Is SSA Independent?

From today's New York Times:

The Social Security Administration says a federal judge’s ruling last week suspending a crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants could cause a major disruption in its processing of millions of routine retirement and disability claims.

In papers filed late Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, David A. Rust, an acting Social Security deputy commissioner, said a vast bureaucratic logjam would result unless the agency was allowed this month to mail about 141,000 already-prepared letters advising employers of discrepancies between workers’ Social Security information and agency records. Government lawyers said any delay in the mailing — or any requirement that the mailing be revised — would cause “significant harm” to the agency and “interfere with its ability to carry out its core functions.” ...

In a statement, Mr. Rust said the Social Security Administration had already delayed sending the letters to employers for several months this year as officials negotiated with immigration authorities over the new rules and the Senate debated an immigration bill, which failed in June.

Although Judge Chesney did not bar the agency from sending the letters if references to the new rules were removed, Mr. Rust said it would take 30 days to fix the mailing. He said any delay past mid-September would cause a backlog that would spread into the first half of 2008, when he said the agency was expecting a “significant increase” in its workload, though he did not say why. He said the agency was facing “severe budgetary constraints” and a staffing shortage. ...

This is utter balderdash. Delaying sending out the letters does no harm to the Social Security Administration. Sending them out is going to cause a huge workload increase. I am appalled to see this sort of misrepresentation to a federal court. This is not the sort of thing that we would want to see from an "independent" Social Security Administration. This is a sign of an agency acting as if it reported directly to the White House.

Technical Denials Soar -- Why?

The Social Security Administration has issued its 2006 Annual Statistical Report on the Social Security Disability Insurance Programs. Oddly, the report seems to contain almost no information on backlogs, even though statistics on adjudication backlogs may be of more interest to more people than anything included in the report.

Take a look at the outcomes chart. You can click on it to make it larger. It shows a recent dramatic increase in the number of technical denials. There were 104,344 technical denials in 1999 and 615,924 in 2004, according to an accompanying table. That would seem to call for a good explanation, but I cannot think of one other than that Social Security employees were using technical denials as a shortcut to getting their work done. Instead of helping a confused claimant, a Social Security employee would use that confusion as a pretext for denying the claim for failure to cooperate. Does anyone have a better explanation?

The chart also shows that initial awards and Appeals Council awards went down significantly after George W. Bush became President (and Jo Anne Barnhart became Commissioner of Social Security).

Privatization Not A Good Idea For Tony Snow

Tony Snow was, until recently, President Bush's press secretary. One of his jobs was defending Bush's proposal for partially privatizing Social Security, a plan that was based upon a belief that American workers wanted to and were capable of saving for their own retirements and managing those retirement investments. From Slate, a little irony:

Snow's own life in many ways symbolizes the downside of the ownership society—and suggests how much a government role in health and retirement benefits is necessary.

When Snow came to the White House after several years at the Fox News Channel, it was clear that he had relied entirely on others to save for his retirement. Snow conceded: "As a matter of fact, I was even too dopey to get in on a 401(k). So there is actually no Fox pension. The only media pension I have is through AFTRA [a union]." Even though his employer provided a 401(k) and would have matched contributions, and even though he was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, Snow had not shown either the interest or financial capability to manage his own retirement benefits.

Off Topic -- Death Of Pavarotti

I must have heard this at least a hundred times and the hair still stands up on the back of my neck ever time I hear this -- and I am not an opera fan.

Death Of ALJ "Cleve" Miller

I regret to report that Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) James "Cleve" Miller of Greenville, SC has passed away. His funeral is tomorrow. You can see a brief obituary at the Berry Funeral Home website.

QDD Made National

Effective immediately, the "Quick Disability Determination" or QDD process has been made national, according to a Federal Register item. Previously, QDD was an experiment in the Boston region only.

I have stated previously that I regard QDD as little more than a new name for something that has been around for decades. This may induce those unfamiliar with the program to think that Social Security has a new process to make disability decisions faster, but the truth is that this applies only to a small number of claims from the most seriously ill claimants, most of whom have terminal cancer. Social Security has always processed such claims expeditiously. Everything I have seen tells me that QDD is meaningless hype.

Opposing Views

From the Associated Press:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton promised retirees that if elected president she will not cut Social Security benefits, raise the retirement age or privatize the taxpayer-funded system. ...

"This is the most successful domestic program in the history of the United States," Clinton said to applause from seniors gathered in Washington to push their policy agenda. "When I'm president, privatization is off the table because it's not the answer to anything."

Also from the Associated Press:

[Republican] Presidential hopeful Sam Brownback said the current Social Security system "stinks" for younger workers -- including his children -- and instead should be shifted to optional personal accounts. ...

He said the system is making unfair promises to younger generations, missing an opportunity to make itself solvent and failing to offer any meaningful support for older Americans.

New Regulation

From today's Federal Register:

We [the Social Security Administration] are revising our regulations to reflect two provisions of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 that affect the payment of benefits under title XVI of the Social Security Act (the Act). One of the provisions extended temporary institutionalization benefits to children receiving SSI benefits who enter private medical treatment facilities and who otherwise would be ineligible for temporary institutionalization benefits because of private insurance coverage. The other provision replaced obsolete terminology in the Act that referred to particular kinds of medical facilities and substituted a broader, more descriptive term.