The Wall Street Journal Reports On The End Of The Fiscal Year Anomaly

From Damian Paletta at the Wall Street Journal (the rest of this is behind a subscription wall):

Managers in the Social Security Administration, struggling to handle a skyrocketing number of disability cases, had an unusual request for their workers this week: slow down. ...

Social Security judges and employees in Florida, Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio and Arizona were among those instructed to set aside disability cases this week, with the slowdown allowing managers to boost their performance numbers for the coming fiscal year, which starts Monday.

Top officials, in a bid to meet goals to win promotions or thousands of dollars in bonuses, directed many employees to refrain from issuing decisions on cases until next week ..

Update: I have now seen the entire article. Here are a couple of more excerpts:

On Monday, the Social Security Administration's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review closed out 230 cases nationally, compared with the roughly 3,000 it usually averages a day, a government official said. No cases were closed in the SSA's Boston and Denver regions on Monday, that person said, and the Seattle region closed just one case....

On Wednesday, the agency's chief judge, Debra Bice, sent a memo to all judges ordering them to close cases normally.

The Republican Plan For Social Security's Appropriation -- Don't Worry So Much About Putting Anyone Else On Benefits; Just Try To Cut Them Off

     A draft of the House Appropriations Committee's Labor-HHS Appropriations bill (the Social Security part begins at page 122) is out. That bill would give Social Security approximately $12 billion. This seems to compare favorably to the version reported out of the Senate Appropriations Committee which called for only $11.6 billion but not really. The House version specifies that a whopping $896 million would have to be spent on continuing disability reviews and SSI eligibility redeterminations. The Senate bill would appropriate $139.5 million for the more generic category of "program integrity activities." I cannot say exactly how things would work out if the House bill became law. There might be dramatically increasing backlogs, while Disability Determination Services would be working overtime and hiring rapidly to do huge numbers of continuing disability reviews. Basically, the philosophy expressed is "don't worry about putting anyone else on benefits; just find ways to take people off benefits."

      The Hill tells us not to worry that this is going to happen anytime soon since two Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee wants to cut more money from the bill, exactly where being uncertain. Also, the bill as written could not become law since it would make it impossible to spend money to implement the Affordable Care Act and the Senate is not going to agree to that, nor would the President sign it.

     The bottom line is that we should expect a prolonged appropriations dispute which may cause a government shutdown as early as November when the current continuing resolution ends.

New Office in Franklin

Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue was in Franklin, TN yesterday for the official opening of a new hearing office, one of eight opening this year.

One User Fee Goes Down

From today's Federal Register:

We provide limited fee-based Social Security number (SSN) verification service to private businesses and other requesters who obtain a valid, signed consent form from the Social Security number holder. ...

To use [this system], interested parties must pay a one-time non-refundable enrollment fee of $5,000. Currently, users also pay a fee of $5.00 per transaction in advance of services. We agreed to calculate our costs periodically for providing [these] services and adjust the fees as needed. ...

Based on the most recent cost analysis, we will adjust the fiscal year 2012 fee to $1.05 per transaction. New customers will still be responsible for the one-time $5,000 enrollment fee.

Quiz Answer

Question: For purposes of Disability Insurance Benefits, what is the date last insured of the 43 year old claimant whose earnings record is shown here?

• June 30, 2010
• September 30, 2011
• March 31, 2012
• June 30, 2012
• September 30, 2012
• Never since never fully insured

Answer: September 30, 2012. The claimant needs only one quarter of coverage for each year after turning 21 so is easily fully insured. If you count backwards until you reach the 20th covered quarter, you appear to get to the second quarter of 2002 but quarters of coverage can be moved around within a calendar year (but not stacked). Thus, the 20th covered quarter counting backwards is the fourth quarter of 2002. Counting forward 10 years from there, you reach the third quarter of 2012 and the last day of the quarter is always used.

     If you did not know where to start in figuring out the answer to this question, please realize that your expertise in Social Security, which may be considerable, is far from complete.

Update: The results of this quiz dismay me. Confusion about fully insured status! Confusion about everything! This is basic. The earnings record I displayed was plain vanilla. Nothing tricky. If you are working with disability claims, you need to know how to do this. If you rely upon Social Security's computer's you will not know what to do when presented with evidence showing additional earnings that will not be posted for months to come, for instance. If a claimant does not meet the earnings requirement, you need to be able to understand why and be able to sort of explain it. If you represent claimants you need to understand how correcting an earnings record or obtaining additional earnings will affect a claimant who is just short of meeting the earnings requirement. And there are claimants who have off again, on again coverage. No one should rely upon the computers if the claimant had a prior period of disability, especially when the claimant turned 31 soon after going off disability.

Quiz

Free Web poll for your Web site - freepolls.com

Really?

From an anonymous poster on the ALJ Discussion Forum:

Although this is the final week of the Federal Government's Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, ODAR [Office of Disability Adjudication and Review] decided that last week would be the final "countable" week for FY 2011 dispositions/decisions, next week will be the first week for FY 2012 dispositions/decisions, and that this week will be a "stand alone" week, with nothing that is done this week being credited to either fiscal year. My (rather obvious) prediction: this will easily be the least productive week of the year, to the obvious disservice of the claimants.

Social Security Employees Like Their Jobs

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) does an annual survey of federal employees. Social Security scored well on this year's survey, coming in at number 4 in leadership and knowledge management and number 4 in employee job satisfaction.

