When Will The Field Offices Reopen To The Public?

    Why is it that I have a feeling that Social Security won't make any prior announcement when they reopen the field offices to the public because they want a "soft" reopening? Is there any other way they'd do it?

 Anyway, here are new health protocols for visiting the agency's field offices just issued by Social Security:

What safety protocols must I follow to visit a Social Security office?

Date: March 30, 2022

All visitors, employees, and guards must review the self-assessment below before allowed to enter. You may not enter the office if your answer to any of these questions is YES, regardless of your vaccination status. Masks are required for all visitors, employees, and guards.

1. Do you have any new or worsening symptoms of COVID-19 including:
   • Fever (100.4 degrees or higher);
   • Cough or sore throat;
   • Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing;
   • Fatigue;
   • Muscle pain or body aches;
   • Headache;
   • New loss of taste or smell;
   • Congestion or runny nose; or
   • Nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea?
2. Within the last 10 days, have you:
   • Been diagnosed with COVID-19;
   • Received instructions from a public health authority (local health authority, medical professional, etc.) to self-monitor for symptoms of COVID-19 or self-quarantine due to COVID-19;
   • Been tested for COVID-19 and are awaiting the results (other than for travel purposes); or
   • Been in close physical contact with anyone who was diagnosed with COVID-19 or developed symptoms consistent with COVID-19?
3. Within the last 5 days, have you:
   • Traveled outside the country by means other than land travel, such as car, bus, ferry, or train?

Close physical contact is defined as being within 6 feet of an infected/symptomatic person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period starting from 48 hours before illness onset (or, for asymptomatic individuals, 48 hours prior to test specimen collection).

If you answered YES to any of these questions or if you feel ill, please call the office to reschedule your appointment.

If you answered NO, you must wear a face covering over your mouth and nose to enter this facility. If you do not have one, we will provide you with one. If you are unable to wear a face covering, call the office and ask to speak with the manager.

Preach!

    From a piece by Nancy Altman, the president of Social Security Works, in The Hill (emphasis added):

After two long years, Social Security offices are scheduled to reopen in early April.  

It was wrong to keep them closed (to all but those deemed to be in dire need) for so long. Post offices never closed. ...

During the two years of closed offices, claims for disability benefits plummeted, at a time when they should have skyrocketed, given the pandemic. ...

But the reopening may be rocky — or worse. There may be very long lines; there may be people who wait and wait but are not served. People may be forced to wait outside in the rain. If things go horribly wrong, there could even be violence, committed by people who are desperate. ...

The Social Security Administration (“SSA”) should have started planning for reopening the day the offices were closed. But unfortunately, the commissioner at the time was a Donald Trump crony, Andrew Saul, who was only too happy to work from home himself, even before the pandemic.

Ralph de Juliis, head of the union council representing field office workers, also contributed to the two years of closed offices. Shockingly, he has publicly advocated for permanently shuttering almost all of the more than 1200 field offices. ...

Congress has starved SSA — and continues to do so.The Omnibus funding bill recently passed by Congress drastically underfunds SSA ....

This is part of a long pattern of Congress underfunding SSA, which began years before the pandemic. Between 2010 and 2021, SSA’s operating budget fell by 13 percent. During the same period, the number of beneficiaries grew by 21 percent due largely to the (still ongoing) retirement of the Baby Boom generation. ...

 For most of its history, SSA had a well-deserved reputation for providing exemplary service to the public. People went to their local field offices knowing they would get excellent, compassionate help with their earned benefits. It was considered one of the best federal agencies to work for, as well. Now, it ranks near the bottom. Training, which used to be extensive and first-rate, has reportedly deteriorated. ...

    You would expect that Altman would be sympathetic to de Juliis and the union. I think it's a sign of just how outrageous the union has become that Altman is criticizing him by name.

    It's not a good long term strategy for a labor union to lose support from the left since it will never have support from the right.

President Releases Budget Proposal

     President Biden has issued his Administration's budget proposal for FY 2023 (which begins on October 1, 2022). It calls for an administrative budget for Social Security of $14.998 billion, up 13% from $13.284 billion in FY 2022. Under the law, the Commissioner of Social Security issues their own proposed budget for the agency. The Acting Commissioner's proposed budget is $15.55 billion.

    These are only proposals. Congress decides. It has been obvious in recent years, particularly the current year, that Social Security is a disfavored agency that is unable to get enough additional funds to even cover inflation. I like to think that the lines that will form before dawn once Social Security field offices reopen may change Congressional perspective but I'm not sure. As long as payments keep going out to retirees, Congress seems unconcerned about problems that mostly affect disabled people and poor SSI claimants.

    Below is a table prepared by Government Executive showing comparisons to what is proposed for other agencies. I have no idea how they get a figure of $10.1 billion in the President's proposed budget or $8.9 billion in the current year's for Social Security. Maybe they're excluding the Office of Inspector General and the funds earmarked for program security? But I don't know if that gets you to their numbers. In any case, this gives us a good comparison to other agencies. Obviously, Social Security didn't do bad but could have done better. It's not just Congress that discounts the need for additional funding for the Social Security Administration.

Click on image to view full size

Some Small Attention To Social Security's Budget Crunch

      From Mark Miller's syndicated column:

If you need help filing for Social Security, Medicare or disability benefits, I have good news and bad news.The good news: The sprawling network of more than 1,200 Social Security field offices around the United States will reopen to the public in early April after a two-year COVID-19 shutdown ...

