What's Going On At OIG?

Ennis

      Back in October there was a report of serious employee dissatisfaction at Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG), centering on actions taken by the agency's Inspector General, Gail Ennis, a Trump appointee, that were viewed as hostile to the workforce.

     There may be no connection whatsoever but OIG's production of reports seems to have dropped down to near zero over the last two months. While I'm sometimes critical of OIG's reports, they're still vital to good management at Social Security.

Another CR Coming

      A continuing resolution (CR) is what Congress does when it can't reach agreement on appropriations. CRs allow agencies to continue spending money at the same rate as in the previous fiscal year. The alternative to a CR is a government shutdown. It looks like there will be a new CR coming up soon. Great new, right? We'll avoid a government shutdown! Actually, while a government shutdown is definitely a bad thing, CRs are worse for Social Security. Without a new appropriation, the agency has little money to spend on overtime and new hires. Backlogs get worse and worse. The damage is minor if the CR is only short term. However, we're already more than a third of the way through the federal fiscal year and there's still no agreement on appropriations. You can blame it on the Republican "rule or ruin" strategy. It's becoming more likely that we'll see a full year CR, which would be disastrous for Social Security. With field offices likely to open soon, the agency will need to spend a lot of money on overtime but it won't have the money.

    Watch out for the length of the CR. If it's short, say a week or two, maybe they're getting closer to an agreement. If it's long, say a month or longer, maybe we're in for a full year CR.

     Update: There's a report out this morning that the CR may be for three weeks, until March 11. The end of March would be halfway through the federal fiscal year.

A Poll

web survey

LGBTQIA+ Forum On February 17

      Social Security will be holding a National Disability Forum on Equitable Access to Social Security Disability Programs for LGBTQIA+ Communities on Thursday, February 17, 2022 via Microsoft Teams from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET.  The agency wants "to learn from stakeholders, advocates, researchers, medical experts, and the public how SSA can provide equitable access to the LGBTQIA+ communities to our disability programs."

OHO Caseload Analysis Report

    The report shown below was obtained from Social Security by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in its newsletter, which is not available online to non-members. It contains basic operating statistics for Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations (OHO). 

Ralph de Juliis On Social Security Service Problems

de Juliis

      Ralph de Juliis, the head of the union that represents most Social Security employees, has written a piece for Federal News Network on the subject of the service that his union members are giving the public. To understand this piece, you must know that de Juliis is highly focused on keeping his members working from home for as long as possible, ideally for ever. Thus, even though he acknowledges that there are problems, he claims that telephone service has gotten better during the pandemic. I don't know how he can say that with a straight face. He also tells us that Social Security should reorganize its operations so union members don't have to come back to their offices. Somebody, anybody other than his union members, should be helping claimants with their sensitive documents. He doesn't address the manifold other service delivery problems at Social Security. He could make a claim that bringing employees back to their offices wouldn't help so much with all these other problems -- and he might be at least partially right -- but he doesn't even address the massive backlogs that Social Security has in every part of its operations apart from holding hearings and issuing ALJ decisions. 

    The argument for getting agency employees back in their offices is fairly simple. Service took a nosedive once the pandemic hit and employees started working from home. Wouldn't getting these employees back to their offices as soon as possible help? You can say that the sharp decline in service has a lot to do with the agency's poor appropriations but claiming that none of the decline in service has to do with work from home?

     In any case, Social Security employees will soon start heading back to their offices at least part of the time. Let's hope that helps because things are in bad, bad shape.

How Long Can Kijakazi Stay As Acting Commissioner?

      Questions have been asked about the length of time that Kililo Kijakazi has served as Acting Commissioner of Social Security. The Vacancies Reform Act places limits on the length of time that a person can serve in an acting capacity as head of a federal agency. The contrary argument has been that the Vacancies Reform Act doesn't apply to an Acting Commissioner of Social Security since the Social Security Act itself has a specific provision concerning the designation of an Acting Commissioner which supersedes the Vacancies Reform Act. For whatever reason, the job of deciding how the Vacancies Reform Act applies to various positions has been lodged with the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO has now issued an official ruling on the question. Kijakazi can continue to serve as Acting Commissioner because the Vacancies Reform Act doesn't apply to Social Security.

     The GAO ruling, of course, gives no answer to the question of why the President hasn't nominated a Commissioner. My guess is that because of the firing of Andrew Saul that Republicans would mount a pitched battle against the confirmation of anyone as Commissioner and the President, or more likely Senate Democratic leaders, don't want to waste the time on it. 

    I don't like the idea that only Republicans can be confirmed as Commissioner of Social Security.

OK, We Know Nobody Cares About Disabled Claimants, What About Widows? Do We Care About Them?

