House Appropriations Committee Markup Begins

The House Appropriations Committee has begun marking up the FY (fiscal year) 2010 appropriations bill covering Social Security. This markup is in subcommittee. The Chairman of the Committee, David Obey, has released a statement giving information about the chairman's mark, that is the starting point for the markup. Here is what it says about Social Security:

...[T]his bill sustains critical support for America’s most vulnerable children, families, and seniors. These investments include: ... $11.4 billion for the Social Security Administration, which provides the single largest dollar increase in the bill and the request – to help the agency process a rising number of retirement and disability claims, make progress in reducing the backlog of disability hearings, and improve services to the public.

The figure for Social Security is $200 million less than what President Obama had asked for. However, I would note that there are rumbles about a possible second economic stimulus bill. If such a bill happens, it will almost certainly include some additional money for Social Security.

Update: Chairman Obey's statement misled me. A more detailed summary of the Chairman's mark shows it to be the same as the President's proposed budget.

Fox News Criticizes Social Security Training Conference

Update: I do not want to claim credit or blame for this story, but you may recall that I had earlier expressed concern about expenditures for conferences such as this.

No Match Rule Being Rescinded

From the Washington Post:

President Obama will abandon a controversial immigration crackdown, sought by his predecessor, to pressure U.S. companies to fire 9 million workers with suspect Social Security numbers, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced yesterday.

Instead, Obama will mandate that federal contractors confirm the identities of 4 million workers against federal databases beginning in September ...

Compassionate Allowance Hearing

From today's Federal Register:

We will hold a hearing on July 29, 2009, to obtain information about possible methods of identifying adults with Early-Onset Alzheimer's Disease and related dementias and the advisability of implementing compassionate allowances for people with these diseases.

DATES: This hearing will be held on July 29, 2009, between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m., Central Daylight Time (CDT), in Chicago, IL. The hearing will be held at the Drake Hotel, 140 East Walton Place, Chicago, IL 60611. While the public is welcome to attend the hearing, only invited witnesses will present testimony.

You may also watch the proceedings live via Webcast beginning at 9 a.m. CDT. You may access the Webcast line for the hearing on the Social Security Administration Web site at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/compassionate_allowances/hearings0709.htm.

First $5,917 Attorney Fee Check

Today my firm received its first fee computed under the new $6,000 cap on fees under the fee agreement process. This higher cap went into effect on June 22. The fee came to $5,917 after the user fee.

It has become not uncommon in the last two or three months for us to receive a fee this quickly after a favorable decision. The payment centers have been doing a great job in getting claimants -- and their attorneys -- paid quickly after favorable decisions in Title II cases. Backlogs remain, however, in doing windfall offset computations and the reconsideration units at the payment centers are a disaster area.

Off Topic: GS-13s Be Proud, Be Very Proud

According to Alyssa Rosenberg at Fedblog, Neil Armstrong was a GS-13 when he walked on the moon.

House Appropriations Committee Schedules Markup

The House Appropriations Committee has scheduled a markup session for the FY (fiscal year) 2010 Labor-HHS Appropriations bill for July 10 at 9:00. The Labor-HHS appropriations bill includes Social Security.

The next step will be for the Chairman of the Committee, David Obey, to release the "Chairman's Mark" that will be the starting point for the markup session.

SSN Security Threat

From the Washington Post:

Researchers have found that it is possible to guess many -- if not all -- of the nine digits in an individual's Social Security number using publicly available information, a finding they say compromises the security of one of the most widely used consumer identifiers in the United States. ...

"For reasons unrelated to this report, the agency has been developing a system to randomly assign SSNs," which should make it more difficult to discover numbers in the future, Mark Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration, said by e-mail. ...

CMU researchers Acquisti and Ph.D student Ralph Gross theorized that they could use the Death Master File along with publicly available birth information to predict narrow ranges of values wherein individual SSNs were likely to fall. The two tested their hunch using the Death Master File of people who died between 1972 and 2003, and found that on the first try they could correctly guess the first five digits of the SSN for 44 percent of deceased people who were born after 1988, and for 7 percent of those born between 1973 and 1988. ...

They were able to identify all nine digits for 8.5 percent of people born after 1988 in fewer than 1,000 attempts. For people born recently in smaller states, researchers sometimes needed just 10 or fewer attempts to predict all nine digits.

Press Release On Exempting DDS Employees From State Furloughs

A press release from Social Security:

Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security, expressed his appreciation that Vice President Joseph R. Biden also has urged Governor Edward G. Rendell, Chairman of the National Governor's Association, to exempt federally-funded state Disability Determination Service (DDS) employees from any furloughs, hiring restrictions, and other budget cuts. Earlier this year, Commissioner Astrue wrote his own letter to Gov. Rendell expressing his grave concerns that including DDSs in state-wide reductions saves no money and, in fact, hurts the most vulnerable residents.

"I thank the Vice President for helping us make the case to Governors across the country," Commissioner Astrue said. "Social Security funds 100 percent of DDS employees’ salaries as well as overhead -- that's about $2 billion nationwide this year. These funds cannot be used by the states for any other purpose, so states do not save money by cutting employees in DDSs – they only slow getting benefits to the disabled, which runs counter to what the President and the Congress were trying to do with the $500 million in the Recovery Act dedicated to accelerating disability decisions. Nevertheless, many governors are imposing across-the-board hiring freezes or furloughs that also affect DDS employees. For the good of the country, this has to end.”

To read the Vice President's letter, click here.

NCSSMA Meeting Notes

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has posted the minutes of its May 27 quarterly telephone conference meeting. This meeting involved representatives from Social Security's Office of Automation Support (OAS). The minutes are in a somewhat confusing question and answer format. They are probably of much more significance to Social Security field office personnel than to someone like myself who is outside the agency representing claimants.