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Warnings From Employee Unions

     From Government Executive:

Officials with the nation’s largest federal employee union on Monday sounded the alarm on the staffing crisis at the Social Security Administration, warning that without a substantial budget increase and fundamental workforce policy changes, customer service could deteriorate even further. ...

At the Social Security Administration, staffing levels are at a 25-year low, despite ever increasing numbers of beneficiaries. ...

Although Congress appropriated around $785 million in additional spending for Social Security in the fiscal 2023 appropriations package, officials at the American Federation of Government Employees said after inflation, the impact of the new funding was “negligible.” Workloads for agency employees remain unsustainable, and around 1,000 workers are leaving the agency per month due to burnout and insufficient pay, benefits and workplace flexibilities. ...

Jessica LaPointe, president of AFGE Council 220, which represents field office, teleservice center and workload support unit workers at the agency, said management’s approach to dealing with the staffing crisis is simply making more people want to quit. The union and management are slated to begin renegotiation on six articles of their collective bargaining agreement next week.

“Hiring is down 50% since 2010, promotions are down 25%, and staffing is at a 25-year low,” she said. “Management has assigned workers to intake for most of the work week, so back-end work is now piling up, and managers are resorting to bullying tactics like leveraging leave, micromanagement and surveilling employees’ use of the bathroom to attempt to control back- and front-end productivity of workers . . . Employees are being treated like disposable cogs in a machine, and when an employee burns out and quits, the agency just seeks to replace them.” ...

LaPointe said that the union’s internal survey found that 8% of respondents knew a coworker who died by suicide at least in part due to work-related stress. ...

Edwin Osorio, first vice president of AFGE Council 220, said at least part of the blame can be placed at the feet of Kijakazi, who he said has shown a lack of leadership while atop the agency. ...

It's Been Slow Lately

     You may have noticed that I'm not posting much recently. That doesn't have to do with me. There is little to report. Things aren't changing for good or ill. Some of this is Congress. They're doing little with Social Security. Oversight hearings seem to be nearly a thing of the past. There's no hope of passing Social Security legislation. Some of it may be due to lingering effects of the pandemic. Until recently, there was little time to develop new policies for anything other than coping with Covid. Policy development was and is difficult anyway with people working from home most of the time. However, I think a lot of the torpor at Social Security has to do with the fact that there's no confirmed Commissioner of Social Security. An Acting Commissioner can't lead in the same way that a confirmed Commissioner can. Yes, there's a real potential for bad new policies as well as good with a confirmed Commissioner but sitting dead in the water for years on end isn't good for the agency or the people it serves. The lack of action on an occupational information system is one prominent example of the lack of leadership at Social Security.

    So, why hasn't the President nominated a new Commissioner?

Happy Easter

 

Ukrainian Easter Eggs

This Should Come As No Surprise

     From the Associated Press:

Most U.S. adults are opposed to proposals that would cut into Medicare or Social Security benefits, and a majority support raising taxes on the nation’s highest earners to keep Medicare running as is.

The new findings, revealed in a March poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, come as both safety net programs are poised to run out of enough cash to pay out full benefits within the next decade.

Few Americans would be OK with some ways politicians have suggested to shore up the programs: 79% say they oppose reducing the size of Social Security benefits and 67% are against raising monthly premiums for Medicare. ...

Instead, a majority — 58% — support the idea of increasing taxes on households making over $400,000 yearly to pay for Medicare, a plan proposed by President Joe Biden last month. ...

Three-quarters of Americans say they oppose raising the eligibility age for Social Security benefits from 67 to 70, and 7 in 10 oppose raising the eligibility age for Medicare benefits from 65 to 67. ...

While most support increasing taxes on households earning more than $400,000 a year to pay for Medicare, the poll shows a political divide on doing so: 75% of Democrats support the tax but Republicans are closely divided, with 42% in favor, 37% opposed and 20% supporting neither. ...

    So why do Republicans in Congress keep talking about raising full retirement age and keep refusing to consider any changes to FICA? That's what their big money donors want; their rank and file members not so much.

Hear From The Acting Commissioner

     From the Urban Institute:

Join the Urban Institute for a conversation with Kilolo Kijakazi, acting Social Security Administration (SSA) commissioner, and Sarah Rosen Wartell, president of the Urban Institute. They will discuss the challenges and opportunities facing SSA. In 2023, SSA will administer benefits and payments for over 70 million people, and Social Security will cover about 181 million workers and their families. 

Following the conversation with Kijakazi, an expert panel will discuss challenges facing Social Security retirement and disability programs. Researchers will present policy options that could promote equity and bolster the financial security of retirees, people with disabilities, and their families in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. ...

    You can attend this by Zoom. It's at 2:00 Eastern Time on Tuesday, April 11.

Video CEs To Continue On Limited Basis

     Prior to the Covid pandemic, the Social Security Administration used video technology to perform consultative medical examinations (CEs) -- to help evaluate disability claims -- on a very limited basis. For understandable reasons, the agency has made much more extensive use of video technology for CEs during the pandemic but the pandemic is waning. The President has declared that the Public Health Emergency will end on May 11, 2023. Social Security has just issued an Emergency Message detailing how it will use video technology for CEs after May 11. They will use video technology only for psychiatric CEs, psychological CEs without standardized testing and speech and language CEs. The claimant must agree to the video CE.

Why Did Anybody Ever Take This Seriously?

    From Semafor:

The closely watched effort by a club of Senate moderates to craft a bipartisan Social Security reform plan may be stalling out for the foreseeable future. ...

No Democrats so far are willing to sign on as original co-sponsors of a potential final proposal, despite the fact that Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia, D-Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, another independent who caucuses with Democrats, form part of the bipartisan gang. Both are up for re-election in 2024. ...

    And no Republican would have been a sponsor for a bill that increases taxes so the whole thing was a waste of time. Nobody in Congress is willing to admit they favor a "bipartisan" approach. Nobody.

Any Politician Who Supports Raising Full Retirement Age Is Way Out On A Political Limb

     From The Hill:

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans said in a new poll that they would oppose the federal government raising the full retirement age for Social Security from 67 to 70. 

In a new Quinnipiac University poll published Thursday 78 percent of respondents said they would oppose the move, while 17 percent of those surveyed said they would support it. 

In the survey, 77 percent of Republican respondents said they would oppose raising the full retirement age for social security, while 81 percent of Democrat respondents and 75 percent of independent respondents also agree with the same sentiment.  ...

Members Of Congress Press For Social Security To Receive An Adequate Operating Budget

     One hundred and six (if I've counted correctly) members of Congress have signed a letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee having jurisdiction over Social Security asking that the Social Security Administration receive the full funding requested by the Biden Administration for the next fiscal year.