Senator Kohl Introduces Bill To Stop Illegal Garnishment

From the Small Business Times of Wisconsin:

U.S. Senators Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) have introduced the Illegal Garnishment Prevention Act, a bill that would prevent the U.S. Department of Treasury from promoting the use of direct deposit for Social Security beneficiaries until they put a stop to the illegal garnishment of government benefits from the bank accounts of private citizens.

With increasing frequency, financial institutions are garnishing or freezing funds on behalf of creditors from bank accounts into which Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Veterans benefits are electronically deposited, despite clear protections in federal law against the garnishment of such benefits, Kohl said.

Senator Clinton On Backlogs

A press release from Senator Clinton's office:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today joined Congressman Brian Higgins in calling on the Social Security Administration (SSA) to answer questions regarding excessive delays in appeal hearings that have been caused by a lack of Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) who are charged with hearing those cases. In a letter sent today to SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue, Senator Clinton expressed her concerns regarding the excessive delays that have been reported in the Buffalo Hearing Office, which affects Social Security recipients in Erie, Chautauqua, Niagara, Genesee, Ontario, Monroe, and Cattaraugus counties. She also called for an explanation of how the agency determines the allocation of ALJs throughout their offices. Congressman Higgins brought this matter to the forefront on Monday when he singled out the delays affecting the Western New York region, and called for additional ALJs to be assigned to the Buffalo Hearing Office.

“It is unacceptable that people in Western New York are forced to wait almost two years before they can expect the SSA to hear their appeals,” said Senator Clinton. “People can’t be expected to put their lives on hold indefinitely. If the SSA is aware that certain offices have a track record of experiencing excessive delays, the agency should take a thorough look at how they are allocating the judges charged with hearing those cases.”

“This is a matter of basic human dignity,” Higgins said. “No one should have their life put on hold for years to find out whether they will receive social security disability benefits, but this has become the frustrating reality for thousands of Western New Yorkers. I thank Senator Clinton for partnering with me to advocate for getting these people the service they deserve.”

Monthly SSI Stats

The Social Security Administration has released its monthly statistical package for the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program.

Treasury Won't Give Up On Privatization

No else one is paying attention any more, so maybe I shouldn't, but the Department of the Treasury has released its Issue Brief No. 4 promoting privatization of Social Security. The paper aspires to an above the fray tone, basically by assuming that everyone agrees that we should privatize Social Security and that the only dispute is on how to do it. That is a ridiculous assumption, of course. Here is a small excerpt:

The institutional reforms considered in this issue brief, including several variants of personal accounts, are discussed solely in terms of the contribution they make to ensuring that attempts to pre-fund Social Security actually result in an accumulation of resources to fund future benefits. Accordingly, elements of these reforms that do not directly bear on the question of pre-funding—for example, the inheritability of personal accounts—are not discussed. In addition, it should be emphasized at the outset that none of the mechanisms for pre-funding considered here involve the privatization of any function of Social Security.

Yeah, right. Personal accounts and privatization are two completely separate things. Why would anyone think they were the same thing?

Advance Notice On Cardiovascular Disorders Listings

As mentioned yesterday, the Social Security Administration has published advance notice that it is considering changes in its listings for cardiovascular impairments. The agency is not giving an idea of what it is considering, only asking what the public thinks should be in the new regulations.

Council Bluffs Man Charged With Fraud

I love the name of this newspaper. From the Daily Nonpareil of Council Bluffs, Iowa:

Council Bluffs police officers served an arrest warrant on John B. Wilcox, 57, for first-degree theft Thursday. Reports indicated a special agent with the Social Security Administration told Council Bluffs police Wilcox received $10,867.50 in Social Security aid between January and June 2007.

Reports stated the money was meant for Wilcox because of a disability, but the report alleged he continued to work.

SSA Loses Arbitration On Telework

From the Federal Times:

An arbitrator has ordered the Social Security Administration to reverse its rollback of a telework program for some employees and to bargain with the employees’ union over any changes it wants to make.

The agency must decide by April 25 whether to appeal the ruling.

The order affects about 100 senior case technicians in SSA’s Boston region who are responsible for preparing disability claims cases for review by administrative law judges. But the case is being watched by about 2,000 senior case technicians across the country, many of whom complain that they too have been provided less freedom to work at home, said Jim Marshall, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 215.

For years, senior case technicians were allowed under a collective bargaining agreement to take their paper files home and work from there at least one day a week. But two years ago, the agency’s Office of Disability Adjudication and Review began using electronic files instead of paper files. By spring 2007, employees were complaining the transition to digital files meant they were allowed to work at home only once a month or less. ...

Marshall and Andy Krall, vice president of Local 1164, said they expect SSA to appeal the decision.

Waiting In Buffalo

From WGRZ:

The Social Security Administration's Buffalo office has a lot of cases to process. And the delays in getting those cases resolved has raised a lot of questions.

According to the SSA it takes 669 days, or nearly two years, for the average Western New Yorker to have their case heard and processed. Also, each Administrative Law Judge in Buffalo has on average 895 cases pending.

"It's unacceptable," said Congressman Brian Higgins (D) (Buffalo). "People in this community are hurting. When they file a claim, they're not looking for benefits two years from now, they're looking for benefits right away."

Higgins wants to know why ten new administrative law judges have been added to New York in 2008, and none of those ten have been assigned to Buffalo. "We need more administrative law judges to get these claims processed in an expeditious way," he said.

Note that the Congressman is asking a question that has not been asked by Congressmen in the past. How does Social Security decide which hearing offices to assign new Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) to. From what I have seen, the assignment of new ALJs seems to have little to do with need. There are legitimate questions to ask.