Why Appropriations Matter

     From a letter sent by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the union the represents most Social Security employees, to the Democratic members of the "Supercommittee" that is supposed to come up with means to reduce federal budget deficits (emphasis added):

Recently, AFGE’s Social Security Council was provided with a comprehensive briefing by SSA [Social Security Administration] officials regarding the impact of different budget reduction scenarios on SSA services and programs.   It was made quite clear that any reductions below the FY [Fiscal Year] 12 Budget Request will have adverse consequences.    Further cuts below the current FY 11 baseline will lead to furloughs, staffing reductions, office closings, longer wait times and general dissatisfaction with the Social Security system itself.  The union was informed by SSA officials that for every $25 million of cuts below the FY 11 appropriation, SSA will be forced to furlough both SSA federal employees and State Disability Determination Service workers 1 day.
With respect to office closings, S.S.A. has closed or proposed to close 19 offices to date in 2011.  AFGE expects that number to increase significantly before the end of the year.   Each of those offices has less than 15 employees and was targeted in 2007/2008.  However, SSA is aggressively proceeding with its plans and not waiting for leases to expire.  AFGE’s Social Security Field Council has determined that more than 515 offices could be at risk of closure. 

The letter includes this summary that must have come from SSA (again with emphasis added):

FY 2011 Current Status
1. S.S.A FY 2011 administrative expenses appropriation is $11.4 billion, nearly $1 billion below the amount the President requested.
2. S.S.A-wide hiring freeze with the exception of hearings operation (ODAR [Office of Disability Adjudication and Review]).
3. Overtime spending has been severely reduced despite increasing workloads and reductions in personnel..
4. S.S.A will lose about 2,500 federal employees and 1,000 DDS (Disability Determination Service) State employees.
     o    As a result, S.S.A is facing geographical disparities in service as some offices are facing more losses than others.
5. S.S.A did not open 8 new hearing offices and the Jackson, TN Teleservice Center.
6. S.S.A stopped service in most contact stations and remote sites.
7. S.S.A temporarily suspended mailing the Social Security Statement.  Neither the union nor the public were notified in advance of this change.  Social Security statements are an important link between young contributors and the benefits they will receive when they retire.  
8. S.S.A closed Social Security field offices to the public 30 minutes early each day beginning August 15, 2011.  Yet the agency has provided no evidence or cost analysis to show that this reduction in hours will in fact save money.

FY 2012 at Level  Funding
9. Level funding in FY 2012 would effectively leave us with about $800 million below our FY 2011 funding:
     o    In FY 2011, S.S.A is using approximately $450 million of IT [Internet Technology] no-year funding, which S.S.A will not have in FY 2012. (See table for available funding.[table not included in AFGE letter])
     o    S.S.A also expects to incur approximately $350 million in growth of mandatory cost increases, such as rising health care costs for our employees and increases in rent and guard costs, etc.
10. S.S.A would lose another 4,400 SSA and DDS employees in FY 2012.  This would be on top of the 3,500 S.S.A expects to lose this year for a total reduction of 7,900 employees in two years. 
11. S.S.A would complete 568,500 periodic medical CDRs (Continuing Disability Reviews) and 2.622 million SSI non-disability redeterminations, consistent with the Budget Control Act.
12. S.S.A would complete 2.8 million disability claims, nearly 400,000 less than in FY 2011, with pending levels rising from 845,000 to about 1.2 million and processing time exceeding 4 months.
13. It would greatly delay other less visible workloads, as S.S.A faces a snowball effect of staffing losses two years in a row.  

FY 2012 Budget at Below Level Funding
14. If FY 2012 funding is below the FY 2011 funding level, our performance would be substantially worse, and it would be difficult to avoid furloughs and closing our doors to the American people.
15. An across the board reduction in agency spending of 5 percent will result in the imposition of 24 furlough days for every S.S.A and D.D.S. employee.
16. Each furlough day would result in approximately 19,000 retirement claims, 11,000 initial disability claims, and 3,000 hearings S.S.A would not be able to complete.
17. Each furlough day would also result in 2,400 periodic medical CDRs and 10,500 SSI redeterminations that S.S.A could not complete. These reviews more than pay for themselves and are vital to protecting taxpayer dollars. 
18. Substantial cuts in our administrative budget will result in significantly higher program costs and negatively affect the economy. 

 By the way, why isn't SSA releasing this information directly to the public?

Both Republicans And Democrats Love Ticket To Work -- Why?

An excerpt from the written report of Daniel Bertoni of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), testifying at today's House Ways and Means Committee hearing:

Lack of performance measures may send the wrong message to ENs [Employment Networks -- Ticket to Work contractors], whose staff may be unclear about program goals and send mixed messages to ticket holders about expected outcomes. Of the 25 ENs we interviewed, representatives of 15 said SSA had not adequately articulated performance expectations for serving ticket holders. SSA’s EN handbook does state the ultimate goal of the program is to reduce dependence and, whenever possible, eliminate reliance on benefits. Yet, an EN, which had the fourth-largest payment amount from SSA in fiscal year 2009, stated in its last three annual periodic outcome reports that 100 percent of its ticket holders placed in jobs had earnings of less than $10,000 per year—equating to less than the SGA level [Substantial Gainful Activity  -- if the ticket holders earn over the SGA level they eventually lose their Social Security disability benefits, which is the pretty much the whole point of Ticket to Work as far as Congress is concerned], if earnings were accrued regularly over the course of 12 months. In fact, this EN’s recorded phone message states that DI [Disability Insurance] ticket holders can work part time indefinitely without reducing SSA benefits, and its Web site says most of its positions are designed so ticket holders stay below income thresholds for benefit cutoff. With assistance from our investigative staff, we found multiple ENs among those with the largest payment amounts communicating through their Web sites, recorded phone messages, or in our discussions with representatives that as long as DI ticket holders’ earnings stay below the SGA level, they can keep full disability benefits ...