Below is a chart from Social Security showing the number of claims for Disability Insurance Benefit taken, sent for adjudication and approved since 1996. Note that everything declined during the pandemic but the decline seems to be part of a longer term decline that has been ongoing since about 2011. We do not have such a chart for SSI disability claims. There's no doubt, however, that an SSI chart would show a precipitous decline during the pandemic.
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… Mr. Biden campaigned on increasing Social Security benefits for many Americans and moving to shore up the program’s finances, funded by higher payroll taxes on workers who earn $400,000 or more.
But his $4 trillion agenda has thus far excluded those efforts, which were also excluded from his first formal budget request as president. Administration officials have suggested privately that Mr. Biden will wait to push Social Security changes later in his term, once he has completed work on infrastructure and other efforts to remake the American economy with a larger role for government.
Mr. Brady and Mr. Crapo [two Republican Senators] alluded to that proposal in their reaction to the firing. “We are concerned that this politicization of the Social Security Administration is just the beginning of efforts to raise payroll taxes,” they said, “and seriously undermines bipartisan efforts to save Social Security for future retirees.
Do Republicans want to filibuster a bill that would increase Social Security benefits in an election year? Is opposing an increase in the FICA tax that would only apply to those with high incomes a political winner for the GOP?
… Less access to application support services from community-based caseworkers to help their clients with the disability application process, needed medical care, and the associated medical records are all potential barriers that research suggests are more likely in communities of color and can prevent people from applying for federal benefits, for which they are eligible. Other research has shown that access to local Social Security offices can affect applications. …
With no fanfare, the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice issued an opinion yesterday that the President may remove the Commissioner of Social Security from office notwithstanding the statutory provisions limiting removal from office. An opinion had been requested by the Deputy Counsel for the President.
Update: Senator Grassley has tweeted that he's hearing that the President may oust Andrew Saul from his position as Commissioner. Senator McConnell has retweeted this saying "httI agree with @ChuckGrassley. This removal would be an unprecedented and dangerous politicization of the Social Security Administration."
Further update: I've received several reports that there was a blast e-mail to Social Security employees at 4:30 today from an Acting Commissioner of Social Security indicating that Saul and Black are gone.
And another update: The Washington Post reports that Saul still believes he’s Commissioner and plans to report for work on Monday — remotely from his home in New York city. Who’s going to break it to him?
ps://twitter.com/LeaderMcConnell/status/1413584718684168197?s=20
From Government Executive:
More than 900 Security Administration employees were left wondering Thursday how much of their regular paycheck they would receive at the end of the week, after a mishap caused their internal payroll software to report they would receive deposits of $0.00 for the pay period that ended July 2. ...
On Thursday, Social Security Administration spokesman Darren Lutz said the agency were still working with the Interior Business Center, which provides payroll services to around 150 federal agencies, on determining the cause, but that all 922 affected employees would receive at least a partial paycheck by Tuesday, SSA’s “official” pay day. ...
The Partnership for Public Service does an annual survey to determine the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government. The 2020 results are out and Social Security didn't do well at all. The agency came in as the 15th best place to work out of 17 large agencies.
They also rated agency components. Here are the rankings for Social Security's components, out of 411 total agency components:
“Program integrity” is the sort of technical term that sounds good. Who wouldn’t want to run Social Security with integrity? But unfortunately, in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of Washington-speak, the phrase doesn’t mean what you think.
Administering Social Security with integrity sounds as if it means ensuring that the right payments go to the right people in the right amounts. You would think it means that the Social Security Administration (SSA) helps working families get the benefits that they have earned. Instead, it means the opposite.
“Program integrity” is insider-code for saving money. How is money saved? By going after people who have done nothing wrong. By going after people with serious disabilities who must prove over and over again that they are unable to support themselves. By going after people whose benefits SSA claims were wrongly paid out, often because of mistakes made by SSA itself. ...
SSA must return to its roots, to its core mission of helping everyone get the benefits for which they are eligible. It should devote at least as much effort to underpayments as it does to overpayments. It should focus more on educating the public about the benefits for which they are eligible and less on challenging previously-awarded benefits. ...
It has become clear that Social Security advocates are working to improve Social Security's administrative budget difficulties by liberalizing what "program integrity" funds can be used for. At the moment, Social Security doesn't have enough money to answer its phones or to put people on benefits in a timely manner but it has abundant funding to cut people off benefits. We need balance.
From a television station in Miami:
One of the agencies on site helping families affected by the condo collapse in Surfside is the Social Security Administration. ...
