aware of how hard it was for Native Americans to receive Social Security. Both forms of discrimination stuck with her and helped form the basis of her future career. ...

Former Social Security OGC Attorney's Nomination To MSPB In Trouble

     From Government Executive:

The [Merit Systems Protection Board, MSPB] that determines federal employees’ challenges to adverse actions will likely to continue to be rendered impotent into next year, as the Senate appears unlikely to approve a slate of nominees to the panel before the legislative session ends.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee scheduled a vote on Wednesday for three individuals President Trump nominated to sit on the Merit Systems Protection Board, but ultimately the committee failed to advance the nominations. The senators present were deadlocked on the nomination of Andrew Maunz, the most controversial of the nominees, with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voting no by proxy. ...

Trump nominated Maunz to MSPB after he served as an attorney in the Social Security Administration’s general counsel office. His nomination troubled Democrats and some board observers, in part because his office was once found by a federal court to be “dysfunctional and under the management of supervisors whose management skills and performance were deficient in many respects, including unfavorable treatment of older women working in the office, compared with younger women and male attorneys." Maunz, representing SSA’s general counsel office in the case, launched a “vigorous attack” on an employee seeking redress for violations of the Civil Rights Act, according to the judge. The court ultimately ruled in the employee’s favor. ...

     There's no way to discipline Administrative Law Judges without a functioning MSPB.

Update: Since I first posted this, Government Executive has somewhat altered the article I quoted. See the link for the revised article.

Astrue Trashes Democratic Candidate At House Hearing

     Former Commissioner of Social Security, Michael Astrue, testified before some House subcommittee yesterday. The article I'm getting this from says it was the "Health Subcommittee" but the House Ways and Means Committee site doesn't show its Health Subcommittee having a hearing this week. Anyway, Astrue was there to trash Donald Berwick, who is running for governor of Massachusetts. Berwick used to be head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Astrue was blaming Berwick for the terrible rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

     The big problem with Astrue's criticism of Berwick is that Berwick left his position as head of CMS twenty-three months ago. Maybe the early planning for the Affordable Care Act rollout was lacking but most of the rollout preparation happened after Berwick left office. How much of the responsibility can one legitimately lay on Berwick? It's also clear from the description of Astrue's testimony that Astrue simply has a personal distaste for Berwick. I don't know whether Astrue's feelings are justified but they are irrelevant to the question of responsibility for the rollout of the Affordable Care Act or Berwick's qualifications for governor of Massachusetts.

Astrue Called "Hack" By Candidate For Governor

     From the Boston Globe:

[F]issures between Michael Astrue and Donald Berwick, a Democratic candidate for governor, opened in early 2011 when Berwick, then administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, summoned Astrue, then Social Security Administration commissioner, to his office.

Berwick wanted Social Security to help pay for a piece of the health care insurance marketplace, which was in the planning stages and due to go online almost three years later in October 2013.

Astrue said he felt bullied by Berwick and rebuffed him.

Now they have brought the fallout from their Washington dispute back to Cambridge, where, in new roles, they are locked in an increasingly fierce feud with implications for the 2014 campaign for governor.

Astrue, a Republican biotechnology chief executive and supporter of GOP gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker, said in news media appearances in recent weeks and in an interview with the Globe that Berwick’s weak leadership and “dawdling’’ during his tenure at CMS in 2010 and 2011 were the root cause of the embarrassing failures this month of Obama’s insurance marketplace.

Berwick, asked by the Globe to respond, vigorously denied Astrue’s accusations. The former Social Security commissioner, he said, is a “hack’’ and a “right-wing pundit’’ who is “just not credible.’’

“His comments are basically ridiculous,” said Berwick, who is seeking his party’s nomination for governor while serving as a fellow at the nonprofit health care think tank he founded in Cambridge. “He’s uninformed, and he’s politically motivated. I met with that guy probably twice in my life.” ...

