Will Social Security Be An Issue In The 2022 Elections?

     From Fox News:

President Biden on Monday commemorated the 87th anniversary of the Social Security Act becoming law by touting Democrat plans to protect, expand and deliver "stronger" benefits to recipients, while warning that a Republican-controlled Congress could put the program "on the chopping block."  ...

Look, if you know me, you know I think rebuilding the middle class is the moral obligation of our time," Biden says in the video. "Social Security allows for our seniors to retire with dignity, and me and my Democratic friends on the hill are trying to protect it and expand it." ...

"But here’s what’s crazy," Biden continued. "Republicans on the hill—they want to put it on the chopping block."

"Every five years it would come up to reconsideration, whether it continues or not," Biden said. "Think about that."

Biden was referring to a plan Republican Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., proposed earlier this year that would sunset Social Security and Medicare within five years.

"Let me ask you have you ever seen the Republicans on Capitol Hill do anything to protect or increase or to benefit Social Security?" Biden asked. ...

"So here’s the deal, with Democrats in Congress, you get stronger social security because you paid for it and you deserve it," Biden said. "With Republicans in Congress, it’s probably going to get sliced." ...

But Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., shut down Scott’s proposal earlier this year, stressing that Republicans "will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years." ...

OGC Is Hiring

     Social Security's Office of General Counsel is hiring. They're accepting the first 1,000 applications.

What To Do About The Death Master File?

     The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) has produced a lengthy Report to Congress on Sources and Access to State Death Data. This is a role that Social Security, by default, has assumed for the federal government and, indeed, for many businesses. It's a role that Social Security has never been comfortable with and which others have criticized. 

    NAPA has come up with five possible ways to address this issue: 

• the status quo (what SSA does currently)
• designating an agency as the distributor of state death data
• a non-governmental data clearinghouse
• designating an agency as the federal repository of death data
• federal agencies contracting directly with individual states 

    NAPA regards the last two options as not feasible. 

    I'm  betting we end up with no change in the status quo. Social Security acknowledges that there are problems with its Death Master File but it's unlikely that anyone else would do better. There's certainly no other agency that wants this chore.

    By the way, this is a much better report than you usually see from a Beltway Bandit.

Happy 87th Birthday, Social Security!

 

    The woman in the photo is Frances Perkins, who may deserve the most credit for the creation of Social Security.  I've always thought that Perkins was looking into the future when this photo was taken.

Hard To Spell Isaac

    From the Washington Post:

... Inspired by Mississippi-based journalist Sarah Fowler’s brilliant Washington Post story on the folks who changed their baby’s first name — 30,000 in the past five years alone — we asked the Social Security Administration for a list of the most-changed names. They ran the numbers back to 2017. ...

EM On Covid

     Social Security has issued an Emergency Message on the evaluation of Covid cases. It goes on and on but says little. Certainly, there is no suggestion that there are standards that the agency is obliged to abide by. Everything must be "considered."

OHO Posts Updated Stats

    A Caseload Analysis Report on Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations, posted online. As always, click on the image to view full size.

It's The Dog Days -- Or Maybe The Tortoise Days

     There seems to be no Social Security news to write about today so I'll just post a picture of a visitor we saw this morning on the walk outside our offices.

Flyover States Like Representation?

     A map showing geographic variation in representation of Social Security disability claimants at the initial level from Legal Represetation (sic) in Disability Claims a presentation by Hilary Hoynes, of the University of California, Berkeley, Nicole Maestas, of Harvard University and Alexander Strand of the Social Security Administration at the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium: 

 

SSNs Exposed In Court Records

From a letter from Senator Ron Wyden to John Roberts, the Chief Justice:

I write with concern that federal courts are failing in their legal obligations to protect Americans’ private information, putting Americans at needless risk of identify theft, stalking and other harms. Each year, federal courts make available to the public court filings containing tens of thousands of Americans’ personal information, such as their Social Security Numbers (SSNs) and dates of birth. However, federal court rules — required by Congress — mandate that court filings be scrubbed of personal information before they are publicly available. These rules are not being followed, the courts are not enforcing them, and as a result, cach year tens of thousands of Americans are exposed to needless privacy violations. 

The Judicial Conference, the courts’ policy-making body, has known about this problem for at least a decade and has refused to act.  …

The most recent report, which was provided to my office in draft form, says the Federal Judicial Center (FIC), the courts’ research arm, has twice studied the problem of personal data appearing in public court records, in 2010 and 2015, and in both cases found significant violations of the judiciary’s privacy rules. In the most recent study, the FIC examined 3.9 million court records filed duringa one month period in 2013. It found 5,437 of these documents included one or more SSNs. If these statistics are representative of the problem, it would mean that the courts have made available to the public roughly half a million documents containing personal data since 2015. …

     I hope this isn’t happening in Social Security cases. Many, many years ago we used to put the claimant’s Social Security number in the case caption but those days are long gone.