Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas

 

Look familiar?

OIG Report To Congress

     This is from the Semiannual Report to Congress prepared by Social Security's Office of Inspector General. Note that 143,816 total allegations of fraud were received but there were only 228 indictments or criminal informations issued. That's a pretty low ratio. Note also the vast number of imposter scam allegations received. This is where the real fraud problem is at Social Security. (I received a call earlier this week from a former client who was the recent victim of imposter fraud. How long will it take before his benefits are restored?)

Click on image to view full size

    Also, why is Gail Ennis still the Inspector General?

Lauren Boebert Is An Ass -- But You Already Knew That

     From The Hill:

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) argued with a Social Security official over claims of backlogs in a Wednesday hearing about post-pandemic teleworking policies.

Boebert asked Oren “Hank” McKnelly, an executive counselor for the Social Security Administration, if the administration monitored its employees’ output and hours if workers are logging on from home.

 McKnelly assured Boebert social security employees are “subjected to the same performance management processes” whether they are teleworking or working from the office. ...

“We have systems in place that our managers use to schedule, assign and track workloads,” McKnelly said, adding that if employees work virtually, they must be responsive to various forms of communication.

Boebert continued, asking the official why the backlog of social security applicants has increased from 41,000 to 107,000.

“We’ve been historically underfunded for a number of years now,” McKnelly fired back, to which the congresswoman disagreed.

McKnelly said in the past 10 years, the administration has seen an increase of more than 8 million beneficiaries and experienced the lowest staffing levels ever at the end of fiscal 2022.

“That’s a math problem,” he said. “If you have those workloads increasing and you don’t have the staff to take care of those workloads, you’re going to have the backlogs that you’re talking about, representative.” ...

O'Malley Nomination Reported Out Of Committee

     From the New Hampshire Bulletin:

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley moved one step closer Tuesday to becoming the next Social Security commissioner, a role that would become increasingly difficult as the program inches closer to insolvency during the next decade.

The U.S. Senate Finance Committee voted, 17-10, to send O’Malley’s nomination to the floor, though it’s not clear how soon the entire chamber will vote on confirmation. All the panel’s Democrats and Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted to advance his nomination. ...

Annual Statistical Supplement Issued

     The Social Security Administration has issued its 2023 Annual Statistical Supplement, a huge compendium of all the statistical information you could ask for concerning Social Security programs. Here's one excerpt (footnotes omitted):

Number of SSA full-time staff and work years, fiscal years 1995–2023 

Year	Full-time permanent staff a	Total work years b
1995	62,504	67,063
1996	62,133	66,726
1997	61,224	69,378
1998	59,943	67,210
1999	59,752	66,459
2000	60,434	65,521
2001	61,490	65,562
2002	61,914	65,742
2003	63,569	65,343
2004	63,186	c 66,154
2005	63,696	d 68,026
2006	61,692	66,878
2007	60,206	63,939
2008	61,920	64,358
2009	65,203	67,170
2010	67,548	70,758
2011	64,744	69,936
2012	62,943	67,208
2013	59,823	64,601
2014	62,956	64,006
2015	63,466	67,004
2016	62,685	65,798
2017	61,250	63,957
2018	61,011	64,095
2019	60,450	64,576
2020	60,364	62,291
2021	58,952	61,830
2022	56,907	60,570
2023	60,026	61,771

 

The Attacks On Social Security Never Stop

     Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times has quite the takedown of a ridiculous piece on Slate by Eric Boehm and Celeste Headlee titled “Social Security Doesn’t Make Sense Anymore.” Hiltzik describes the Slate piece as full of "misconceptions, inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and flat-out lies about" Social Security.

Social Security Bulletin Released

     The Social Security Administration has posted the most recent issue of the Social Security Bulletin, its scholarly publication, which is now in its 83rd year. Here are summaries of two articles from this issue of the Bulletin:

Mixed-Methods Study to Understand Public Use of Social Security's Online Platform by Lila Rabinovich and Francisco Perez-Arce

In this article, the authors use quantitative analysis of survey data and qualitative analysis of personal interviews to examine public awareness and use of online my Social Security accounts. The accounts are the Social Security Administration's platform for providing both general and personalized retirement-preparation information, including benefit estimators, along with other agency services. The authors explore internet literacy and demographic factors that may affect platform access and use. They also review the experiences and reactions reported by individual platform users.

The Alignment Between Self-Reported and Administrative Measures of Disability Program Application and Benefit Receipt in the Health and Retirement Studyby Jody Schimmel Hyde and Amal Harrati

This study examines the differences between self-reported data and administrative records on Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) application and benefit receipt using survey data from the Health and Retirement Study linked to the Social Security Administration's Form 831 records and Disability Analysis File. The authors find that aggregate survey reports of DI and SSI application and benefit receipt are lower than administrative records indicate and that individual-level misreporting is common, although both sources indicate similar incidence patterns.