Astrue's Role In Fighting Obamacare -- Also, Astrue's Own Federal Records Got Hacked

     You may have vaguely noticed that one aspect of the all out press by Republicans to prevent the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, from coming into effect is to insist that the data infrastructure for the health care exchanges is inadequate to protect our privacy. Former Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue appears to have had a role in this fight -- a role that began while he was Social Security Commissioner. He testified yesterday before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies of the House Committee on Homeland Security. I don't mean to suggest that Astrue has been simply behaving in a partisan way. His concerns seem to be based upon genuine problems in the data infrastructure, problems that may or may not be adequately addressed by the implementing agencies. These appear to me to be no more than the routine, predictable problems inherent in implementing a major new federal program but Congressional Republicans seem intent on puffing this into something much more.

     Interestingly, in his written statement to the Subcommittee, Astrue says, with no further explanation, that he "suffered through OPM’s [Office of Personnel Management's] inept response when my federal financial records were breached two years ago."

Astrue Takes Another Biotech Position

     About a month ago former Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue took a job as non-executive chairman of the board of Vivus, a biotechnology company. Astrue has now taken a position as interim CEO of InVivo Therapeutics, another biotechnology company. There is no sign that Astrue is resigning the Vivus position, which, being "non-executive", is presumably part time.

More On Astrue's New Job

     I don't want to get too deep in the weeds on former Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue's new job with VIVUS but it looks like he was hired as part of the resolution of a shareholder lawsuit. It looks like the shareholders won and VIVUS' old management lost. It also appears that the shareholder lawsuit came about because VIVUS hasn't been doing so well.

New Job For Astrue

     From a press release:

VIVUS, Inc. ... which recently began selling the obesity drug Qsymia (phentermine and topiramate extended-release) capsules CIV in the United States, today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Michael Astrue to serve as its Chairman and Anthony Zook to serve as its Chief Executive Officer ...

Mr. Astrue said, "We intend to move quickly on our four main goals: 1) expand use of Qsymia through targeted patient and physician education; 2) find the right partner for Qsymia; 3) quickly create a pathway for approval in Europe; and 4) eliminate expenses that are not essential to expanding use of Qsymia....

     Astrue had worked in the biotechnology field before becoming Commissioner of Social Security.

A Spring Haiku

     Former Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue submitted the following haiku via twitter to an NPR show that was celebrating National Poetry Month:

Early April. 

Winter drums cold tunes. 

The old word pile sheds its slush. 

What burns is unseen.

A "Ringing Call For Incrementalism"

     Some excerpts from an address by former Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue at a Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB) forum on March 8: 

I want to thank the SSAB for inviting me back to Washington.It has involved some sacrifice for me -- I’m going to miss the Early Bird Special this afternoon ... but I should be back in Boston for bingo tonight. ... 

Unlike in the past, we should not expect that this Congress will do a quiet and efficient reallocation of the Trust Funds to cover the OASDI [Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance] deficit. We do not have a sufficient number of the Daniel Patrick Moynihans & Bob Doles, the Bill Archers & Barbara Kennellys, enough leaders to lead a civil, informed debate on a hard topic . What we must try to do now to is start a process of education and dialogue that could let us avoid another inflamed, last-minute public spectacle, like the fiscal cliffs and sequestration, driven by what Stephen Colbert calls truthiness rather than actual truth....

[I]n order to pay for sexier items, Congress had drained the SSA [Social Security Administration] administrative budget so badly over two decades that the inevitable occurred — backlogs increased not only for hearings, but also for the continuing disability reviews that are the agency’s main weapon against improper payments. Having said that, the level of actual fraud is still extremely low, probably some fraction of one percent of the people receiving benefits. C ritics of the agency have resorted to distoring data that relates to the perfection of documentation — not fraud, not even improper payments — in order to support overheated claims of massive fraud....

The number of people on the rolls is rising substantially, but that rise is a predictable consequence of the baby boomers reaching their disability -prone years, not the product of new rules or management. ...

By contracting with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to supplement the existing O*Net system, the agency has shaved tens of millions of dollars off the cost of replacing the DoT. It may be doable for an additional cost of 10-20 million dollars and periodic costs for updating ... 

I am very concerned , though, about the possibility of another well-packaged but ill- considered reform initiative driven by the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] institutional views, which relies on the fallacy that we can solve problems created by bureaucracy and complexity with ever-more complex bureaucracy and complexity. Like Ahab chasing Moby Dick, they reject all the evidence and experience to date and insist that they can harpoon a system that will be so much more accurate up-front that Congress will be impressed by the back-end savings and fund the added bureaucracy. 