      From TheNews.com:

The day after her husband’s funeral, Rondell Gulick called Social Security. Now alone with their nine children, the stay-at-home mom faced what would become a months-long process of claiming the benefits she was counting on to keep her family afloat.

Gulick, like many people trying to access benefits, is at the mercy of phone calls. Across the country, Social Security Administration offices have been closed since the start of the pandemic and with nearly 900,000 additional deaths caused by coronavirus, there are thousands of people seeking Social Security survivors benefits, some who know little about the process. The majority of people seeking survivors benefits, by far, are women. ...

Applications that could be completed in one in-person visit in a normal year are taking weeks and even months to complete. 

Gulick has spent hours and hours on the phone in the weeks after her husband’s death to try to get the benefits most of her children qualify for. ...

Ben Gulick’s death was sudden: He was only 45 when he died January 2 from complications related to COVID-19. Donations from family and friends have helped, but they will keep them going for only so long. 

“Dealing with so many hurdles on top of dealing with loss, while also trying to help nine children grieve this process” has been stressful, Gulick said. “I do not know what our future holds. I just don’t know.”  ...

Brianna Berry, 31, only started to seek out survivors benefits after other widows told her she could apply. Her husband, Lewis, was one of the earliest and youngest deaths from COVID-19 in the state of Indiana. He died in April 2020 at age 37. 

Berry spent a part of those early months after Lewis died on the phone trying to reach someone at Social Security. At first she didn’t know if she could go in person, or even who to call. She couldn’t find information on how to apply on the website or what she qualified for. When she found a number to call, she bounced around between different phone numbers and representatives until she was finally able to apply.  ...

Jolene Reeves hasn’t been able to get through to Social Security. After half a dozen calls spending 45 minutes to more than an hour on hold, the Georgia resident only has a phone appointment scheduled for the end of March. ...

 

Miscellany

      Some stories from the weekend:

• Washington Post article on Social Security's field office problems;
• Nancy Altman urges an end to the "starvation" of Social Security's field offices;
• Binder and Binder -- the law firm -- gets a big payday.
  

Seditious Conspiracy And Social Security Benefits

One of those charged

      Eleven individuals have been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Did you know that they can lose their Social Security benefits if convicted? It's right there in 42 U.S.C. §402(u). It's not automatic. It's at the discretion of the judge in sentencing. The way it's accomplished is by wiping out any existing wage credits so it would be possible to re-establish entitlement to benefits by continuing to work but, of course, after conviction there's likely to be a significant prison sentence.

     I'll bet that Social Security hasn't had to deal with this provision too often.

     Perhaps some of the accused are among those on the right who go around saying "I'll never receive a penny in Social Security." If so, I wonder how they will react to the possibility that their prediction will come true -- but just for them.

Don't Think We'd Have Seen This While Trump Was In Office

      From a new update to Social Security's main operating manual (POMS):

Transgender individuals contact us for all of the same reasons other people do. ... During and after any interaction with a transgender individual, be mindful to:

• Protect the confidentiality of each individual;
• Always treat the individual with dignity and respect;
• Ask only questions that are necessary to complete the transaction;
• When speaking to or calling a person, use the name and pronouns appropriate to the individual’s self-identified gender, even if the person has not changed his or her name or updated his or her records; and
• Be aware that the individual’s gender transition is a personal matter. Questions or comments regarding a person’s medical treatment and appearance are inappropriate.

Nomination To SSAB

     From a press release:

President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Sharon Lewis of Oregon to serve on the Social Security Advisory Board ... The position is subject to Senate confirmation.

Lewis is a Principal at Health Management Associates, where she consults with government entities, providers, and advocates to advance opportunities for people with disabilities to fully participate in all aspects of their communities. Before that, Lewis served nearly six years in presidentially appointed roles at the Department of Health and Human Services. There, she was one of the chief architects of the Administration for Community Living and worked to improve access to quality integrated home and community-based services by working with states, stakeholders, and other federal agencies, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Social Security Administration, and the Departments of Labor, Education, Transportation, and Justice.

Before joining the Obama administration, Lewis worked as a Senior Disability Policy Advisor to the House Committee on Education & Labor and as a Kennedy Public Policy Fellow for the Senate HELP Subcommittee on Children and Families. Lewis is the recipient of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Chairman’s Award and is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. ...

Walk In Service Matters -- Especially If SSA Can't Answer Its Phones

     From HuffPost:

Byron Jones just wanted a printout with his Social Security number on it so he could apply for an apartment.

But when Jones showed up to the Social Security office in Northeast D.C. with a receipt saying he’d filled out an online application for a replacement card, a man at the door turned him away, explaining the office is closed except for appointments.

Jones, a 45-year-old hospital worker, didn’t know what else to do. If he has to wait until the replacement card arrives in the mail, he said, he’ll miss his chance this week to fill out a rental application for the apartment he wants.