Field Offices Closed Today

      I didn’t see anything about it until Wednesday evening but Social Security field offices are closed today. Are employees still working, that is, the ones who didn’t take leave?

Celebrate Thanksgiving In Your Own Way

 

Here's the recipe!

It Gets Cold In Pittsburgh

     From WESA (emphasis added):

As winter homeless shelters fill around Pittsburgh, City Council may look to zoning changes to allow for legally authorized homeless encampments. A bill set to be introduced Monday would create a new zoning use called a "temporary managed community" — areas that could host homeless encampments, with support staff, heat and food.

“We know [shelters are] full right now. … it’s just heartbreaking,” said the bill's sponsor, Councilor Deb Gross. “We want to make sure that we're not the obstacle for trying to achieve a temporary managed community.” ...

But overall, Gross said, the city desperately needs to create more affordable and transitional housing options. “People cannot live in the city of Pittsburgh on a disability check,” she said. “You cannot live indoors anywhere if you are on some of the lower levels of Social Security income.” ...

    It's obvious in my law practice that inadequate SSI benefits and delayed Social Security disability benefits cause a lot of homelessness.

House Social Security Subcommittee Field Hearing

     With no advance notice that I'm aware of the House Social Security Subcommittee held a "field hearing" yesterday in Baton Rouge on the effects of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO), which reduce Social Security benefits due to the receipt of pensions from work not covered by the FICA tax. Apparently, Louisiana doesn't cover state and local workers under Social Security so this comes up a lot in that state. It's obvious from the opening statements that the Republican leadership of the Subcommittee think these provisions are unfair, which they may well be.

    The merits of the WEP and GPO can be argued but isn't there more than a little hypocrisy in the Republican Party's endless calls to "save Social Security" by increasing the retirement age and subjecting Social Security benefits to means testing at the same time they're acting as if they want to increase Social Security benefits? Isn't it also a sign that they're never going to vote to increase the retirement age or means test Social Security? Those plans will always be highly unpopular.

A Thanksgiving Poll

online polls

Reactions To NYT Editorial On Raising Retirement Age

      Readers react to the recent New York Times editorial calling raising the Social Security retirement age.

     By the way, my response is: That’s so not happening!

Who Do You Call?

    From the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College:

The first place most people say they would go for information about Social Security’s various benefits is family and friends.

That’s true whether they are Black, White, Asian, or Hispanic. But after family and friends, there are few similarities in whom each group consults. And their preferences, revealed in a new survey, reflect differences in their socioeconomic circumstances and social networks.

White workers, who are wealthier overall than Blacks and Hispanics, stand out for being more likely to say they would ask financial advisers and accountants about Social Security. Black and Hispanic workers more often would rely on social services agencies, and Blacks also ask for help at church. ...

    From what I've seen, Hispanics and Blacks may not be suffering because they can't ask their stock broker or accountant about Social Security. I've not found financial advisers or accountants to be knowledgeable about Social Security matters. They may be worse than useless. If you ask the average financial adviser or accountant what the requirements are to get widows benefits from Social Security what do you think the chances are that you'll get accurate and complete information? Do they know the age requirements? Anything about the actuarial reduction? Anything about widows disability benefits?

Write About What You Know

    Alessandra Malito has written a piece for Dow Jones that's supposed to be in response to a reader's question. After reading it, my response is "How much can one writer get so much wrong in one short column?"

    Click on the link above to read the article for yourself and see how many errors you come up with. Click on the image below to see the problems I found -- beyond the article's pathetic description of disability determination.

 

 

Food And SSI

     In February of this year the Social Security Administration published proposed rule changes to omit food from in kind support and maintenance calculations for Supplemental Security Income benefits. Social Security has now asked that the Office of Management and Budget authorize publication of these changes as final rules.

OHO Caseload Analysis

 

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Minor Social Security Bill Advances

    The description of a bill passed by the House Ways and Means Committee:

The Clergy Act

Introduced by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (CA-20) and Representative Mike Thompson (CA-04), H.R. 6068 creates a window for clergy members to opt back into contributing to and receiving Social Security.

• Creates a time-limited, voluntary open season for members of the clergy to revoke their Social Security exemption and opt into Social Security coverage.
• Under current law, members of the clergy may apply for an exemption from paying certain taxes on income associated with the performance of ministerial services. The exemption also applies to receiving future benefits. Once the exemption is made, it currently cannot be reversed. Roughly 2,000 members of the clergy receive an exemption every year.

     If this advances, and I wouldn't bet on even such innocuous legislation advancing, it may attract amendments which would make it more interesting but which could also cause it to fail.

Does This Seem Surprising To You?

     Man receives $20,000 in back benefits from Social Security. Five days later he received an overpayment notice from Social Security saying he owed $11,000.

    I'm so inured to this sort of thing that the newspaper article didn't register with me at first. It didn't seem odd. It should but it's not surprising if you work in this field.