Dec 22, 2023
Dec 21, 2023
"We Will Need Sufficient And Sustained Funding"
From The Sacramento Bee:
Trying to get through to Social Security on its 800 number? Be very, very patient. Wait times have been averaging roughly 35 minutes. In September, the latest data available, the average time on hold was 34.7 minutes. The shortest average wait so far this year came in May, 28.8 minutes. The longest was in March, 39.8 minutes. ...
Reps. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, and Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, have introduced the “Stuck on Hold Act,” which would require the Social Security Administration and Department of Veterans Affairs, which has also experienced customer service issues, to tell callers the estimated wait times. If the wait is longer than 15 minutes, the agency would give the consumer the option of receiving an automated call back when it is their turn in line. The agencies would have up to a year to put the new system into effect. ...
At Social Security, “We are doing what we can to improve phone service,” said Darren Lutz, an agency spokesman, who cited the hiring of new phone agents ... . The agency has moved to a new phone system, which Lutz said “allows us to receive more calls and provides callers with estimated wait times, and will soon provide an option for some callers to receive a call back instead of waiting in a queue. “ Social Security plans more improvements, he said, though ”to improve our phone service we will need sufficient and sustained funding.“ ...
Dec 20, 2023
Officially On The Job
Martin O’Malley was sworn in as Commissioner on Wednesday.
He has no leave built up yet so I guess he’ll be on the job every workday other than Christmas Day itself.
Off Topic For A Slow News Day
Maybe I’m just confessing that I was ignorant until recently but that song, "Winter Wonderland", that you’ve heard hundreds, if not thousands of times, what's it about? If your answer is "Well, it's about the pleasures of walking in the snow" you're not completely right. Here's part of the lyrics:
In the meadow we can build a snowman,
Then pretend that he is Parson Brown
He'll say: Are you married?
We'll say: No man,
But you can do the job
When you're in town.
Later on, we'll conspire,
As we dream by the fire
To face unafraid,
The plans that we've made,Walking in a winter wonderland.
The song tells a story about a couple becoming engaged to be married or at least contemplating it seriously. Did you know that? I’ll admit that I didn't until recently. Of course, I have a bit of excuse. We've often heard it with different lyrics that don't include Parson Brown and conspiring by the fire but you hear it both ways. I think that most times I hear it, the romantic content is there.
Anyway, that song, at least as originally written, isn't quite as sappy as I had thought.
Dec 19, 2023
O'Malley Nomination Spurred Few Passions
From Politico:
... The vote [on the nomination of Martin O'Malley to become Commissioner of Social Security] was 50-11, with 39 senators absent for the chamber's first vote the week before Christmas as lawmakers continue working on an international aid and border security supplemental package.
Longtime Senate reporters and procedural experts called it the worst attendance for a vote that they could recall for at least the last two decades. ...
On The Way Out The Door
In one of her last acts as Acting Commissioner of Social Security, Kililo Kijakazi issued an apology for her confused testimony before a Congressional committee that badly understated her agency's problem with overpayments of benefits.
By the way, does anyone have an idea where Kijakazi is headed now? Back to a staff job? On to a new position?
Dec 18, 2023
Senate Schedules Vote Today On O'Malley Nomination
According to the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the matter, there's been unanimous consent in the Senate to vote on Martin O'Malley's nomination today.
Update: Martin O’Malley has been confirmed by the Senate.
Dec 17, 2023
Dec 16, 2023
Dec 15, 2023
Rampant Scamming Of Social Security Recipients
From Newsweek:
More than $100 million is lost each year due to Social Security scams, new figures from the Federal Trade Commission show.
Already in 2023, the FTC has received reports of 164,413 government imposter scams, with social security scams being the most common of all. The Social Security Administration saw 38,852 reports, with a total of $101.58 million lost to government-impersonating fraudsters. ...
Dec 14, 2023
Workers Say The Physical Demands Of Their Jobs Are Increasing
From the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College:
For obvious reasons, people who do physically demanding work are prone to injuring themselves on the job and are more likely than office workers to apply for federal disability benefits.
But is technology changing this relationship?
We know technology has caused a decline in manual labor, and the blue-collar jobs that remain are also easier to perform when machinery and computers are doing more of the heavy lifting workers used to do – think warehouse robots that alleviate the need to lift and carry heavy boxes.
But new research based on a survey of couples between ages 51 and 61 – a population that is particularly vulnerable to illness and musculoskeletal disabilities – finds no evidence they feel the physical demands on them are lessening. If anything, they said, the requirements for motions like stooping, lifting, or crouching have increased somewhat since the early 1990s.
Their perceptions conflict with the other studies showing an easing in the demands on blue-collar workers. But those studies are not based on what older people are saying about their jobs but on analyses of an occupational database that rates the intensity of the specific tasks required in each job. One example is how many pounds a warehouse worker must lift and how often that is required. ...
Dec 13, 2023
Now They Make It Public
I can't say whether this is related to the recent publicity concerning overpayments to Social Security claimants but the agency has decided to make public its longstanding policy of waiving overpayments of less than $1,000 in most cases. The policy has been around for a long time, at least for SSI cases, but
it was previously labeled "sensitive" in Social Security's manual and withheld from the public. Now
it's out there for everyone to see. The exception to these administrative waivers is cases where the claimant is at fault. My experience is that they only refuse to waive these small overpayments when it's obvious that the claimant is a bad actor.
Now, how about let's raise that amount from $1,000 to $5,000? How long has it been at $1,000? Also, how about waiving these without demanding that the claimant file a request for waiver? These waivers may be nearly automatic but the big catch is that you have to file a request for waiver. Most of these small overpayments aren't waived because the claimant doesn't know to request waiver or can't figure out how to complete a waiver request form or, perhaps more important, can't get through to a Social Security office to ask what to do.
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