Spring Thaw At Hand?

     I have a question for those of you on the inside. Has Social Security started authorizing more overtime since the budget deal was finalized last month? For that matter, in the absence of a Commissioner, is there anyone to authorize it? It seemed clear that very little overtime had been authorized from the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1, 2017 until the budget deal last month. The agency had reason to fear that its appropriation would be cut below the previous year's level. Since the budget deal, it's clear there won't be a cut. It now seems likely that the agency will get a budget boost although how much is up in the air. It may be wishful thinking but I think I've seen a few signs in the last month that a Spring thaw might have started, that a little more OT is being authorized. It's certainly needed, or at least I think I'm seeing things getting a little less bad than it has been these past six months.

More Conn Cases But The Nexus Is Getting A Little Strained

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     It may not be clear from this memo but many, perhaps most, of the claimants involved here weren't even Eric Conn's clients but the clients of one or more other attorneys who worked with Conn who haven't themselves been accused of misconduct.

Telephone Phishing Scheme

     From KMBZ:

A phone scam is making the rounds again.

Greenwood police say they've heard from residents that they've gotten calls from someone claiming to be from the Social Security Administration.  

This is how the scam works: They leave a message on your voicemail, claiming your social security number has been suspended and asking that you return the call and speak with a paralegal. 

46 Months For Former Social Security Employee

     From Social Security's Office of Inspector General:

Sharon Ramos, age 56, of South Bend, Indiana was sentenced before District Court Judge Jon E. DeGuilio for ten counts of making false entries in government records, two counts of conversion of government money, and one count of wire fraud, announced U.S. Attorney Thomas L. Kirsch II.

Ramos, convicted after a four-day jury trial in November 2017, was sentenced to 46 months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay restitution to the Social Security Administration in the amount of $550,383.66.

According to testimony during the trial, from approximately January 2008 and continuing until around December 2013, Ramos devised a scheme to defraud the Social Security Administration by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises.  Ramos, then an employee of the Social Security Administration, made numerous false and fictitious representations in Supplemental Security Income (SSI) accounts of numerous SSI claimants.  These improper entries in the accounts resulted in numerous SSI claimants obtaining payments they were not eligible to receive.  As a result, Ramos fraudulently converted money belonging to the Social Security Administration. ...

When Will The Budget Drama End?

     The federal government is operating on a Continuing Resolution (CR) that funds government operations only through next Friday, March 23. Unless something is passed before then the entire federal government, including Social Security, will shut down. 

     Congress is working on an omnibus funding bill to fund all of the federal government through the rest of the fiscal year. In more normal times, this is done with a series of bills covering different parts of the federal government. 

     There are still disagreements over the omnibus and some predictions that another short CR will be needed. 

     The current draft or drafts of this bill have not been released to the public. There's no definite sign that Social Security's appropriation is in dispute but we can't be sure. 

     The AARP has just sent a letter to Congressional leaders asking for higher administrative funding so they must think something is still up in the air.

A Long Wait In Philly

     From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

A federal administrative law judge signed a letter this week ruling that Adrianne Gunter’s multiple sclerosis has left her too sick to work, qualifying her for the government assistance known as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) — three months after she finally got a remote hearing via TV hookup and more than two years after she applied.

In total, it took the Social Security Administration 878 days to decide Gunter's case from the time she requested an appeal of her routine denial of benefits. ...

The Philadelphia Office of Disability Adjudication and Review has one of the worst averages for decision times in the country: 756 days. Not far behind is the South Jersey office, with a 736-day average decision time as of Feb. 23, according to the latest SSA data. ...

Since January, Social Security has added eight judges to the two Philadelphia-area offices, for a total of 23 administrative law judges. Four area congressmen also wrote to Nancy Berryhill, acting commissioner of the agency, asking her to address the sometimes years-long delays for residents seeking hearings.

U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, whose district includes parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery County, met with Berryhill last week and said that the administration started a prehearing conference pilot program in Philadelphia in an attempt to alleviate the backlog. According to Boyle, Berryhill said a big reason for the pileup is that appellants often don’t learn they have a right to an attorney until their scheduled hearing. The prehearing meeting is designed to happen months before the hearing, giving them time to find a lawyer. ...

It Took The Help Of A TV Station To Get A Terminally Ill Man Paid

Fewer People Out Of Labor Market Due To Health Reasons

     From the New York Times:

A seemingly inexorable economic trend has changed direction in the past few years, as people who cited health reasons for not working are returning to the labor force.

The rise in the number of Americans not working because of disability was so persistent for two decades that some economists began to hypothesize that the trend would never reverse.

But perhaps it has. Since a peak almost four years ago, that number has steadily fallen, showing its largest decline — both in terms of head count and percentage — in at least the last 25 years. ...

The data shows that the decline has come almost entirely from the older half of the prime-age population (that is, people between 40 and 54). The drop has also been steeper among the less educated. The number of disabled nonparticipants without a high school diploma fell by 18 percent, versus 4 percent for those with at least a high school diploma. It has been somewhat larger among women (minus 9 percent) than men (minus 6 percent). ...

     One thing to keep in mind is that there are many people who believe themselves to be disabled by illness or injury who are not on Social Security disability benefits. Whatever has been going on probably has little or no connection to program developments at Social Security. There have been changes at Social Security over time but the only dramatic changes have been in backlogs.

New ABLE Account Instructions

     The Social Security Administration has updated the staff instructions in its POMS manual for Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) accounts. These accounts allow the sheltering of money which would otherwise render a person ineligible for Supplement Security Income (SSI). 

     I cannot evaluate the significance of these new instructions since I haven't been involved in ABLE issues. 

     I'm glad the ABLE accounts exist but they're a sop to people who have money and want to help their disabled relatives get around the ridiculously stringent SSI resource limits. Most disabled people don't have relatives who can help them in this way. What's urgently needed are updated resource and income limitations for everyone on SSI. The SSI resource and income limitations contain no cost of living adjustment and haven't been updated since they were created in the 1970s. They're brutal. I know those who supported ABLE accounts also supported income and resource updates. I can't fault their decision that it was better to take ABLE than to get nothing but ABLE isn't nearly enough. When the time finally comes again when Democrats control Congress, an SSI update has to be very near the top of the entire Democratic agenda. There is no other issue in the Social Security world, apart from the agency's operating budget, that's anywhere near as important as an SSI update.

Should He Have Been Arrested?

     From the Journal News:(which is apparently somewhere in Pennsylvania although their website either doesn't give that information or hides it):

Middletown police responded to the report of a man saying “you’re all going to die” at the Social Security Administration office in Franklin on Monday, but the man later said he actually just meant they were “going to hell.”

The incident happened Monday morning ... according to a Middletown police report. The man, who was not arrested or charged, was upset for procedures he did not get done, and a security officer reported that the man said, “you’re all going to die” as he was leaving. ...

     Update: I'm told that this Middletown is in Ohio, not Pennsylvania.