The bad news: The Social Security Administration (SSA) is bracing for a crush of office visitors. Along with the pent-up demand created by the long shutdown, the agency’s national toll-free number has been experiencing problems, with some callers getting busy signals or abrupt disconnections, which an SSA spokesman confirmed. The phone system problems are expected to increase demand further in the initial weeks of the reopening.

The return to office comes at a time when the SSA was working to replace staff lost during the pandemic. But hiring has been frozen due to a lower-than-expected operating budget signed into law last week as part of a $1.5 trillion U.S. government spending bill for 2022. The SSA budget rose by $411 million to a total of $13.3 billion – less than half of what the Biden administration had requested.

“Our 2022 funding level will complicate our efforts to improve services to the public, although we remain committed to doing so,” said Mark Hinkle, the agency’s press officer, via email. ...

Part of the problem is application processing delays at the state level. The SSA sends disability applications to state agencies, which make medical determinations of eligibility. The largest backlog is in Florida, which had 92,525 cases awaiting determination at the end of January; Texas, California, New York state and Georgia also had large backlogs, according to agency data.

The SSA funds these state-level determinations, so the agency’s broader budget crunch has played a role in the backlogs, according to Cloyd [who works for NOSSCR]. ...

Social Security Is Really Popular

      From a report based upon public opinion polling compiled by the Partnership for Public Service:

At Least He Didn't Use A Gun

      From some television station in the Killeen, Texas area that prefers to hide its call letters and its exact location:

A 64-year-old man remained in the Bell County Jail Thursday without bond set on felony charges in connection with a disturbance at the Temple Social Security Office.

Perry Lee Penning was being held on a charge of aggravated assault of a public servant.

A Temple Police Department spokesperson said officers were called to the office Tuesday after a visitor to the office got into a physical confrontation with a security guard.

Police said Penning had been asked to leave and refused.

He was accused of striking the security guard on the head and in the abdomen. ...

Social Security Is Back To The Position That There Are No Time Limits On Collecting Overpayments

      Social Security had been observing a 10 year time limit on collecting overpayments by recoupment from current benefit payments. That's over now. The agency has sent out instructions to its staff saying that once again there is no time limit on recouping overpayments. You can be retiring at age 67 and be told that you won't be paid now because you were overpaid when you were a child. This has happened before and will soon happen again, not in a few solated cases but as a matter of routine in many cases. Social Security has records of how much these alleged overpayments are but doesn't have records showing why these alleged overpayments happened or whether the claimant was ever given due process rights. The claimant is left with the daunting task of trying to get in touch with Social Security to explore what their rights are.

Online Protective Filing Tool Released

     From a recently released Emergency Message: 

A. Purpose
This emergency message (EM) provides policy guidance and processing instructions for handling protective filings established by the Online Protective Filing Online Protective Filing tool which was released into production on March 19, 2022. 

B. Background
... The Online Protective Filing tool is a public-facing web tool to submit a request for an appointment to file for benefits and record a protective filing date for individuals who cannot contact us by phone or does not wish to utilize existing Online Services, such as the Internet Claim (iClaim) Application. The request can be submitted by an individual interested in benefits for themselves, or on behalf of certain other individuals. Upon submission, a protective filing date is established. The Online Protective Filing tool fills gaps in existing online methods for establishing a protective filing date for (or on behalf of) potential claimants of any age interested in receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI).  

The Online Protective Filing tool is targeted to individuals interested in filing for SSI. The Online Protective Filing tool will:

· Collect responses to preliminary screening questions,
· Determine the applicable Title II and Title XVI claim types,
· Establish Title II and Title XVI protective filing dates, and
· Provide appropriate closeout language for both Titles (in certain situations).

 Once the appointment request is submitted, the Online Protective Filing request is sent to the Enhanced Leads and Appointment System (eLAS) to create a record for further action. If the individual does not complete all required fields to submit the Online Protective Filing inquiry, or the submission fails, no data is saved or sent to eLAS, and no protective filing date is established. ...

Priorities

      From David Weaver writing for The Hill:

Elites in America often marvel at the supposed ignorance of the American people, who, when surveyed, overestimate how much is spent on foreign aid. However, it is possible the public understands something the elites do not: Service from the government is often so bad that there must be something wrong with domestic spending.

Congressional appropriators recently provided more money for the country of Ukraine ($13.6 billion) than they did for administering Social Security ($13.3 billion).  ... Congress rapidly approved the president's request for Ukraine funding and even added an extra $3.6 billion.

Funding for the Social Security Administration (SSA), which runs the largest and most important program in the United States? That's different. Congressional appropriators decided to cut the President's FY 2022 request by about $1 billion, which will result in severe hardship for Americans, particularly Americans from low income and minority communities, who will now not be able to access benefits.

It's possible to laud assistance to Ukraine and still wonder what's wrong at home.

Since 2010, SSA's operational budget has fallen in real terms by 13 percent while the number of beneficiaries it serves has grown by 21 percent. 

The effects of underfunding an agency with a growing workload are not particularly surprising: large backlogs (one million Americans are currently waiting for a disability determination from SSA), a collapsing service infrastructure (SSA's phone systems are physically breaking down under the volume of calls), and furious members of the public who, in the most difficult times of their lives, cannot get help. ...

 

Something Coming?

     There have been rumors that an increase in the cap on fees that attorneys can charge for representing Social Security claimants is coming. That hasn’t happened yet but Social Security just saw fit to update its POMS manual section on increases in the fee cap. 

     I will say, though, that I look at these POMS updates generally and a lot of the time I wonder why they bothered with the update.