No Government Shutdown

      There won’t be a government shutdown because Senate Democrats are craven cowards.

We’re In Crisis

      Read this thread on the National Academy of Social Insurance panel on the emergency at Social Security. Just read it.

Field Office Loses 7 Of 26 Employees To DOGE Buyouts

      Social Security field office loses 7 of its 26 employees to DOGE buyouts. You think service won’t suffer?

OHO Caseload Analysis Report

     From Social Security. Note they still refer to it as ODAR. How many years has it been since that name was changed? Has the overtime now ended at OHO?:

Click on image to view full size

 

Change Of Plans

      From the Washington Post:

The Social Security Administration late Wednesday abandoned plans it was considering to end phone service for millions of Americans filing retirement and disability claims after The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service team was weighing the change to root out alleged fraud.
The shift would have directed elderly and disabled people to rely on the internet and in-person field offices to process their claims, curtailing a service that 73 million Americans have relied on for decades to access earned government benefits.
However, Social Security and White House officials said the administration will still move ahead with another far more limited element of the original proposal: Customers will no longer be able to change a direct deposit routing number or other bank information by phone.

Disability Determination Backlogs To Soar

    From David Weaver, a retired Social Security employee, writing for The Hill:

Projections indicate that, in less than two years, there will be a staggering 2.5 million people in Social Security’s disability backlog. That figure is higher than the population of 20 U.S. states and territories. Thus, as we look to the midterm elections next year, President Trump will be dealing with a very large group of Americans who aren’t receiving timely decisions on their benefit applications.

About 70 percent of the projected backlog at the end of fiscal 2026 will be at the initial level of determination. ...

The backlog could easily turn out to be well above 2.5 million cases if current levels of government staffing decline, assumed productivity gains among government workers fail to materialize, or the country experiences a recession and displaced workers with health problems turn to Social Security for help. ...

The large backlog will be a national driver of homelessness, a situation that occurs with some frequency among disability applicants.  ...

Trump’s first instinct may be to look for a technological fix. His executive order creating DOGE stated its purpose as “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” In practice, however, DOGE has become focused on personnel policy and cost cutting, rather than bleeding-edge technology. 

Social Security recently summarized its DOGE-related activities. If members of the public thought the young engineers of DOGE were going to revolutionize technology in the government, they will be disappointed. The Social Security list is basically composed of budget cuts, including two big items: a reduction in the agency’s technology budget and a hiring freeze applied to federal employees and state workers who help process disability claims.  ...

    I am pessimistic about the situation. The present course can lead only to disaster but this will not be apparent to the Trump Administration until the disaster is well upon us. They will then try desperately to turn the spigot back on only to find out that there's only so much that can be done until new personnel are hired and trained and that takes quite some time. And, of course, Weaver is only writing here about impending backlogs of disability determinations and that's only one part of the problem. Addressing field office, teleservice center and payment center backlogs, which will also mushroom, will be even more difficult, especially with a gutted management structure.

Tough Questions

     Two Senators have some tough questions for Social Security Commissioner nominee Bisignano.

DOGE Plans To Cut Telephone Service

      From the Washington Post:

Under pressure from the U.S. DOGE Service team to root out alleged fraud, the Social Security Administration is considering dramatically curtailing the phone services that 73 million retired and disabled Americans rely on to apply for and access their earned government benefits, according to two people briefed on internal deliberations and records obtained by The Washington Post. 

Social Security leadership is now considering a proposal to end telephone service for claims processing and direct-deposit bank account transactions, instead directing elderly and disabled people to the internet and in-person field offices, according to one of the people and the records. The change would disrupt Social Security’s internal operations and threaten its ability to serve the public, current and former officials warned, just as DOGE is targeting the agency for across-the-board staff cuts of more than 12 percent. They also noted that the agency’s toll-free number is a mainstay for older customers who do not have online access or who have trouble navigating the internet. …

Dudek Realizes He’s The Villain

ProPublica obtained a recording of last week’s meeting between Acting Commissioner Dudek and claimant advocates. Here are a couple of excerpts from their write up: 

