If This Is The Best You've Got ...

     The idea of increasing the federal estate tax and devoting its revenues to the Social Security trust funds must be gaining support since the National Review has an editorial out opposing the idea. They oppose it because that alone won't solve Social Security's long term financing issues. The thing is that in the same piece, the National Review supports increasing full retirement age and reducing the cost of living adjustment. Those proposals, either singly or in combination, don't solve the long term financing issues either.

     They also try arguing that increasing the estate tax punishes successful Americans but that's ridiculous. An estate tax reduces inheritances for the survivors of wealthy Americans, not the wealthy Americans themselves. The wealthy Americans may have been successful or maybe they just inherited wealth themselves but their survivors aren't inheriting money because of their own success.

Hearing Backlog Dwindling

     This is a caseload analysis report from Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations (OHO) which was obtained by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in their newsletter (which is not available online to non-members).

Click on image to view full size

     Note that in May the average receipts per Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) per day was 1.39 but the average number of dispositions per ALJ per day was 2.31. It won't take long at that rate for the backlog to disappear. In retrospect, was it a good idea to increase the minimum notice of a hearing from 20 days to 75 days?

Woman Convicted Of Assaulting Social Security Worker

     From WXYZ:

A 41-year-old Ann Arbor woman was found guilty of an assault on a Social Security Administration worker after she was notified that her disability benefits had changed.

According to a press release, on Aug. 14, 2018, Latasha Long went into a Social Security Administration office in Ann Arbor to discuss issues with her ability to continue receiving disability benefits.

While interviewing with a worker, Long was told that she had reported income on her tax returns that was too high for her to continue receiving benefits. When the employee asked Long to provide additional evidence of her work and income levels for reevaluation, Long began to explain her circumstances, but the employee said that information was not different from what was already recorded.

Long then became angry, according to a release, and began to verbally insult the employee, calling her a "psycho."

When the employee proceeded to stand and close the interview window, Long then hit her in the face with a large binder, grabbed her shirt, then pulled the woman closer to further punch and scratch her. ...

Presidential Candidates On Social Security

     Yahoo Finance has gone to the trouble of putting together the views of the Presidential candidates on Social Security.

Social Security Won't Ask Supreme Court To Review Hicks v. Commissioner

     The word came out this afternoon that Social Security will not ask the Supreme Court to review Hicks v. Commissioner, the 6th Circuit opinion holding that Social Security's treatment of Eric Conn's former clients to have been unconstitutional.

      I have no idea where things will go from here with these cases. Unless the agency wants to give up, I predict continuing litigation.

ALJs Accuse Social Security Of Bargaining In Bad Faith

     From Government Executive (emphasis added):

The president of a union representing the administrative law judges who adjudicate disability claims has accused the Social Security Administration of bargaining in bad faith. The accusation follows news that federal mediators declared the agency and union to be at impasse in negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement.

Association of Administrative Law Judges President Melissa McIntosh said her union has filed an internal grievance with the agency over its negotiating practices as they discuss a new contract. She said she believes management is focused on standardizing contracts with disparate bargaining units, rather than on improving efficiency for taxpayers. ...

The agency’s “last best offer” to the union, which was reviewed by Government Executive, includes several proposals that have become standard in the Trump administration, including shifting telework policies to be entirely at the discretion of the agency and a drastic reduction in the amount of official time the union can use. In this case, SSA proposed a 90% cut to official time, from an annual bank of 22,000 hours in the current contract to only 2,000 hours. ...

Equally troubling to the administrative law judges are proposals throughout the contract to remove references to the Administrative Procedures Act and an article affirming the “judicial function” of ALJs at the agency. The judicial function article lays out several key duties of administrative law judges, including the power to call for expert witnesses and ensure due process rights of claimants. ...

     I'm not sure that removing the reference to the Administrative Procedure Act matters but it's interesting that they want to remove it.
     By the way, it's Administrative Procedure Act, in the singular. Pluralizing the word "procedure" when talking of the APA is a sign that you're not really familiar with the Act.

Where Are The Headcount Numbers?

     I'm used to posting data on a quarterly basis from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on the number of employees at Social Security. I think the headcount is an important number that helps explain the level of service the agency provides. I haven't posted this number in about a year because OPM hasn't released any new numbers in about a year. I know that the Trump administration is threatening major change at OPM, which I don't understand, but why would they shut down this function? Is Social Security's headcount available through any other public source?

Looks Like An Official Photo Of Andrew Saul To Go Up On The Wall

     For many years now there's been a blank space on the wall at Social Security offices where the picture of the agency's Commissioner should go. It looks like we now have the photo that will soon go up there.

Doesn't Really Solve The Problem

     From The Tennessean:

A controversial [Social Security Administrative Law] judge who was disciplined in Texas over his refusal to watch a LGBT sensitivity training video has transferred to Franklin, Tenn., where he now hears cases from Tennesseans who believe they were wrongly denied federal disability benefits.

The judge, Gary Suttles, was also the subject of an internal inquiry after a Texas newspaper reported he had made disparaging remarks to a Gulf War veteran seeking disability for service-related health problems.

Veterans groups expressed outrage. The Social Security Administration issued an apology for the judge's comments. ...

Three Nashville-area attorneys who routinely represent clients in disability hearings said they were concerned about whether their clients, who include veterans and people of all sexual orientations, can get a fair hearing before Suttles. The three attorneys requested anonymity because they could appear before Suttles in the future. ...

     There is a longstanding tradition of encouraging ALJs who become controversial to transfer. It foists the troublesome ALJ on another region. However, controversial ALJs generally remain controversial even after they've moved.

Impostor Calls Are A Serious Problem

     From the Federal Trade Commission:

... [T]he Federal Trade Commission is reminding consumers that scammers are increasingly trying to make a buck by falsely claiming to be Uncle Sam. Monthly complaints to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network about scammers pretending to be from the government reached the highest levels on record this spring.

Since 2014, consumers have filed nearly 1.3 million reports about these cons, far more than any other type of fraud. The FTC received about 46,600 complaints in May alone from consumers who were contacted by someone falsely claiming to be from the Social Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service, or another government entity, according to the latest FTC Consumer Protection Data Spotlight. These scammers may tell people that their Social Security number has been suspended, which does not happen, or that they are facing arrest because they owe back taxes, and demand payment from the consumer to avoid getting into trouble. Often, they demand that a consumer pay with a gift card, which is a dead giveaway that the consumer is dealing with a scammer.

While only 6 percent of consumers who report a government imposter scam say they lost money, when people do report a loss, it is a significant amount. The median amount consumers reported losing to a government imposter scam from January 2018 through May of this year was $960. Consumers under the age of 60 report losing money at higher rates than consumers over that age, but median individual reported losses increase with age. ...

     The 46,600 number for May is only the number who complained. Vastly more people received calls but didn't complain. I know. I'm one of them. So is my wife. So are many, perhaps most, of my readers.