Social Security Budget To Be Decided Early On

The chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have jointly announced that they intend to pass a year long continuing funding resolution early in the next Congress for the entire government. If this resolution is the same as the continuing funding resolution already approved through February 15, 2007 (and that will certainly be the starting point), Social Security is in deep trouble, with staff furloughs inevitable. The furloughs might be the most dramatic problem, but the agency would avoid even longer furloughs only by a near complete hiring freeze, no overtime and a very limited budget for things like equipment purchases and travel. All of this put together would certainly cause dramatic increases in the agency's already terrible backlogs. Social Security must now seek urgently to get an adjustment in the continuing funding agreement to allow more operating funds, but this effort may be crippled since the two top positions at the agency, Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner, will soon be vacant, leaving Social Security almost leaderless.

SSAB Meeting Agenda

The Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB) has announced the following agenda for its meeting on December 15, 2006.

Social Security Advisory Board
Meeting Agenda
Friday December 15, 2006

10:30 a.m. - 1145 a.m. Linda Maxfield, Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Policy,

Social Security Administration

1:30 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Richard V. Burkhauser,

Professor and Chair,

Department of Policy Analysis and Management,

Cornell University

Debra Bailey Whitman,

Specialist in the Economics of Aging,

Congressional Research Service

The meeting will be held in the Board's conference room, Suite 625

400 Virginia Avenue, SW

Washington, DC

The agenda suggests that the Board is trying to come up with some dramatic proposal for "Social Security reform." There are even some straws in the wind suggesting that the SSAB wants to propose something before the next Congress convenes. The rest of us may roll our eyes upon hearing that there are actually people who believe that there will be some agreement in the next two years on "Social Security reform" that will satisfy Congressional Democrats and Republicans and President Bush, even though none of the parties has any interest in raising taxes or cutting benefits and most of the Republicans still suffer from the delusion that adding some sort of private accounts to Social Security will help the situation instead of making it worse.

Social Security ALJ Pleads Not Guilty

The Associated Press reports that Douglas Combs, Jr., a Social Security Administrative Law Judge (ALJ), has pleaded not guilty to federal mail fraud charges. The charges relate to Combs' service as a Kentucky Circuit Court Judge before becoming an ALJ.

Aloha Disability Claims

The Honolulu Star Bulletin reports on Vikky Nakamura, a supervisor at the Hawaii Disability Determination Branch, in its series, "Hawaii at Work." Even in paradise there are disability claims.

SSA Semi-Annual Regulatory Agenda

Social Security has published its semi-annual regulatory agenda, showing the regulations that the agency is working on. The list seems to lack anything surprising or mysterious. There usually seems to be at least one item that is described in such a sketchy way that it is impossible to tell whether it is important, but not this time.

New NADE Newsletter

The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of employees of state disability determination agencies, has published its Fall 2006 Newsletter. The Newsletter contains this little piece of new information from Sylvia Karman of Social Security's Office of Disability Evaluation Policy:

Draft final regulations of Silvera-Vargas pending at the executive level. This regulation will clarify illiteracy and inability to communicate in English as an education level and its impact on potential skill transferability.

Family Burns Father 's Body To Keep Social Security

The Jefferson City News Tribune reports that the widow and two children of a Missouri man have pleaded guilty to concealing his death in order to keep getting his Social Security retirement benefits. Larry McWilliams died of natural causes in 1997. His family burned his body to conceal the death. The family members were improperly paid $130,000 in Social Security benefits as a result of the fraud.

Social Security Funding Stays Low Until February 15

The House of Representatives has just adopted H.J.Res 102, a continuing funding resolution that will keep the government running through February 15, 2007, on a roll call vote. The resolution keeps Social Security funding at the same low level in effect since the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1. This means that Social Security will be operating for at least four and a half months under a budget that the Commissioner of Social Security has said would require ten days for furloughs for Social Security employees over the course of the entire fiscal year. The Commissioner does not have the relative luxury of planning how to use what is available now over the course of the entire fiscal year, but must deal with almost day to day limitiations on spending money. Purchases may be deferred and payments to vendors may be delayed slightly, but there is a real risk of serious problems at Social Security over the next two months.

In fairness, Commissioner Barnhart must share in the blame for this fiasco. She has spent over five years doing her best to convince Congress that she could bring dramatic improvements in productivity through the EDIB electronic file program and the Disability Service Improvement (DSI) reorganization. Congress ended up taking her seriously, even though EDIB has hurt productivity in the short run and few now believe that it will ever yield more than modest productivity gains and even though DSI will have almost no effect, either good or bad, on Social Security productivity until well into the future. The failure of Commissioner Barnhart to pull the promised rabbit out of the hat leaves Social Security painfully short of manpower for at least the next two months.