Working Under A CR

From David Ignatius via the Denver Post:

The talk among some of my government buddies this week was an obscure term of federal budgeting known as a "continuing resolution." This is what Congress passes when it hasn't gotten its act together to pass a real appropriations bill before the start of a new fiscal year. The "CR," as it's known, allows agencies to continue operating at the same spending level as the previous year. ...

We are now a month into fiscal 2008 without Congress having approved a single appropriations bill. That means that every federal agency is operating on a "CR" basis, with that funding due to expire Nov. 16. ...

Late appropriations have become a chronic problem, whichever party is in control of Congress. According to Philip Joyce, a budget expert who teaches at George Washington University, Congress has managed to pass all its appropriations bills on time in only three years since 1977. ...

[Rop] Meyers [a political scientist] summarized the inefficiencies that result from having to run an agency without knowing your budget. "When regular appropriations are delayed, uncertainty about final appropriations leads many managers to hoard funds; in some cases, hiring and purchasing stops.

These effects are so unnecessarily counterproductive, it is surprising (the comic strip) 'Dilbert' has not devoted a month to this topic." Joyce argues that government contractors jack up their prices to compensate for the risk and uncertainty. And he notes the added cost for federal agencies who have to plan for the possibility that a new CR won't be approved and that they may have to shut down. "That's what economists would call a dead-weight loss," says Joyce.

"It's a lousy way to do business," says Leon Panetta, who grappled with these issues as director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration.

"You're almost guaranteeing that there will be incompetence, because the agencies don't have the resources to do the job."

U.S. Sweden Social Security Treaty

The Social Security Administration has published a notice in the Federal Register that a supplementary Social Security treaty between the United States and Sweden is going into effect. The new treaty addresses changes in Sweden's Social Security program.

ALJ Register

From the Baltimore Sun:

The Social Security Administration can start hiring the judges needed to speed the processing of disability claims now that a new list of candidates qualified for the job is available.

This week, the Office of Personnel Management released a new roster of more than 600 ready-to-hire administrative law judges, said Mike Orenstein, a spokesman for the agency. ...

"Under our collective bargaining agreement, we have to let the existing ALJs who want to move into openings move first," said Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue. "We're required to go through a musical chairs process. That adds a couple of months to the process."

Good News On Social Security Budget

From Stephen Barr's column in the Washington Post:

The Social Security Administration -- where staffing is at its lowest levels since the 1970s and the number of disability claims are at an all-time high -- got some hopeful news on its budget yesterday.

The House and Senate appropriations committees agreed to provide the agency with $9.9 billion for operations in fiscal 2008. That is $275 million more than the Bush administration requested and probably enough to keep Social Security from drowning, at least for the short term, in its growing workload.

The problem is that the President has promised to veto this appropriations bill. The ultimate outcome is uncertain. For the moment, the Social Security Administration is operating under a continuing funding resolution at last year's rate. As a result, the agency is under a complete hiring freeze. The budget stalemate and Social Security's hiring freeze could go on for months.

Shooting Outside Social Security Office in Massachusetts

From Yahoo News:

Two people were injured Thursday in a shooting outside the Social Security Office in Dorchester.

Police are looking for three men who shot at a man and a woman while the couple sat in their car in the parking lot off Freeport Street at about 3 p.m. They drove themselves a few blocks and called police.

A Question

Why have we not heard anything recently about the effects of the EDIB electronic disability file upon Social Security's productivity? EDIB was supposed to create large productivity gains for the Social Security Administration. We heard early on that EDIB was hurting productivity, but there was a reasonable argument that the productivity losses were nothing more than normal startup problems.

EDIB is past the initial startup. If there are productivity gains from EDIB, they should be showing up. One would think that if there had been productivity gains that the Social Security Administration would have been quick to get the word out. One would also think that we would have heard a good deal about the effects of EDIB on Social Security productivity from Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) and from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) about productivity under EDIB, but we have heard nothing.

Why the silence?

Deep Freeze

In case you have wondered just how serious the hiring freeze is at Social Security, currently the agency lists no job openings whatsoever -- at an agency with something like 55,000 employees.

One Big Reason Why Field Office Closures Matter

I have gotten many comments wondering why I keep focusing upon the closure or threatened closure of a few small Social Security field offices. I do not know if Michael Astrue was trying to surreptitiously put pressure on Congress to increase his agency's budget by threatening to close Social Security field offices at the same time as he stuck closely to the Bush Administration party line of opposing any increase in the Social Security administrative budget, but that was clearly the effect. Here is an excerpt from the Carlsbad, NM Current Argus on two Senators' motivation for trying to increase Social Security's budget:

[Senator] Bingaman also added an amendment to the FY2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Bill calling for a $150 million increase in Social Security administration.

"So they can deal with the enormous backlog of cases that are pending there in people applying for disability benefits," Bingaman told the Senate. "The average wait is 523 days now. If a person filed today for a hearing in Social Security, they would expect to get that hearing in June of 2009. That is unacceptable. We need to do better."

Maria Najera, a spokeswoman for Bingaman's office, said the senator is concerned with communities like Carlsbad.

"We want to use that money to fix problems like in Carlsbad where they are having staff problems," Najera said. Carlsbad officials are presently fighting to keep the Social Security Administration office here open, and the office has been understaffed for several years.

Domenici supported Bingaman's amendment.

"For citizens who are on disability to have to wait two years on an appeal, as the Senator said, is unacceptable," Domenici told the Senate. "The money this is providing will take care of that."