Get Your Act Together

     Just yesterday I wrote about Social Security's noncompliance with the CARES Act, which requires the agency to accept electronic consents from digitally identity proofed and authenticated record holders to disclose Privacy Act protected records to third parties. The same day Social Security released a new Emergency Message saying that it now has a fully electronic means to give consent for release of records. The problem is that the link in the EM takes one to a webpage saying the agency is committed to protecting privacy and little else. There's supposed to be a tab for "Electronic Request for Consent to Disclose" but there's no such tab. The closest thing is a tab for "Submit A Privacy Act" request but that takes you only to a webpage giving links to the agency's privacy regulations.

    Shouldn't someone have checked to make sure the electronic request form was actually available online before posting the EM?

Social Security's Noncompliance With The CASES Act

     I'm not sure that I heard of the CASES (Creating Advanced Streamlined Electronic Services for Constituents) Act until I saw a recent report by the Congressional Research Service. CASES requires federal agencies to "accept electronic identity proofing and authentication processes for individuals to consent to gaining personal access to, or the disclosure of, an individual’s records in possession of a federal agency to another party" and to "create templates for electronic consent and access forms and require posting of the templates on agency websites" and to "accept the electronic consent and access forms."

    Apparently, a major impetus for this legislation is the problems that Congressional offices themselves have in providing constitutent services. They want to be able to access agency records directly. However, the language isn't limited to Congressional offices. Social Security claimants should be able to access their own records as well as their attorneys. 

    Social Security seems to be wildly out of compliance with CASES and making little, if any, progress to compliance. Yes, claimants can establish electronic access to something that Social Security calls their file but that access is extremely limited. For instance, claimants can find out that an Administrative Law Judge has made a decision in their case but they cannot access the decision. They can find out that their disability claim is pending at the initial level but they cannot see what is going on other than a totally meaningless percentage that purports to show how far along their case is. Telling a claimant that their case is 55% of the way to a decision is giving them meaningless and misleading information. It doesn’t work like that. Claimants can't access the medical records in their case. Yes, attorneys can get better access to their clients' files but the attorney electronic consent and access form has so many problems that it's seldom used. If the e-1696 is submitted, the agency still contacts the claimant by telephone to make sure they really did appoint an attorney and they must still laboriously enter the information in Social Security's data systems, processes that can literally take months. Even after that, attorneys still don't get much access to their clients' files other than at the hearing and Appeals Council levels. We certainly cannot access information on what is going on at the black holes called payment centers.

Where Are The Missing Children?

      From The Hill:

… Recently, the Social Security Administration (SSA) began publishing statistics on beneficiaries by race. There are approximately 260,000 Black children receiving survivor benefits from Social Security. With nearly 1 million orphaned Black children in the country, a natural question policymakers should ask is “Where are the missing beneficiaries?”

Black children may miss out on survivor benefits because of eligibility requirements, such as the parent not having sufficient work in Social Security-covered employment. Policymakers should acknowledge the reality on the ground and ask whether those eligibility requirements need to be updated.

Black children also miss out on survivor benefits because of mistakes by SSA, a lack of awareness of benefit eligibility, and budget cuts to SSA’s administrative budget. …

Union Negotiations Start On Monday

     Joe Davidson at the Washington Post reports that negotiations between the Social Security Administration and its largest employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), are scheduled to begin on Monday. According to the Post:

... At Social Security, labor relations still are hung over from the anti-union days of the Trump administration. President Donald Trump used executive orders to sharply weaken the ability of unions to bargain with agencies, including through the unilateral imposition of contract provisions. Union leaders say current Social Security leaders don’t want to give up that authority.

A key example is telework, which Republicans claim there is too much of in the federal workforce. Restrictive telework policies were implemented under Trump and the agency now “doesn’t want to give up its power,” [Rich] Couture [of the AFGE] said in a telephone interview. “It doesn’t want to give up its discretion.”

He added, “they won’t guarantee a telework program or telework levels. They won’t negotiate with us over telework, despite at one point promising to do so. That’s a huge issue that they have shown zero actual interest in fixing with us.”

Another key issue is the “very dire situation in terms of service delivery and how much it’s deteriorated in the last couple of years …” Couture said, “stemming from overwhelming workloads, low employee morale … a lack of competitive pay and benefits.” ...

SSAB On DDS

     The Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB) has issued a 27 page report titled Social Security and State Disability Determination Services Agencies: A Partnership in Need of Attention. It's mostly descriptive. It does say that the DDS's are "struggling" and that " ... the Board believes long-standing frictions between SSA, state governments, and the DDSs call for ongoing review of how SSA and the DDSs work together and how the agency incorporates DDS needs into its overall strategic, performance, workforce, and contingency plans. ..." There's nothing I'd call a recommendation in the report.

SSA Ranks Poorly As Employer

     From Federal Times:

The results are in, and the Social Security Administration took last place among the best places to work in the federal government.