Lining Up Before Dawn In Las Vegas

This could be something the Ways and Means Committee will ask Commissioner Astrue about when he testifies. From the Las Vegas Sun:

The Las Vegas Valley’s Social Security Card Center, already among the nation’s busiest, will be even more of a headache for employees and customers if the federal government makes the agency enforce immigration laws, the head of the agency’s field worker union says.

Witold Skwierczynski says the Las Vegas office is a poster child for why the Homeland Security Department’s push to clamp down on undocumented workers by chasing down false Social Security numbers won’t work. ...

[I]f the new rules are adopted, Skwierczynski says, Social Security offices will be swamped, making it more difficult for other customers to get services. And Las Vegas, which until recently had customers waiting three hours in the lobby, will be among the hardest hit.

The problem is that the Social Security Administration’s database has serious problems. A 2006 inspector general’s report uncovered about 17.8 million discrepancies between names and numbers among 435 million records. More than 70 percent of those “no matches,” or nearly 13 million people, involved native-born U.S. citizens, including people who got married and changed their last names or whose two last names were switched by mistake.

So if the federal government suddenly required about 800,000 employers nationwide to check the Social Security Administration’s database, more of those cases would crop up. And the only place to fix those mistakes is at one of the agency’s offices — like the one at 1250 S. Buffalo Drive.

A long line forms outside the building most mornings about two hours before the doors open at 8:45.

The valley’s card office was second nationwide for visitors among all Social Security offices last month, with 12,931 customers, said Marjorie Johnson, district manager. The office has served more than 45,000 customers since January — with only 15 employees to help them.

First in line on a recent morning were a pair of friends who shivered in an uncharacteristic April chill. Marji Puype and Mike Chiou wanted to change the names on their cards — Puype because she is no longer married and Chiou because he recently became a citizen and, well, Mike is easier to pronounce than his real name.

The two showed up at 7 a.m. because they had been at the office a year ago for other business and saw four-hour waits during the afternoon.

Since then, Johnson said, another employee has been hired, with three more on the way. The office also became the first in the nation to use mandatory overtime for customer service. Since January, workers have stayed after the office closes at 4 p.m. to help customers still waiting in the lobby. So far, that has cost $14,367. But wait times are down to 30 minutes, Johnson said.

With hiring more, expanding the office and paying the overtime, things were looking up — after several years of seeing a lot of frustrated faces out in the lobby, she said.

But if the Homeland Security rule becomes reality, “we would have to come up with a new system,” Johnson said, adding: “I’m not sure how.”

At least one state already is dealing with the issue: Arizona, where a new state law requires employers to check workers’ records against the Social Security Administration’s database. Leslie Walker, spokeswoman for the agency, said there are no figures yet on how the law has affected caseloads at Phoenix’s two card offices. But she said field workers have noted that many who come in to clear up mistakes are recently naturalized citizens or have two surnames that have been switched. Both types of cases would be common in the Hispanic community here.

Full Ways And Means Committee Hearing On Social Security Backlog

I had openly wondered when we would get a hearing of the Social Security Subcommittee at which Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue would testify. It has been almost a year since he has testified before the Social Security Subcommittee, which is part of the Ways and Means Committee in the House of Representatives.

A hearing has finally been scheduled for April 23 at 10:00, but it is not before the Social Security Subcommittee, but before the whole Ways and Means Committee, raising this to a much higher level of visibility! Although no witness list has been issued, I think that we can presume that Commissioner Astrue will be testifying. The focus of this hearing goes well beyond the hearing backlogs. Staffing levels and adequacy of public service throughout the agency are the issue.

Here is an excerpt from the press release on the hearing:

In recent years, SSA’s workload has grown significantly due to the aging of the population and new responsibilities stemming from Medicare and homeland security legislation. Despite a productivity increase of more than 15 percent since 2001, the administrative funding SSA has received has been well below the level needed to keep up with this growing workload. From Fiscal Year (FY) 1998 through FY 2007, SSA received a cumulative total of $1.3 billion less than was requested by the President, and $4.6 billion less than the Commissioner’s own budget for the agency.

As a result, by the end of calendar year 2007, SSA staffing had dropped to almost the level in 1972 – before the start of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program – even though SSA’s beneficiary population has nearly doubled since that time.

Due to the combination of rising claims as the baby boom generation ages and prolonged underfunding, Social Security and SSI disability claims backlogs have reached unprecedented levels. More than 1.3 million applicants for disability benefits are currently awaiting a decision on their claim, and total waiting times often extend into years. In addition, as SSA tries to address the backlog crisis, the agency is forced to divert its limited resources away from its day-to-day operations in field offices and payment processing centers in order to try to manage the disability backlog. The result is an increase in long lines, delays, busy signals, and unanswered telephones, and growing concern about closures and consolidations of local field offices. Resource shortages have also forced the agency to cut back on program integrity activities, even though such activities have been demonstrated to generate considerable savings to the Trust Fund.

Under the President’s FY 2009 proposed budget, the agency would be able to make modest progress toward addressing the disability claims backlog, but service in the field would continue to decline. Moreover, proposals to assign additional workloads to SSA, such as expanding SSA’s role in verifying the work-authorization status of employees, would, if enacted and not funded in full each year, force SSA to shift scarce resources away from its core functions to carry out these new workloads.

In announcing the hearing, Chairman Rangel said, “We are alarmed by the deterioration in service to our constituents and the suffering of those who must wait years to receive benefits they desperately need. Despite its well-earned reputation for being a can-do agency, the Social Security Administration simply cannot do its job without adequate funding. We have been working on a bipartisan basis to address this problem, and will continue to do so until the disability claims backlog is eliminated and SSA’s capacity to provide high quality service to the public is restored.”