This whale hunt failed with the Clinton Administration’s prototype initiative, and it failed more miserably with the Bush Administration’s DSI initiative. In fact, DSI almost brought the agency to its knees...

OMB should drop its harpoon, let that imaginary whale swim into the mist, and focus its attention on actions that could actually produce real program savings : two-year rather than one - year appropriations cycles; stronger support by the Appropriation Committees for the IT [Information Technology] carry-over fund; and CDR [Continuing Disability Review] funding formulas that would allow CBO [Congressional Budget Office] to score the program savings in a way that would shelter associated administrative costs. ...

I submit to you that the academics, the policy experts, and the advocates of all stripes have not demonstrated an overarching issue in the system that could be the foundation for sweeping reform. Most of the time Social Security disability does exactly what the American people want it to do, which is to provide a safety net for people whose medical problems dictate  that they legitimately cannot work for a year or more. I can tell you better than almost anyone that the system is far from perfect, but the problems result from many very different failings throughout a highly complex system, not one or two overarching issues. In my opinion, there is no magic bullet solution, only scores of detailed answers to very specific problems. ...

My ringing call for incrementalism is hardly sexy, but if you care about supplying a compassionate but cost-effective safety net for the disabled, you will need to have a laundry list of concrete reforms to offer Congress in the next year or so....

Let me “help” you with this list. ...

[B]udgeteers in state agencies have figured out that they can shift their program costs to the administrative budget of SSA by requiring a decision on disability from SSA before allowing people to collect benefits from TANF [Temporary Assistance to Needy Families] or some other state-funded program. .... It is time that Congress closed this loophole and made it explicitly illegal to condition receipt of any benefit upon an SSA disability determination if that benefit is partially subsidized by the federal government....

Another similar area for action is concurrent application for both unemployment and disability....

Congress can also help claimants help themselves by authorizing SSA to direct the state agencies to develop comprehensive, up-to-date websites in each state that include: 1) sources of assistance for free pharmaceuticals; 2) locations of DOL [Department of Labor] one -stop offices; 3) information about services available from the state vocational rehabilitation agency; 4) disease groups that offer supportive services; and 5) a primer about looking for work on the Internet and information about data bases that list available jobs, both locally and nationally.  ...

Congress also needs to give the Commissioner the mandate to begin over the next five years an orderly elimination of the reconsideration step that occurs in most, but not all, states ...

[A]bout half of the [hearing] backlog reduction came from more resources and about half came from increased productivity....

SSA accomplished much of this progress over the intransigent resistance of the Office of Personnel Management [OPM[ They steadfastly refused to reopen the [Administrative Law Judge hiring] list for over ten years — imagine what your hiring would look like if you could only hire off a list that was ten years old! I sat in one meeting where a senior OPM official told John Berry and me that there was no reason to consider new applicants until SSA hired from the last person left on the list. What does that statement say about OPM’s commitment to quality in public service? What makes it worse is that OPM is spending a lot of trust fund money doing very little.  ...

I believe the ALJ position is the only job left in the civil service that requires a test, and it is a test designed by people who have no understanding of the administrative process and no desire to learn. It has become a budget game to pad the OPM budget at the expense of the trust finds. For instance, not long before I left I learned third-hand that trust fund money is going to develop a new on-line testannounced this week will be administered by little cartoon figures on the screen. Little cartoon figures... 

Where are the oversight committees on this critical function? OPM’s work is excruciatingly slow, outrageously expensive, and of unacceptably poor quality —and it has been so since at least the Clinton Administration. OPM damages SSA’s efforts to supply timely, high-quality justice, and it is time for Congress to move OPM’s responsibilities in this area to a federal agency that understands administrative law — either the Department of Justice or the Administrative Conference of the United States. ... 

Congress needs to streamline its statutes on return to work. Congress has tended to have an unrealistic view as to how many recipients can return to work. Somewhere around 60% of the people on the rolls have no realistic expectation of returning to work — they have fatal diseases, like ALS or Huntington’s, that are certain to continue debilitating the person until he or she dies a premature death. Some people have horrific brain damage from car accidents or military service. For many of the 40% for whom a return to work would be difficult but perhaps possible at some point, the layers of new incredibly complex statutes to encourage work have become counter-productive....

