In 1981 the Social Security Subcommittee in the House of Representatives published a staff report with the title "Social Security Hearings and Appeals: Pending Problems and Proposed Solutions." This is not available online. The report began "The backlog of social security administrative law judge hearings is rapidly reaching crisis proportions."
Click on the attached page from that report showing the situation at that point and compare it to the current situation. If the situation in 1981 was a near crisis, how should the current situation be described?
The current Commissioner of Social Security tells us things are getting better because they are getting worse at a slower rate than they used to. His goal is to slowly, slowly work towards a situation in which it would take about a year to get a hearing. before an Administrative Law Judge. He believes that this would constitute normality, even though he was working at Social Security at the time this report was produced in 1981. I do not think many people believe that the Commissioner even has a plan to reduce the backlog at all, but his plan, even taken at face value, would take us to a place that would be much worse than what seemed intolerable in 1981.
The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase "defining deviancy down" to describe permissiveness in criminal justice. Commissioner Astrue is trying to define adequate service down at Social Security in a dramatic manner.
Barack Obama titled his second book, The Audacity Of Hope. I think we should take this title seriously. We should aspire to levels of service at the Social Security Administration comparable to what they were before Ronald Reagan was elected President. Anything less seems to me lacking in both audacity and hope.
We have a political situation that has not been present since at least 1964 -- a Democrat elected President with a strong mandate and a heavily Democratic Congress. Don't tell me that we cannot aspire to really do something about the mess at Social Security.
Click on the attached page from that report showing the situation at that point and compare it to the current situation. If the situation in 1981 was a near crisis, how should the current situation be described?
The current Commissioner of Social Security tells us things are getting better because they are getting worse at a slower rate than they used to. His goal is to slowly, slowly work towards a situation in which it would take about a year to get a hearing. before an Administrative Law Judge. He believes that this would constitute normality, even though he was working at Social Security at the time this report was produced in 1981. I do not think many people believe that the Commissioner even has a plan to reduce the backlog at all, but his plan, even taken at face value, would take us to a place that would be much worse than what seemed intolerable in 1981.
The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase "defining deviancy down" to describe permissiveness in criminal justice. Commissioner Astrue is trying to define adequate service down at Social Security in a dramatic manner.
Barack Obama titled his second book, The Audacity Of Hope. I think we should take this title seriously. We should aspire to levels of service at the Social Security Administration comparable to what they were before Ronald Reagan was elected President. Anything less seems to me lacking in both audacity and hope.
We have a political situation that has not been present since at least 1964 -- a Democrat elected President with a strong mandate and a heavily Democratic Congress. Don't tell me that we cannot aspire to really do something about the mess at Social Security.
