Lame Valentine's Day Press Release

This is from the HeraldStarOnline.com of Steubenville, Ohio. Clearly, it was written by some PR person at Social Security who is unfamiliar with the shaky state of online service at Social Security.

People falling in love with online services for Social Security

By MICHAEL REYNOLDS

As you’re preparing your Valentine’s cards, you may also want to join the millions of users who have fallen in love with Social Security’s online services. Here’s our own Valentine’s sampler of things you can do at www.socialsecurity.gov.

See if you qualify for Social Security benefits. You can use our online screening tool to see what benefits you might be eligible for from any of the programs Social Security administers. Then, you can use our benefit planners to calculate your benefit amounts, whether you’re considering retirement or disability or the benefits available to your family if you die.

Apply for benefits. You can apply for Social Security retirement, spouse’s or disability benefits right over the Internet. If you are applying for disability benefits you’ll also need to complete the disability report, which is also available online. Need to take a break or look for some records to answer the questions? That’s just fine with us: You can leave and then come back to complete it. After you have applied, you can return to the Web site later to check for status.

Find the office closest to you. There is much you can do online, but sometimes you may want to visit a representative face-to-face. If that’s the case, your first step is to visit our online field office locator. Just type in your ZIP code and find the Social Security office closest to you.

Get a Password. If you already get Social Security benefits, there’s even more you can do online when you have a password. Anyone who gets benefits can get a password.

With a password, you can check the information and benefit amounts in your Social Security records and change your address, telephone or direct deposit account information without leaving the comfort of your home.

Whether you’re ready to apply for retirement benefits this month or you’re just interested in getting an estimate for future benefits, check out our Web site at www.socialsecurity.gov and go to the “What you can do Online” section.

We won’t try to take the place of your sweetheart this Valentine’s Day, but you may fall in love with our online services.

(Reynolds is Social Security manager in Steubenville.)

Charlotte Observer Reports On Social Security Backlogs

Fred Kelly at the Charlotte Observer has written another article about Social Security's terrible backlogs in processing disability appeals.

Failed "Grand Plans" And Republicans

I have written about the string of "grand plans", re-engineering, Hearing Process Improvement (HPI) and Disability Service Improvement (DSI), tried at Social Security over the past twelve years, in an effort to produce dramatic productivity gains at the agency. The net result of the first two of these schemes was a dramatic worsening of Social Security service. DSI is just now being introduced, but I am convinced that it is also doomed to failure. This raises the question of why these failed and why would I believe that DSI is also doomed to failure? I also noted that this twelve year period corresponded exactly with Republican control of Congress. This raises another question. What do these schemes have to do with Republican control of Congress.

To answer the first question of why "grand plans" to dramatically improve efficiency at Social Security are doomed to fail, let us take a look at some fairly simple numbers. The Social Security trust funds currently total about $1,994 billion. The President's budget proposal for 2008 is $9.637 billion. Social Security annual administrative expenses come to 0.05% of the assets of the Social Security's trust funds. On it's face, does that not seem awfully low? By contrast, a report from the Cato Institute, which was clearly trying to promote privatizing Social Security, calculated the annual administrative costs of a privatized old age benefit plan at 0.3% to 0.65% of assets. Note that the Cato estimate is about ten times as high as the actual administrative costs for the Social Security Administration and the plan that Cato is promoting, unlike Social Security, does not include disability or survivors benefits which are much more expensive to administer. By comparison, the Social Security Administration looks incredibly efficient.

My point here is not that a plan to privatize Social Security would result in vastly greater administrative expenses. That is obvious enough, but privatization is not going to happen for many reasons and administrative efficiency is not even one of the more important reasons. My point is that the Social Security Administration is already incredibly efficient. The idea that Social Security could be managed into much greater efficiency is ridiculous on its face. Of course, not every Social Security employee is a dynamo and there are inefficiencies and some money wasted at Social Security. The agency is large and some problems are inevitable. However, the idea that major improvement in efficiency is possible at Social Security is ludicrous. The agency is already a model of efficiency. Any efficiency gains at Social Security are bound to be small -- or, perhaps, incremental to use a word that the new Commissioner of Social Security used during his confirmation hearing.