When Congress gets serious about addressing the 2016 insolvency of the trust funds, there will be bad ideas floating around too. The one that has the most currency baffles me, which is another try at making hearings adversarial. I was stunned when I first answered questions before Congress on this proposal because none of its proponents knew that the agency had piloted this proposal in the 1980’s and that it failed miserably. It was expensive — probably several hundred million dollars to implement fully in today’s dollars — and it made no difference in outcomes while simultaneously undermining public confidence in the agency.  ...

NPR Interview With Astrue

     Forner Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue gave an interview to Michel Martin, an NPR reporter, that was aired yesterday. Here are a couple of excerpts (emphasis added):

MARTIN: You've only recently stepped down from the Social Security Administration. Is there anything that you miss? Or is there anything you particularly don't miss now that you've left?
ASTRUE: Well, I think what I miss the most are the people of the agency. Unlike other government agencies, almost everybody at Social Security is a lifer. And they're very talented, they're very dedicated. And so when you leave you know that you're not going to have, you know, that experience again. And that's sad.
MARTIN: Anything you particularly don't miss?
ASTRUE: Sure. I mean, I don't miss having everything I say being cleared by a 28-year-old at OMB [Office of Management and Budget, part of the White House]. And I'm not critical of OMB for that. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I think the president needs to have some consistency of message. But it does get very frustrating. And particularly when you're trying to say something important and it's neutered down to a platitude. I always found it difficult to go out and just voice the platitudes.
So, you know, getting my First Amendment rights back and being able to say what I think, you know, you don't miss that until you've given it up. And I guess, you know, when you've given it up you appreciate it more when you get it back. So. ...
MARTIN: Secret is not quite right, right? I mean, because you're a published poet, but you kept your worlds very separate.
ASTRUE: I kept my worlds very separate and I think when I first started thinking about trying to publish poetry I realized that the business and government worlds that I was functioning in, in a fairly high level, didn't really respect people that engaged in the arts. And likewise, in artistic communities, people that have substantial jobs outside those artistic communities tend to be looked at with suspicion.
And so I explained it to one of my friends, the great local poet XJ Kennedy, is I didn't want to be a novelty act. You know, I wanted to sort of stand, particularly in the literary world, on my own merits. And I was pretty comfortable keeping it separate and was rather annoyed in 2010 when I was first outed in the trade press for Social Security.
And then later there was a very flattering article in First Things that went into a lot more detail, which made me feel a little better about it because the article was so nice. But I think down deep I still wish that I'd been able to keep my life separate ...

     There was no way the White House could force Astrue to submit to OMB editing of his remarks. The White House couldn't fire him. I wonder what carrot and/or stick persuaded Astrue to consent to this.

Mr. True On Cavuto

     Michael Astrue appeared on Neil Cavuto's show on Fox Business News yesterday. Here are some things I gleaned from this appearance:

• If you thought that the Fox News attitude wouldn't carry over to Fox Business News, you'd be wrong. Cavuto had all the Fox News talking points on Social Security down pat. He could not refer to any Democratic idea without sneering.
• Cavuto seemed incapable of pronouncing Astrue's surname. A couple of times he seemed to refer to Astrue as Mr. True. Eventually, he just referred to him as Michael.
• Astrue wanted to talk about the serious problems affecting the Social Security disability trust fund.
• Astrue was promoting a Simpson-Bowles Commission to deal with Social Security. He wanted a requirement that there must be a vote on the floor of each House of Congress on this Commission's recommendations.
• Astrue thought it was a "trendy but facile" idea to remove the cap on earnings covered by the FICA tax because this would put a "crippling burden on the younger generation" and it would make it very difficult to operate a small business.
• Astrue believes that raising the retirement age "has to be on the table."
• Astrue made a dig at President Obama by noting that George W. Bush had nominated him four months before his predecessor's term had ended while, in Astrue's words, Obama was only in the "early stages" of selecting a new Commissioner.
• Astrue criticized an unnamed candidate or candidates for the job of Social Security Commissioner whom he characterized as being from the "very far left" because they denied that Social Security had any serious funding problem and because they believed that only minor tweaks would be required. He thought that the Social Security Commissioner should stay out of the debate and be an operational manager.