“No one answers the phone,” he said. “It hangs up on me and then when I get down to the Social Security place, they say I’m not allowed to come in.” ...

Jones ...  was just one of five people HuffPost observed knocking on the Northeast D.C. field office door Monday and being turned away — all within half an hour.  ...

In May 2021, the Social Security Administration announced people who need replacement cards can arrange special “express interviews,” but only if they’re unable to order a new card online, as Jones had already done. Jones said he had planned to apply for an apartment this week and the card won’t arrive on time, and all he needed was some other document proving he had a Social Security number.

The field office worker who turned Jones away gave him a number to call. He dialed it right away and got a busy signal.

     I keep posting this sort of thing because the biggest issue facing the Social Security Administration now, by far, is its inability to do that which it was created to do, serve the public. I see an agency in the midst of a crisis. It seems incapable of doing anything other than urging the public to use its online systems, even though it knows that the online systems are incapable of handling many issues and many people with issues are incapable of using the online systems for anything.

These Aren't "The Good Old Days" At Social Security

      A former Social Security employee can't believe how bad service is at his old agency these days. By the way, I was around in what he supposes were the "good old day" and service wasn't all that great even then. It's deteriorated tremendously since then and is just unbelievably bad now.

Senators Asking Pointed Questions

       The Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and 16 other Democratic Senators wrote a letter to the Acting Commissioner of Social Security on January 25 asking pointed questions about the state of service to the public at the agency. 

     Now, if these same Senators would just insist on giving the Social Security Administration an adequate appropriation, we just might get somewhere. If they even scheduled a hearing on the issue, it would help. Social Security is only the most important Democratic legislative victory in FOREVER. You'd think Democratic Senators would be extremely protective of the agency that administers this towering achievement.

Public Has Low Opinion Of Social Security Service

      From a press release:

Citizen satisfaction with U.S. federal government services declines sharply in 2021, down 2.6% to 63.4 on the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s (ACSI^®) 100-point scale. This is the fourth consecutive annual decline in citizen satisfaction and marks an unprecedented run of negative movement in the index. Significantly, the federal government score is now at its lowest-ever recorded level. The results for this study are based on interviews with citizens who experienced a federal government service throughout 2021. ...

     This is what happens when government operations are starved for operating funds.

Unhappy Employees At Social Security

      From Federal News Network:

... The President’s Management Council, together with the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration, released the first data from its Federal Pulse Survey.

The first-round pulse survey, a pilot project which launched in October, went out to the approximately 2 million civilian federal employees who work in the 24 largest agencies. ...

Employees at SSA, followed by the Veterans Affairs Department and USAID, were more likely than employees at other agencies to feel exhausted in the morning at the thought of another day of work.

Employees at DHS and SSA said they were most likely to take another job that offered the same pay and benefits as their current position. ...

Respondents who work at SSA, followed by USAID, gave the lowest marks to the reasonableness of their workloads. ...

The survey data shows employees at the Interior Department, Social Security Administration and the State Department showed the lowest response rate. ...

Final 2021 Trust Fund Numbers

      Social Security has posted final 2021 numbers for the Trust Funds. There are two tables below, the first for combined Old Age, Survivors and Disability Trust Funds (even though these are two separate funds) and then for the Disability Trust Fund alone. As always, click on the image to view full size.

Trajector Lays Off 500 Employees

      I have no idea where this leaves their Social Security operations. This may just affect their VA claims operations. I’m getting the 500 number from anguished tweets from laid off employees.

First I've Heard Of This

      From Market Watch:

Devin Carroll knew that Social Security is the backbone for many Americans’ retirement security, and yet, because it’s wildly complicated to understand, and everyone’s situation is different, people often lose out when they claim these benefits. 

As a result, there was a “tremendous appetite” for information about Social Security, so Carroll, founder of Carroll Advisory Group, created a blog called Social Security Intelligence and, in 2015, began a YouTube channel, though it didn’t get much traction at first. Two years after abandoning the YouTube project, he noticed one of his videos had 40,000 views, so he decided to try it again. His videos and blogs eventually brought in so much traffic—with thousands of hits—that he was bombarded with questions. 

“It got to the point I wasn’t able to help people,” he said. “It would have taken all day and then some to respond to these emails.” Instead, he created a group on Facebook in 2019, where people could ask and answer questions. It is one of many groups dedicated to personal finance. 

The group, called Social Security Intelligence Member’s Group, has 21,300 members, who discuss strategies and scrutinize the extensive rules under the Social Security Administration. Carroll has administrators who run the page, and they provide answers to users’ questions. Other members also join in to give their perspective. “It gives them a community,” Carroll said. “The community is answering. And if someone gives a wrong response, someone calls them out on it.”