Don't Want To Seem Impatient But When Next Month?

From: ^Commissioner Broadcast
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 3:20 PM
Subject: COMMISSIONER'S BROADCAST--01/28/13

A Message To All SSA And DDS Employees

Subject:  Massachusetts

I wanted you to hear from me that I will be submitting my resignation to President Obama next month.

I will have more to say as we get closer to my last day, but I consider it a great privilege to have led this remarkable agency for six years.  I am very proud of all that we have accomplished in that time to reduce backlogs, improve service, adopt efficient cutting-edge technology, replace fraying infrastructure, and prepare our next generation of leaders for the challenges to come.

Laura, Maggie, and I started moving our summer clothes and books back to Massachusetts over the holidays and we expect to be back home soon.  I will be starting jury duty in Middlesex County shortly after I leave, but otherwise have not made plans.  I am still passionate about public service, teaching, literature, and curing diseases, and hope to find new ways to continue pursuing those interests.

I feel truly blessed.  I am more grateful than I can convey for the skill and dedication of the hundreds of civil servants and political appointees—Republican and Democratic—who have worked closely with me over the past six years.  I have witnessed the same expertise, compassion, and commitment to excellence in my travels outside of our Woodlawn headquarters.

I am confident that you will give Carolyn Colvin and future Commissioners the enthusiastic support that you have always given me. I will miss you and will always be rooting for you.

Thank you.

Michael J. Astrue

Commissioner 

     And here's a link to a press release that talks about Astrue's impending departure from Social Security. This gives information about accomplishments that Commissioner Astrue takes pride in, such as:

• He has served longer than any Republican Commissioner and longer than any Commissioners except Arthur J. Altmeyer (1940-46) and Robert M. Ball (1962-73).
• Adopted fast-track procedures for the 6% of the disability claimants who are most obviously disabled;
• Reduced the time to a disability hearing from about 540 days to about 360 days in an era of rapidly rising claims and dwindling budgets;
• Replaced the fraying data center with a state-of-the-art facility due to open next year and built a second co-processing center that can continue operations in the event of a disaster;
• Developed a suite of electronic services that are rated the best in government;
• Developed the federal government’s first interactive suite of Spanish services;
• Updated most of the agency’s medical listings and entered into a partnership with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to replace the antiquated vocational tool used for disability determinations;
• Created the online Retirement Estimator, which allows Americans to better plan for retirement by obtaining personalized information about their projected retirement payments;
• Improved the quality of disability decision-making through better staffing, training, and software support; and
• Spearheaded “plain language” efforts for the annual reports on the financial status of the Medicare and Social Security programs.

" A Dearth Of Staff To Perform Checks"

     From Yahoo News:

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey says a pilot program designed to prevent criminals from becoming managers of a person's Social Security benefits has screened out dozens of people convicted of fraud and violence.

The Pennsylvania Democrat now wants the Social Security Administration to expand and improve the initiative, which was launched last summer in five states and Washington, D.C., after a convicted killer on parole in Philadelphia allegedly kept several mentally disabled people captive while cashing their benefits checks. ...

Under the program, Social Security offices in the Philadelphia region instituted a new policy that barred people convicted of certain crimes — including sex offenses, theft, forgery and abuse — from serving as payees. Applicants were asked specific questions about past criminal behavior and agency employees used an in-house database to cross-check convictions.

Through Jan. 23, 100 people were rejected from becoming payees, Casey said. ...

Social Security Administration spokesman Mark Hinkle has previously said key stumbling blocks to more vigorous screening are the agency's lack of access to government databases with criminal background information and a dearth of staff to perform checks on each applicant.

ALJ Attitudes About Unemployment Benefits And Workers Compensation May Be Bias

     From Social Security Ruling 13-1p to be published in the Federal Register tomorrow: "Possible examples of allegations that the Appeals Council will refer to the Division of Quality Service include, 'the ALJ is biased against claimants who receive workers compensation benefits or unemployment benefits' and 'the ALJ shows prejudice toward women'.”

Sequestration Threat Having An Effect

     From the Washington Post (emphasis added):

The drastic $85 billion in automatic spending cuts Congress approved in hopes of heading off another deficit showdown may or may not occur, but federal agencies say the threat has been disrupting government for months as officials take costly and inefficient steps to prepare. ... 

Office of Management and Budget spokesman Steven Posner declined to comment on the planning costs. But Jeffrey Zients, the OMB’s acting budget director, warned lawmakers last summer that any planning “would necessarily divert scarce resources” from other important missions and priorities, “to say nothing of the disruptive effects this exercise would have” on federal workers and contractors. Any preparations “could inadvertently trigger some of the negative effects of sequestration even if sequestration never happens,” he said. ...

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Sunday that he thinks the cuts are inevitable ...