The agency is working with more than a dozen others to help families reestablish documents that they lost in last week’s collapse of the 12-story building. ...
I’ve spoken with the families while I do their paperwork and it’s awful,” said Maria Del Carmen Ortega with the Social Security Administration. “I get goosebumps. The stories are terrible, very sad, and these people have a very long road to recovery because the emotions are unbearable.” ...
From some newspaper in Maine:
Social Security offices in Maine have been closed since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 ...
U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine 2nd District, is calling for the SSA to open its doors.
“The current unavailability of most in-person services at SSA field offices … creates difficulty for people who lack broadband access, have certain disabilities, or are otherwise more comfortable with in-person service,” wrote Golden in a recent letter to the administration.
“In light of the public’s need to access SSA services in a timely and convenient way, I request that SSA expedite its OMB-mandated reentry planning to increase staffing at field offices to enable a wider set of in-person services, and to end the requirement for people to part with their original identification documents.” ...
Social Security employees should not think that because the Democratic Party is friendly with their union that there will be no pressure to reopen the field offices from Democrats in Congress. There's going to be increasing bipartisan pressure to reopen. Representative Golden is just one of the early ones to chime in.
From CBS Chicago:
Imagine this – you’re unemployed and you get a letter saying you owe thousands of dollars in back Social Security taxes.
That is the reality for some local U.S. Census managers. CBS 2’s Suzanne Le Mignot spoke to one of them, who said the news was a shock. ...
In August of last year, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum allowing employers to defer certain workers’ Social Security taxes during the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
“I never received any documentation – any communication – from my former employer indicating that my payroll, Social Security taxes would be deferred while I was working,” the Census manager said. ...
When I went to look for an image to post, I happened to come across images showing how India celebrates its Independence Day (also from the British but almost two centuries later) and I can't help posting one because, as much as I enjoy our Independence Day, Indian Independence Day sure looks like fun!
Getting the largest possible Social Security check doesn’t appear to be incentive enough for 90% of non-retirees 45 and older to wait until age 70 to claim them, according to a new study from Schroders Investment Management. Indeed, 30% plan to begin taking benefits between age 62 and 65, before full retirement age. Fourteen percent plan on taking benefits between 66 and 69, while nearly half 46% aren’t sure when they will claim.
Even those who are at or near retirement age — ages 60 to 67 — don’t seem interested in waiting until age 70: Only 13% said they plan to wait to age 70 to claim Social Security benefits while 28% are still unsure.
Only 5% say they waited until age 70 to claim the benefits.
If you follow Social Security affairs, you frequently notice statements made by supposed "experts” based upon the premise that people would wait until age 70 to start drawing Social Security retirement benefits if they only knew just how much more they'd receive if they waited. That's nuts. People already know in general terms how things work. They just don't want to wait. Accept the reality. Even those who now promote waiting to age 70 will themselves probably start drawing retirement benefits well before age 70 because their opinions will change as they get closer to retirement.
I hope that the agency doesn't try to give months of advance warning before resuming in person hearings. If they do that, many of my clients will decline telephone or video hearings, since they'll be able to get an in person hearing if they just wait a bit longer. I'm pretty sure there will be less chaos if attorneys with scheduled hearings are just notified by phone or e-mail to ask their clients with scheduled phone or video hearings if they want to come to the hearing office for an in person hearing.
From Federal Computer Week:
President Joe Biden reversed much of his predecessor's workforce agenda in the first days of his administration via executive order, but unions at the Social Security Administration are unhappy with the pace of implementation of new policies. ...
The American Federation of Government Employees wants to return to the bargaining table over its 2019 contract. It was negotiated after Trump issued executive orders limiting official time, restricting union use of federal facilities and easing the process for firing poor performers, in 2018. ...
SSA finalized its review of the contract, identifying sections impacted by the rescinded orders, on June 23, said Mark Hinkle, an SSA press officer.
But AFGE officials say that the agency is conceding too little.
"It was devastating, actually, compared to what we expected. They pretty much ruled out everything," said Barri Sue Bryant, president of AFGE Local 2809, which represents employees at an SSA operations center in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and member of the SSA General Committee.
Official time, federal time spent on union business, is a top concern for the union. In its review, the agency broke that section of the contract into pieces, ruling that some parts had "minimal" or "moderate" "potential impact" from the repealed policies, while others weren't impacted at all, Bryant said.
SSA ruled that the number of hours of official time allowed were "minimally impacted," she said, while they ruled that restrictions for what activities are allowed on union time weren't impacted.
