The U.S. government has a bigger unfunded liability for military and civil servant retirement benefits ($4.7 trillion) than it does for Social Security ($4.6 trillion).
Feb 22, 2007
Unfunded Liabilities
Another Columbus Dispatch Article On Backlogs
To tens of thousands of Ohioans who have applied for Social Security disability, waiting for benefits has become a living thing: menacing, frustrating, interminable.
Waiting two years for an appeal hearing chewed up Donald Riley’s income and his health, eventually sending the former diesel mechanic from Johnstown to Mount Carmel East hospital where yesterday he was recovering from his second heart attack.
Waiting since early 2005 drove Dorothy Siders of Columbus to bankruptcy and threatens to steal her home through foreclosure. It’s all she has left.
"It’s not like I haven’t worked all my life since I was 16 years old," Siders said. "If I could work, I would. …What are you going to do? You just feel hopeless." ...
Columbus attorney John R. Allen, who has been handling Social Security disability cases for three decades, said the long waiting time is an extreme hardship for claimants and their families.
"There is nothing worse than meeting with a client, knowing with some likelihood that we are going to prevail, and having to tell him that he’ll have to wait at least two years for benefits. Most have no idea how they are going to survive."
Feb 21, 2007
Chief Of Staff Hired
David V. Foster, Chief of Staff, serves as the principal advisor to the Commissioner of Social Security. He is the Commissioner’s liaison to the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management, Cabinet-level Agencies, Members of Congress, international organizations, the Social Security Advisory Board and executives of state and local governments. Additionally, he is the Chair of the Agency’s Executive Resources Board.
Mr. Foster has held high-level positions in the federal government, having served in various capacities at the White House, the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, DC and the United States Attorney's Office in Alexandria, Virginia. In the private sector, Mr. Foster has worked extensively in the health care field as the head of government relations for biotechnology firms and as counsel for the National Leadership Coalition on Health Care. He also has chaired committees for the American Bar Association, the Federalist Society and the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
Mr. Foster is a magna cum laude graduate of Bowdoin College and received his J.D. from Northeastern University.
Why Isn't SSA A Cabinet Level Department?
- Department of Defense (civilian) 668,450
- Department of VA 239,689
- Department of Homeland Security 168,635
- Department of Treasury 106,623
- Department of Justice 105,827
- Department of Agriculture 105,488
- Department of Interior 73,126
- Social Security Administration 63,647
- Department of HHS 63,506
- Department of Transportation 53,861
- Department of Commerce 40,544
- NASA 18,457
- Department of Labor 15,339
- Department of Energy 14,950
- General Services Administration 12,170
- Department of State 10,208
- Department of HUD 9,825
- Department of Education 4,344
Hiring Priorities
- 40 contact representatives for the teleservice centers in Albuquerque, Houston and Dallas
- Four criminal investigators to be spread around the country
- Two human resource specialists for Social Security's central offices in Woodlawn
- "Many" Federal Reviewing Officers
Columbus Dispatch On Backlogs
Feb 20, 2007
Is This How Social Security Employees See Themselves?
On 24 last night, supercounterterrorist agent Jack Bauer's evil father, who is apparently behind every bad thing that has happened on the show in the past two years, cornered Jack in a warehouse. In an effort to inflict maximum anguish on his son, he told him the most hurtful thing he could come up with: that Jack had turned his back on his family to become a mere "civil servant.
Productivity Gains And Soviet Five Year Plans
Since 2001, SSA has improved productivity on average by 2.5 percent per year for a cumulative improvement of 13.1 percent.
In the old Soviet Union, a shoe factory might be required under a five year plan to increase its productivity by, let us say, 13.1% and would meet that goal, but the shoes made would be ugly, uncomfortable to wear and so poorly constructed that they fell apart quickly, making the productivity gain meaningless. The same sort of thing is happening at Social Security. For instance, more telephone calls are answered at teleservice centers -- but the people answering the calls are under huge pressure to get the callers off the line as quickly as possible so they can meet their productivity goals, so they often fail to help the callers, leading to frustration for Social Security claimants, repeated telephone calls and more in person visits to Social Security field offices. Probably, Social Security is not measuring how completely and accurately their teleservice center employees deal with telephone inquiries and they are certainly not factoring that into their productivity figures. At Social Security's field offices appeals filed by claimants are piling up rapidly because field office personnel lack the time needed to do the data entry required to process the appeals, but no one is measuring that or factoring it into the productivity figures. If anything, delays in processing appeals at the field offices make the delays at the hearing offices look less bad than they are. In many different ways this sort of thing is happening all over Social Security. Productivity is increasing rapidly according to Social Security's official statistics, yet the error rates, which are not being measured, are going through the roof, as are the backlogs in everything that is not being measured or factored into the gross productivity numbers that Social Security reports to the world.