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Fraud Allegation Against Social Security Employee

From KCAL:

A former Social Security Administration worker from the Los Angeles area faces federal charges for allegedly providing information to people who used it to steal identities and rack up about $2.5 million in credit card charges, prosecutors said Thursday.

Jennifer Batiste, 45, allegedly took $20 bribes each time she accessed a government database that lists Social Security numbers, mothers' maiden names and dates of birth.

But Is It Fraud?

From WZZW13 in Grand Rapids, MI:

Dozens of people are facing misdemeanor fraud charges after cashing too many Social Security checks. They are accused of obtaining money under false pretenses. It's all part of a crackdown by the Social Security Administration. ...

In Dipippo's case [she is one of those accused], when she didn't receive her monthly disability check, she asked for a new one. When it came in the mail, she cashed it. Soon after that, another one showed up. "I got in trouble for cashing both", says Dipippo.

The Social Security Administration has been cracking down on what they call "double check negotiations". It started with an audit by The Office of the Inspector General.

Are they going to be able to get criminal convictions without proving that these people were lying when they said their check had not arrived?

Unexpected Effect Of Gay Marriage

The recent wave of state legislation allowing same-sex domestic partnerships with the same rights as marriages may have an unexpected effect upon Social Security. No, Social Security will not recognize these civil unions as marriages, but read this excerpt from an Associated Press article about civil unions in Washington state.

Unmarried, heterosexual senior couples would also be eligible for domestic partnerships if one partner were at least 62. Lawmakers said that provision was included to help seniors who are at risk of losing pension rights and Social Security benefits if they remarry.

An Expensive Request

Witold Skwierczynski, who is head of Social Security operations for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) which represents 28,000 Social Security employees, made a request in 2004 under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for certain Social Security documents. The response he received has shown up on the web. He was told that cost of responding to his request would be $813,747!

I know this is history, but the breadth of this request and the ridiculous response are both amazing. I knew there was bad blood there, but this is stunning!

Disability Appeals Chart

The National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) published the chart shown above that it obtained from Social Security. The chart shows the current results of Social Security's disability appeals process. Click on the image to get it in a full screen version.

NCSSMA On Budget And Backlogs

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA) has posted a statement that it made for the record to the House Appropriations Committee on March 30. However, the House Appropriations Committee website shows no hearing on that date. Maybe, the hearing is still to be scheduled. Here is an excerpt from their statement:

For Fiscal Year 2008, the President has proposed an increase for SSA of approximately $304.0 million over the final level of funding for Fiscal Year 2007. And yet, staffing levels in offices across the country are being cut. In fact, SSA will lose about 4,000 positions from the beginning of Fiscal Year 2006 to Fiscal year 2008. The most significant staffing losses in SSA have occurred in the agency’s Field Offices. Field Offices have lost about 2,300 positions in the past 18 months and about 1,200 positions in the past 6 months. The vast majority of these losses have been in the most critical positions in the Field: Claims Representatives and Service Representatives. All of this comes after five years of reductions to the President’s Budget Requests, which total $720.0 million dollars, and about 8,000 work years. It is interesting to note that while total Executive Branch Employment is expected to increase 2.1% from FY 2006 to FY 2008, SSA’s employment is expected to decrease by 6.2%.

NCSSMA has also posted the minutes of a conference call of their Executive Committee on March 22. Here are a couple of excerpts from that:

NCSSMA’s contacts related to the FY 2008 Budget Resolution have been very productive. Rachel is optimistic that there will be good news about the FY 2008 Budget Resolution and its recommendations for SSA very soon. Rachel and Rick are very encouraged with the reception they have been getting from the staff of key members of the House and Senate related to the Budget Resolution and SSA’s resources needs. There is definitely interest in SSA-related issues and the information we have been sharing has been both well-received and appreciated. ...

Rick and Greg met with Commissioner Astrue on March 1. The Commissioner spoke at length about disability backlogs and it is clear this will be his primary focus, at least for the short term. Congress is expecting him to respond to them about the problems with ODAR and disability backlogs by April 15. He has been working with Linda McMahon and other senior staff on many issues, and we can probably expect some changes to be announced in the near future.

Disability Claim Backlogs At VA Too

From the Houston Chronicle:

Nearly 400,000 disability claims were pending at the VA as of February, including 135,741 that exceeded the VA's 160-day goal for processing them. The department takes six months, on average, to process a claim, and the waiting time for appeals averages two years.

This already strained system may grow more overburdened in years ahead as many of the troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan return from those wars, experts say. The VA gives veterans from those two conflicts top priority in claims processing.

"The projected number of claims from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will rapidly turn the disability claims problem into a crisis," said Linda J. Bilmes, a Harvard University public policy professor who has studied the claims process and met with VA Secretary Jim Nicholson last month to discuss ways to improve it.