Some federal projects meant to improve public services have been stopped outright, and others have been abruptly delayed. The concern is that investing money now might be risky if it’s not there in two months. 

Thousands of backlogged cases at the Social Security office in Rochester, N.Y., will remain that way after a long-awaited plan to double the number of judges handling hearings and appeals was put on hold ...

“They came right out and told us, ‘We’d love to do it, but we don’t know if we’re going to have the money,’ ” employee Timothy Flavin recalled of the September decision.

Intellectual Disability Instead Of Mental Retardation

     From a notice in today's Federal Register:

We propose to replace the term ``mental retardation'' with ``intellectual disability'' in our Listing of Impairments (listings) that we use to evaluate claims involving mental disorders in adults and children under titles II and XVI of the Social Security Act (Act) and in other appropriate sections of our rules. This change would reflect the widespread adoption of the term ``intellectual disability'' by Congress, government agencies, and various public and private organizations.

Disability Claims Decline

From the Wall Street Journal:

Tone-Deafness

     From Paul Krugman, writing for the New York Times:

If you want to understand the trouble Republicans are in, one good place to start is with the obsession the right has lately developed with the rising disability rolls. The growing number of Americans receiving disability payments has, for many on the right, become a symbol of our economic and moral decay; we’re becoming a nation of malingerers. ...

What strikes me, however, isn’t just the way the right is trying to turn a reasonable development [the increase in disability rolls] into some kind of outrage; it’s the political tone-deafness.

I mean, when Reagan ranted about welfare queens driving Cadillacs, he was inventing a fake problem — but his rant resonated with angry white voters, who understood perfectly well who Reagan was targeting. But Americans on disability as moochers? That isn’t, as far as I can tell, an especially nonwhite group — and it’s a group that is surely as likely to elicit sympathy as disdain. There’s just no way it can serve the kind of political purpose the old welfare-kicking rhetoric used to perform.

Medical Expert Witness Handbook

     Social Security's handbook for medical expert witnesses at hearings before Administrative Law Judges is now available online. It was posted as part of a solicitation for medical expert witnesses.

First Report On Youth Transition Demonstration: A Complete Waste Of Money

     From a report by Mathematica Policy Research, a Social Security contractor (emphasis added):

The Youth Transition Demonstration (YTD) is a large-scale demonstration and evaluation sponsored by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to improve understanding of how to help youth with disabilities reach their full economic potential. In particular, SSA is interested in testing promising approaches for helping young people with disabilities become more self-sufficient and less reliant on disability benefits. The YTD conceptual framework, which was based on best practices in facilitating youth transition, specified that the six projects that participated in the evaluation provide employment services (emphasizing paid competitive employment), benefits counseling, links to services available in the community, and other assistance to youth with disabilities and their families. Additionally, the youth who received those services were eligible for SSA waivers of certain benefit program rules, which allowed them to retain more of their disability benefits and health insurance while they worked for pay. ...

In this report, we present first-year evaluation findings for the Career Transition Program (CTP), which served high school juniors and seniors, and youth who had recently exited school, in Montgomery County, Maryland. ...

CTP was well implemented, conformed to the YTD conceptual framework, and provided youth with services to help them graduate from high school, obtain employment, and matriculate into postsecondary education programs. The process analysis showed that CTP enrolled 89 percent of eligible youth in the program and provided services to virtually all of the enrollees. On average, enrollees received 28 hours of services, 36 percent of which were directly related to employment, such as job development. Another 42 percent of service hours were for case management to resolve barriers to employment and education. The impact analysis showed that youth who had been given the opportunity to participate in CTP were more likely to have used employment-promoting services than youth in a randomly selected control group. Nevertheless, we found no impacts of the program on employment during the year following the entry of youth into the evaluation. Neither did we find impacts on income, expectations, or a composite measure of school enrollment or high school completion. We conclude that CTP was no more or less effective than the programs and services available to control group members at improving these outcomes during the follow-up year.

"The Precise Timing Of His Return To Massachusetts"

     From the Federal Times:

For anyone who’s wondering, Social Security Administration Commissioner Michael Astrue remains on the job, even though his six-year term officially ran out last Saturday.

In an email today, SSA spokeswoman Kia Anderson cited the federal law that allows Astrue to stay until the Senate confirms his successor. Given that President Obama has yet to even nominate a possible replacement, Astrue could continue to lead the agency for some time to come. Also remaining in place is Deputy Commissioner Carolyn Colvin.

Astrue, a Massachusetts lawyer and published poet (how many top-level feds can claim that kind of resume?), was named Social Security commissioner by former President George W. Bush and has held the job since early 2007. In the email, Anderson noted that Astrue has said repeatedly that he would not seek reappointment to another term.

Because Astrue has not spoken with Obama “about the precise timing of his return to Massachusetts . . . ,” Anderson added, “it would be inappropriate to speculate about that subject.”