     I don't understand why Astrue would want to promote a Simpson-Bowles Commission to deal with Social Security. Simpson-Bowles was a disaster. That Commission never agreed to any recommendation. Their work didn't move Congress or the American people any closer to a resolution of our budget problems. There's no reason to believe such a commission to deal with Social Security would be any less of a failure. The reason is simple. People like Astrue insist that raising the retirement age has to be on the table but also insist that tax increases have to be off the table. How does that position get one to an agreement? How would lifting the FICA cap put a crippling burden on younger people? The vast majority of younger people would be unaffected by such a change. How would raising the FICA cap make it difficult to operate a small business? Few small businesses have any employees who have earnings above the FICA cap. If Astrue really wants to move the U.S in the direction of some grand bargain on Social Security, he has to say that increasing taxes must be on the table along with benefit cuts but if he says this he won't be appearing on Fox Business News again and he'll be ostracized by his fellow Republicans so he can't say that.

     I agree with Astrue that the next Social Security Commissioner should stay out of the Social Security funding debate and should be an operational manager. Nancy Altman is undoubtedly a fine person with great qualifications but those qualifications don't match up with the job description for the position of Social Security Commissioner. However, I don't think it's accurate or helpful to characterize Altman as being from the "very far left." To my mind, Altman is a political realist. Her position is that any attempt at this time to deal with Social Security's financing difficulties is doomed. Anything that Republicans would agree to would rely almost exclusively on benefit cuts. There's no point in agreeing to this sort of deal or even agreeing to talk about it. Medium and long term demographics strongly favor the Democrats. Wait a bit and this problem can be resolved on Democratic terms. Is that a "very far left" position or just political realism?

Did You Know?

     There is a Social Security Alumni Association. It has an office at Social Security headquarters in Baltimore.

Llewellyn Washington Woolford Sr. Passes

     From the Baltimore Sun:

Llewellyn Washington Woolford Sr., a retired Social Security Administration attorney who was a past Howard County Human Relations Commission chairman, died of stroke complications Feb. 22 at his Columbia home. He was 81. ...

In 1956, he was sworn in as a lawyer in Annapolis. He then formed a law firm, Howard, Woolford and Leeds, on Pleasant Street.

In 1965, Mr. Woolford became an early African-American attorney in the Social Security Administration's Office of the General Counsel. He served for nearly 30 years, family members said.

Former Social Security Commissioner Hardy Still Active

From a press release:

Dorcas R. Hardy, former Commissioner of Social Security, has been named Chair of the National Advisory Board for Early Bird Alert Inc. (EBA), the company dedicated to improving health and connectivity for seniors and the chronically ill, it was announced today.

Ms. Hardy, who served under President Ronald Reagan and is president of DRHardy & Associates, a public policy firm in Washington, D.C., will lead experts in the fields of aging and disability services to advise EBA in the development and implementation of EasyConnect™, its new in-home communications device and service designed to help seniors and patients with chronic medical conditions take better care of their health. 

What Ever Happened To Gordon Sherman?

I had recently posted a link to a news article about Social Security's new Regional Commissioner for the Atlanta region. That made me wonder what happened to one of his predecessors, Gordon Sherman. Sherman served as Atlanta Regional Commissioner for 23 years before retiring in 1999.

Sherman is now on the board of directors of One Georgia Bank. Their website indicates that he:

... is a principal of Lamon & Sherman Consulting, LLC, an investment and income replacement consulting firm and a director of Government Benefits and Information Services, Inc. Other capacities in which he presently serves include director of Lenbrook Foundation, Inc., a continuing care retirement community in Atlanta; director of the Auburn University Foundation; and a fellow in the National Academy of Public Administration.

Social Security Bulletin Released

The Social Security Administration has released a new issue of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication. This issue includes a brief remembrance of the late Robert J. Myers.

NY Times On Robert Myers Passing

The New York Times has a nice obituary on the late Robert Myers. He was one of the most important architects of Social Security in America. A quote from Myers: “To me, the translation of the word ‘privatization’ is ‘destroyed.’ ”