… Dudek’s remarks come at a time when many Social Security employees are feeling confused about Dudek, his role versus DOGE’s and what it all means for the future of the Social Security Administration, according to ProPublica’s conversations with more than two dozen agency staffers. Many said that because the recent cuts at the agency have been carried out in a piecemeal fashion, the public doesn’t seem to be grasping the totality of what is happening to the program, which is having its 90th anniversary this year. …

Meanwhile, DOGE, which Musk has portrayed as a squad of techno-efficiency geniuses, has actually undermined the efficiency of Social Security’s delivery of services in multiple ways, many employees said. Under DOGE, several Social Security IT contracts have been canceled or scaled back. Now, five employees told ProPublica, their tech systems seem to be crashing nearly every day, leading to more delays in serving beneficiaries. This was already a problem, they said, but it has gotten “much worse” and is “not the norm,” two employees said.

And under a policy that DOGE has applied at many agencies, front-line Social Security staff have been restricted from using their government purchase cards for any sum above $1. This has become a significant problem at some field offices, especially when workers need to obtain or make copies of vital records or original documents — birth certificates and the like — that are needed to process some Social Security claims, one management-level employee said. …

“I’m the villain,” he said in the recording. “I’m not going to have a job after this. I get it.”

A Poll

 

online polls

Webinar With Former Commissioners

      The National Academy of Social Insurance is sponsoring a webinar on “Recent Changes at the Social Security Administration: What's at Stake for Customer Service” on March 13 at noon Eastern. Former Commissioners O’Malley and Astrue as well as others will be speaking. It appears to be free and open to the public.

Inside The Work Of A Claims Rep

     E. Tammy Kim at The New Yorker has a great piece going inside the work life of  a current Social Security claims rep. The reporter was not supposed to have this kind of access.

    I'm sure you've seen some cartoons from The New Yorker but you may not be all that familiar with the magazine. I've been subscribing for more than 50 years. I can tell you that articles in The New Yorker have an national agenda setting impact well beyond what most people could imagine.

DOGE Arrived With Core Beliefs That Governing Is Simple And That Federal Employees Are Stupid. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

      From the Washington Post:

… Chief among [DOGE’s] plans: Using their tech expertise to build apps and websites to help federal workers and Americans trying to access government services, according to two people familiar with DOGE internal workings. Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, a close friend of Musk’s who was responsible for the company’s inviting look, has been recruited to help lead the effort.
Even this has invited criticism, however. Musk has repeatedly criticized Social Security, one of the government’s most popular programs, and DOGE staffers have been working inside the agency. But an effort to give the Social Security website and services a user-friendly digital overhaul was already underway at the U.S. Digital Service — until Musk pushed out the team working on it, according to Mina Hsiang, who led the USDS before the department became the U.S. DOGE Service in January.

“When you fire people who have deep understandings of the mission you want to accomplish, you’re sort of starting from zero,” she said. …

Oh Good, Now Private Equity Bros Go Inside Social Security — What Could Go Wrong?

      From Bloomberg:

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has sent three individuals with experience in private equity and finance to the Social Security Administration, highlighting the focus that President Donald Trump is putting on rooting out waste and fraud in the nation’s social insurance programs.

Among those tapped for the task are Antonio Gracias of Valor Equity Partners, who also served on the board of Tesla Inc. and was an early investor in SpaceX — two of Musk’s companies — as well as Scott Coulter, formerly of Lone Pine Capital, and Michael Russo, formerly of Shift4, according to people familiar with the moves who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss them. … 

House CR Proposal Would Cut Social Security Funding But Government Shutdown Looms — What A Mess

      Social Security and other federal agencies are operating under a Continuing Resolution (CR) allowing them to spend money at the same rate as during the prior fiscal year. The current CR expires on March 15.

     Republicans in the House of Representatives have released their version of a new full year CR. It gives the Social Security Administration $14.2 billion for operations, which is down by about $100 million from the prior FY. Of course, this is effectively a greater cut when inflation is considered. That bill's chances in the House are uncertain.