There's a temporary agreement in place on official time that restores it to levels closer to the 2012 contract. That lasts through Oct. 31, but it's unclear what will happen next. ...
The agency ruled that teleworking policies, another key priority for the union, weren't impacted. The agency curtailed teleworking in 2019. ...
They want a better relationship with us? We've got to have a new contract. It's that simple," said Ralph DeJuliis, president of AFGE Council 220, which represents 29,000 SSA employees in field offices and telephone service centers. ...
The agency is also working on plans for bringing the workforce back to the office and instituting post-pandemic workforce policies, although some SSA employees are already in the office.
"Our agency's planning process includes ongoing communications with employees across the agency and their representatives, as well as input from other stakeholders," Hinkle said. "We will meet labor obligations associated with these plans once they are approved." ...
Union officials also say that they haven't seen a marked difference in labor-management progress, despite the change in administration.
"The only thing that's different is their tone," said DeJuliis. "Now they go through the motions, but their actions, the bargaining that we've been to … they don't really agree to anything." ...
I don't know if the courts will find that claimants have standing to challenge Andrew Saul's tenure as Social Security Commissioner but I'm pretty sure that the union does. Saul is certainly involved in the dealings with the union. The union would be in a good position to bring some legal action, perhaps declaratory judgment, concerning whether the position of a Commissioner of Social Security who can only be removed for cause is constitutional.
From CNBC:
A new bipartisan bill proposed in Congress would require the Social Security Administration to once again mail annual statements to everyone ages 25 and over who have paid into the system.
The bill, called the Know Your Social Security Act, was proposed on Thursday by Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate. They include Reps. John Larson, D-Conn., and Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., as well as Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Bill Cassidy, R-La.
The Social Security Administration since 2011 has only sent out paper statements on a limited basis. Those who still receive annual mailed paper statements include people who are ages 60 and up who are not receiving benefits and have not signed up for an online My Social Security account.
Don't do this without giving Social Security more money to implement it. If you prioritize one thing without giving additional operating funds, you deprioritize others. The problem isn't that Social Security lacks the desire to send out annual statements; it's that they don't have the operating funds to do everything they ought to be doing. I don't think this gets through to these members of Congress. There's no elasticity left at the agency.
From an editorial by Mark Miller on Reuters:
Our worries about Social Security often focus on the program’s solvency issues, which threaten benefits if left unresolved. But right now, we face a more immediate challenge: how to fund the Social Security Administration (SSA) as it climbs out of the COVID-19 crisis so that it can serve the public efficiently and equitably.
Social Security’s customer service has suffered from more than a decade of budget cuts imposed by Congress, and its operating budget dropped 13% from 2010 to 2021, adjusted for inflation. Over that same period, the number of Social Security beneficiaries grew by 22%, SSA data shows. ...
Routine business, such as applications for retirement benefits and Medicare, have proceeded smoothly during the shutdown. But applications for disability benefits plunged over the past year at a time when in all likelihood the number of people eligible for benefits - and needing them - jumped. There also has been a sharp drop in applications for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a benefit program for low-income, disabled or older people.
The field office closures are the likely culprit. ...
Social Security also has a problem in an area known as “program integrity.” In Congress, lawmakers typically use the phrase to refer to fraudulent benefit claims - and they have pushed the SSA over the past decade to crack down by earmarking a significant portion of the agency’s budget to program integrity activities.
Much of this activity has focused on removing people from the disability benefit rolls based on an assessment of medical improvement. Last year, Congress earmarked $1.6 billion for disability and other reviews - a whopping 12% of its overall administrative budget.
Next year, the SSA plans to increase medical disability reviews by 36%, and the number of SSI redeterminations by 23%, notes David Weaver, a former associate commissioner in Social Security’s Office of Research, Demonstration and Employment Support.
But we need a broader definition of “integrity” that includes benefits that should be paid - and are not....
Social Security's budget justification for the next fiscal year included numbers indicating a big productivity decline at its Office of Hearings Operations (OHO) during the pandemic. I would guess that the agency has productivity indices for other components. If there are such productivity indices, it seems to me that the agency should release them to the public. I think they would be crucial information which should be used in making decisions on when and how Social Security reopens its offices. If they don't show productivity declines, the continuation of extensive telework is justified. If they do show productivity declines, agency employees and their unions shouldn't make a fuss when telework goes back to pre-pandemic levels or, at least if they do, they shouldn't expect much sympathy from others. However, even if field office productivity indices show no decline as a result of telework (which I doubt), the field offices must reopen to to the public. It's abundantly clear that there is a strong public demand for this level of service. The Social Security Administration exists to serve the public.