Each year, the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service analyzes job satisfaction among federal workers and ranks agencies against that by size. ...

The results for 2022 are also a harbinger of federal workforce attitudes and, perhaps, shifts. And this year, the results show a discouraging trend: Federal employee engagement and satisfaction fell for the second year in a row, and only four of the 17 large agencies improved their score from 2021, according to the survey. ...

 

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    In fact, even if you compare it to all agencies, regardless of size, Social Security still comes in last. Attention must be paid.

OHO Caseload Report

 

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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.

Fewer Applications Where There Are Fewer Field Offices

     From Does the Drop in Child SSI Applications and Awards During COVID Vary by Locality? a study by Michael Levere, Jeffrey Hemmeter, and David Wittenburg:

Child applications and awards for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) fell sharply at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cumulative applications from April to September 2020 were about 30 percent lower than applications over the same period in 2019. Yet the decline varied substantially across local areas. In this paper, we explore the factors correlated with the change in applications and awards at the beginning of the pandemic.

The paper found that:

• The restriction of in-person services at all Social Security Administration (SSA) field offices in March 2020 played an important role in changes in SSI applications; counties with their own field offices, where the change in service availability is largest, experienced larger declines.
• The pandemic’s myriad disruptions to social and service networks through which people may learn about SSI also contributed to declining applications, as declines were largest in counties with more children that participated in SSI before the pandemic and in counties where more people had a self-identified disability.
• New macroeconomic stabilization policies such as economic impact payments and supplemental unemployment insurance payments also appear to have led to fewer child SSI applications. Counties with larger employment reductions early in the pandemic, which likely benefited most from these stabilization policies, subsequently also had fewer SSI applications.

Trustees Report Released

     From a press release:

The Social Security Board of Trustees today released its annual report on the financial status of the Social Security Trust Funds.  The combined asset reserves of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance (OASI and DI) Trust Funds are projected to become depleted in 2034, one year earlier than projected last year, with 80 percent of benefits payable at that time. 

The OASI Trust Fund is projected to become depleted in 2033, one year sooner than last year’s estimate, with 77 percent of benefits payable at that time.  The DI Trust Fund asset reserves are not projected to become depleted during the 75-year projection period. ...

What Is This Supposed To Prove?

     From a notice posted today by the Social Security Administration in the Federal Register:

We are announcing a demonstration project for the Social Security Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program under title XVI of the Social Security Act (Act). In this project, we will test the effect of providing guaranteed income to adults with cancer in active treatment to learn about its interaction with the SSI program. We will modify the program rules that apply to certain project participants who apply for and who already receive SSI payments under the title XVI program.

Should Probationary Periods Be A Factor In Disability Determination?

     From Emergency Message EM-23021:

This EM provides instructions for all components to identify and code cases where the claimant resides in Connecticut, New York, or Vermont, and the record contains vocational evidence that the occupation(s) identified at step five of the sequential evaluation process (SEP), 20 CFR 404.1520(a)(4)(v), 20 CFR 416.920(a)(4)(v), require probationary periods where work demands during the probationary period exceed the claimant’s residual functional capacity (RFC). ... 

On January 7, 2020, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a precedential decision in Sczepanski v. Saul, 946 F.3d 152 (2020). The case addressed the agency’s step five decision to find a claimant not disabled despite the record containing evidence showing that work demands present only during employer-specific probationary periods exceeded the claimant’s RFC. In Sczepanski, the RFC included a limitation that the claimant could miss up to one day of work per month. At the hearing, the claimant’s representative asked the vocational expert (VE) how much absenteeism employers would tolerate at a sedentary, unskilled, entry-level job. The VE replied that the typical employer for those jobs would tolerate no more than two days per month of absenteeism over the course of employment. The representative also questioned the VE about absenteeism during probationary periods at the start of employment. In response, the VE testified that typically, employers would tolerate no absences during probationary periods. The Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) issued a decision finding the claimant not disabled based on the ability to perform other work at step five without addressing whether the claimant could satisfy heightened attendance standards imposed by employers during a probationary period. 

The Second Circuit vacated the agency’s decision. The court found the inability to complete a probationary period relevant to the determination of a claimant’s ability to perform other work at step five. In so finding, the court held that “[t]he ability to complete a probationary period is ... tantamount to the ability to keep a job, and … the ability to keep a job is a necessary prerequisite to the ability to engage in substantial gainful activity.” The court remanded the case with instructions for the agency to further develop the record. Specifically, the court instructed the agency to determine whether a significant number of jobs remain that either lack a probationary period or impose probationary-period requirements consistent with the claimant’s RFC. 

We are evaluating whether to publish an Acquiescence Ruling (AR) for the Sczepanski decision. While awaiting further guidance, all components should follow the instructions set out in this EM to identify and code cases potentially affected by the January 7, 2020, Sczepanski decision. ...