As to the second question of why we saw these silly schemes whose authors hoped to dramatically improve productivity at Social Security while Republican were in control of Congress, we have to look at ideology. It has long been an item of faith on the American political right that government agencies, particularly government benefit programs, are astoundingly wasteful and inefficient. A natural corollary is that Congress should put pressure upon agencies to become more efficient and that budgetary pressure is one good way of doing this. There was an incredible display of Republican ideology at the Astrue confirmation hearing. Republican Senator Jim Bunning, who was at one time in the House of Representatives and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Subcommittee on Social Security, became irate in telling Astrue, and I will paraphrase, that he did not want to hear that Social Security did not have an adequate budget, because he knew that the problem was inefficiency. Bunning's display was astonishing because Astrue had said nothing whatsoever to provoke Bunning. How did Bunning know with such certainty that Social Security was so very inefficient? The facts strongly suggest that Social Security is already incredibly efficient. I cannot imagine any basis for Bunning's outburst other than that it was a display of irrational political ideology. Unfortunately, Bunning and others in his party were able to impose that political ideology upon the Social Security Administration over the past twelve years. Things got so bad by 2006 that Republicans in Congress thought that a Republican Commissioner of Social Security was bluffing when she warned that her agency would have to close its door for two weeks because the budget that Congress was about to enact was so disastrously inadequate. Probably, only the results of the November election prevented this catastrophe.

Cornell Law Review Symposium On Social Security

The Cornell Law Review issue for January 2007 includes a symposium on Social Security, with the following articles:

Medical Proof, Social Policy, and Social Security's Medically Centered Definition of Disability
Frank S. Bloch

The Social Security Administration's New Disability Adjudication Rules: A Significant and Promising Reform
Frank S. Bloch, Jeffrey S. Lubbers & Paul R. Verkuil

A Response to Bloch, Lubbers & Verkuil's The Social Security Administration's New Disability Adjudication Rules: A Cause for Optimism . . . and Concern
Robert E. Rains

Social Security and Government Deficits: When Should We Worry?
Neil H. Buchanan

Comment on Neil H. Buchanan's Social Security and Government Deficits: When Should We Worry?
Benjamin A. Templin

Social Security Reform: Lessons From Private Pensions
Karen C. Burke & Grayson M.P. McCouch

Transofrming the Role of the Social Security Administration
Colleen E. Medill

Professional Responsibility and Social Security Representation: The Myth of the State-Bar Bar to Compliance with Federal Rules on Production of Adverse Evidence
Robert E. Rains

The AFGE Should Be Ashamed

I hate to do this but Local 2452 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is stealing from me. In three separate instances they have copied complete items off this blog and posted them on their website without even an attribution. It would be copyright infringement to do this even with attribution. Trying to pass off items I wrote as if they had written them is something worse, plagiarism.

I e-mailed the local union to ask that these be taken down and got no response. I e-mailed the communications director for the national union and asked that he tell the local to take these down. I received no response.

Here are links to the items on their website with links to what I had written beside them:

• AFGE This Blog
• AFGE This Blog
• AFGE This Blog

NCSSMA Head On Fed Talk

Rick Warsinskey, the President of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations, an organization of Social Security management employees, spoke on Fed Talk, a radio show, on February 9 about Social Security's budget problems and the issues that his organization is working on. The show is available for download.

Social Security Press Release On New Commissioner

Social Security has now sent out a press release on Michael Astrue who was sworn in today as Social Security Commissioner.

Witness List For Social Security Subcommittee Hearing

The Social Security Subcommittee has released the following tentative witness list for its Valentine's Day hearing on the Social Security disability program backlogs:

The Honorable Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner, Social Security Administration

Sylvester J. Schieber, Chairman, Social Security Advisory Board

Nancy Shor, Executive Director, National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Rick Warsinskey, President, National Council of Social Security Management Associations, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio

James Fell, President, Federal Managers Association Chapter 275, Alexandria, Virginia