Maybe Grover Norquist Was The Final Straw

The Associated Press reports that President Bush has now grudgingly, but officially, agreed that he will no longer pursue private accounts at Social Security -- or at least he will not pursue private accounts to begin until at least 2011 or 2012. The stated grounds for this decision is the need to produce a plan to balance the budget by 2012.

Grover Norquist has been strongly pressuring President Bush to not include any tax increase in any plan he may have for Social Security. There was probably no hope for a Social Security plan anyway, but eliminating the possibility of a tax increase makes it utterly impossible. Norquist may not be a household name, but he is one of the most important figures in right wing political circles and someone whom a weakened President Bush cannot afford to cross.

Fraud Allegation In Pennsylvania

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports on Angelette Freeze who has been indicted for Social Security fraud for failing to reveal that she was married, a fact that would have affected her right to receive Supplemental Security Income from Social Security.

Grover Norquist Drives Another Nail In the Coffin

From Bloomberg:

Conservative leaders are confident their opposition to higher taxes scuttles any chance that President George W. Bush will make a deal with congressional Democrats to overhaul Social Security.

`Nothing will happen in the next two years'' on Social Security, said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. After lobbying Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Norquist said the officials made clear to him that ``they don't intend to raise taxes.'' Some Democrats have made Bush's willingness to consider tax increases a precondition for negotiations over Social Security.

House Social Security Subcommittee Members Announced

The House Ways and Means Committee has posted the following list of the names of the members of the Social Security Subcommittee for this Congress:

Michael R. McNulty, NY Chairman
Sander M. Levin, MI Earl Pomeroy, ND Allyson Y. Schwartz, PA Artur Davis, AL Xavier Becerra, CA Lloyd Doggett, TX Stephanie Tubbs Jones, OH		Sam Johnson, TX Ron Lewis, KY Kevin Brady, TX Paul Ryan, WI Devin Nunes, CA

Hearing Scheduled On Astrue Nomination

The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a hearing for January 24 on the nomination of Michael Astrue to become the next Commissioner of Social Security. No hearing has been scheduled on the nomination of Andrew Biggs to become Deputy Commissioner at Social Security. The failure to include Biggs' nomination in the January 24 hearing suggests that Biggs will never get a hearing.

COLA To Three Decimal Places

Social Security has published some of the least exciting rules in its history and that is saying something. Here is the summary from the Federal Register:

We are revising our rules that deal with automatic cost-of-living increases to primary insurance amounts under title II of the Social Security Act (the Act). The revision is necessary because, beginning with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for January 2007, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish the CPI to three decimal places. The CPI is currently published to one decimal place as is now reflected in our regulations. With this revision, our rules will conform to the change in the reporting of the CPI.

House Appropriations Subcommittee Members

The House Appropriations Committee has named the members of its Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over Social Security's appropriations. The list is below. Note the Dave Obey, the chair of this subcommittee, is also chair of the full committee, even though he is listed as only an ex officio member of the subcommittee. The Appropriations Committees may be more important for Social Security at this point than the substantive committees having to do with Social Security.

Chair: Dave Obey (WI)
Nita M. Lowey (NY)
Rosa L. DeLauro (CT)
Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. (IL)
Patrick J. Kennedy (RI)
Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA)
Barbara Lee (CA)
Tom Udall (NM)
Michael Honda (CA)
Betty McCollum (MN)
Tim Ryan (OH)
Dave Obey (WI), Ex Officio

MINORITY

Ranking Member:
James T. Walsh (NY)
Ralph Regula (OH)
John E. Peterson (PA)
Dave Weldon (FL)
Michael K. Simpson (ID)
Dennis R. Rehberg (MT)
Jerry Lewis (CA), Ex Officio

VA Disability Claim Backlogs Mirror SSA Backlogs

It is not just the Social Security Administration that has enormous backlogs of disability claims. Here is an excerpt from a CBS Evening News report:

Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have already filed 176,000 new disability claims, but have run into a VA backlog of more than 400,000 cases. VA officials say reducing this backlog is their top priority.

"I am not happy with it. I want it to be shorter," says [VA] Secretary Jim Nicholson.

Nicholson says the hurdle is that every claim has to be verified when none of the records are on computers. "They're all paper and some are (very) thick. We are working this; it's a big deal for us. It's a high priority," Nicholson says. [Note that VA is saying that a transition to paperless files is the key, which is exactly what the Commissioner of Social Security has been saying, although there is no evidence to date that the conversion to scanned files is doing anything to reduce the backlog at Social Security.]

But Nicholson insists the VA is not understaffed, an assertion veterans groups call absurd. Lewis sees a mistake-prone agency in need of a wartime upgrade.