     However, no appropriations bill can pass the Senate without Democratic votes or ending the filibuster. The price for Democratic support in the Senate is an end to the DOGE reign of terror, which many Republican Senators might also want, even though they won't say it publicly. A government shutdown looks inevitable and it could be a long one. I don't know about the President or Republicans in Congress but this is a fight to the death for Democrats.

    Remember that while most Social Security employees are deemed essential and will stay on the job, eventually the pay checks stop in a very long shutdown. You can't get pay for the time period after the shutdown begins until some sort of funding bill is passed. Federal employees will have to figure out when that will occur.

     Hovering over this is the claim of the President that he is under no obligation to spend appropriated funds — recission. This is almost certainly unconstitutional but that’s not stopping him at the moment. It’s not clear that he will obey the Supreme Court when they finally tell him explicitly to knock it off as I expect.

How Lee Dudek Became Acting Commissioner

      Here’s an extraordinary account of what led up to Michelle King’s firing as Acting Commissioner of Social Security and Lee Dudek’s elevation from the then Acting Chief of Staff, Tiffany Flick.

This Is Insanity

      From the Citizens’ Voice in Pennsylvania:

The labor union leader for employees at the Social Security Administration Data Operations Center in Plains Twp. said she can’t understand how the vital facility ended up on a government sales list earlier this week.

The facility is the lone one in the country that does what it does, said Barri Sue Bryant, head of the local American Federation of Government Employees, who represents more than 1,000 workers there.

“We are the only one left. We are necessary,” Bryant said. “I don’t think much thought went into that list at all.”

Earlier this week, the General Services Administration identified the local Social Security facility as one of 433 “non-core assets” the government wants to sell. By the next day, the list was removed from the agency’s website, replaced by a “coming soon” message. …

Bryant said the Social Security call center — which employs more than 1,100 people — does vital work.’

Between Oct. 1 and Jan. 31, the center handled 1.23 million customer service calls to help people with their Social Security benefits, she said.

During that time, the staff responded to 140,000 emails, processed over 84,000 retirement claims and processed more than 4,000 disability claims, Bryant said. ..

 

Emergency Order Sought

      From the Associated Press:

A group of labor unions are asking a federal court for an emergency order to stop Elon Musk ‘s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the sensitive Social Security data of millions of Americans.

The motion for emergency relief was filed late Friday in federal court in Maryland by the legal services group Democracy Forward against the Social Security Administration and its acting commissioner, Leland Dudek. The unions want the court to block DOGE’s access to the vast troves of personal data held by the agency.

What Could Go Wrong?

      From ABC News:

The Department of Government Efficiency is sifting through $1.6 trillion worth of Social Security payments -- records that include a person's name, birth date and how much they earn -- in an anti-fraud effort that has advocates worried the Trump administration could start denying payments to vulnerable older Americans.

Details on the effort were confirmed in a recent letter to Congress by acting Social Security Administrator Lee Dudek and by several sources familiar with the project.

In addition to combing through sensitive data, DOGE staffers also have been inquiring about the Social Security Administration'stelephone service, sources told ABC News, which a significant portion of beneficiaries use to file initial claims. DOGE's inquiries about the telephone service have raised concerns that it may be planning either to replace the telephone service with private call centers or eliminate it as an option for filing claims, sources said. …

Going Back To 100% Overpayment Withholding

      I warned this might happen. From Social Security’s blog:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced it will increase the default overpayment withholding rate for Social Security beneficiaries to 100 percent of a person’s monthly benefit. The Office of the Chief Actuary estimates this change will result in an increase in overpayment recoveries (i.e., a program savings) of about $7 billion in the next decade. …

As of March 27, the agency will begin mailing notices about the new 100 percent withholding rate, rather than the recent adjustment of just 10 percent. The withholding rate change applies to new overpayments related to Social Security benefits. The withholding rate for current beneficiaries with an overpayment before March 27 will not change and no action is required. The withholding rate for Supplemental Security Income overpayments remains 10 percent. …

     They announced this late on a Friday afternoon.  I wonder why.

     O’Malley’s change should have been placed in the regs where it wouldn’t be so easily reversed.