Hello Tacloban!

This blog is getting regular visits from Tacloban, the capital city of Leyte in the Philippines. I would be happy to hear from our friend in Tacloban. (If you are wondering, the picture is of an impressive bridge in the Tacloban area. The picture may not do the bridge justice.)

Status Of Appropriations -- It's A Trainwreck

From The Hill:

Senate Republicans refused to meet Democrats Tuesday on spending ...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) countered the majority’s plans with a proposal that would require Democrats to accept virtually all of President Bush’s demands on spending.

McConnell demanded that Democrats also provide $70 billion for the war with no strings attached. ...

The majority leader disdained McConnell’s proposal, noting that an earlier Republican effort to increase war funding without restrictions failed to pass. [Senate Majority Leader] Reid was not ready to accept an across-the-board funding cut to pare the omnibus to Bush’s ceiling. ...

Democratic House leaders, including Pelosi, Hoyer and Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.), met Tuesday to discuss strategy. Pelosi also met Reid to discuss spending and taxes.

But they do not appear to have decided how to break the impasse. ...

Obey has proposed reducing the cost of the omnibus to Bush’s proposal and cutting all lawmakers’ earmarks to spare a variety of programs from cuts. He hopes rank-and-file Republicans will press their leaders to accept higher domestic spending to save projects slated for their districts, said a Democratic aide.

Reid was not embracing that idea when asked about it Tuesday.

Incident At Wilson, NC Field Office

An e-mail that was just forwarded to me:

The Wilson, NC office was closed at approximately 10:15 AM on Tuesday, December 11, 2007. A claimant brought an appeals package into the office for his recently denied disability claim. When the Service Representative opened the package at the front desk, a white powder was spilled into the air and surrounding area. The claimant was somewhat vague in explaining the origin of the white powder. The police were called and they have shut down the office until they can determine the chemical make-up of the powder. They are currently interviewing the claimant.

Ernestine Durham
Area Director
North Carolina

New England Disability Law Listserver

The CONNECT Board contains information about a listserver for New England attorneys and representatives for Social Security disability claimants. I know that the North Carolina Acadamy of Trial Lawyers listserver for Social Security attorneys has been incredibly useful.

Federal Offices To Be Closed On December 24

Traditionally, federal employees get only one day off for Christmas. However, President Bush has ordered federal offices closed on Christmas eve this year. Agency heads may still order federal offices to stay open "for reasons of national security or defense or other public need." It seems unlikely that the Commissioner of Social Security would try to keep Social Security offices open on December 24.

New York Times Editorial On Social Security Backlogs

From today's New York Times:

We know what is behind President Bush’s sudden enthusiasm for fiscal discipline after years of running up deficits and debt: political posturing, just in time for the 2008 election. But one should not forget the damage that his administration has also inflicted by shortchanging important domestic programs in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy and his never-ending Iraq war.

A case in point is the worsening bureaucratic delays at the chronically underfunded Social Security Administration that have kept hundreds of thousands of disabled Americans from timely receipt of their Social Security disability benefits. ...

The cause of the bottlenecks is well known. There are simply too few administrative law judges — 1,025 at present — to keep up with the workload. The Social Security Administration is adopting automated tools and more efficient administrative practices, but virtually everyone agrees that no real dent will be made in the backlog until the agency can hire more judges and support staff.

The blame for this debacle lies mostly with the Republicans. For most of this decade, the administration has held the agency’s budget requests down and Republican-dominated Congresses have appropriated less than the administration requested. Now the Democratic-led Congress wants to increase funding to the Social Security Administration, and the White House is resisting.

Last month, Congress passed a $151 billion health, education and labor spending bill that would have given the Social Security Administration $275 million more than the president requested, enough to hire a lot more judges and provide other vital services. But Mr. Bush vetoed that bill as profligate.

Democrats in Congress are working on a compromise to meet Mr. Bush half way on the whole range of domestic spending bills. The White House is not interested in compromise.

If the president remains intransigent, federal agencies may have to limp along under continuing resolutions that maintain last year’s spending levels. That would likely, among many other domestic problems, crimp any new hiring at the Social Security Administration and might require furloughs, leading to even longer waits. ...

Clinton Press Release On Social Security Backlogs

In response to yesterday's New York Times piece on Social Security's backlogs, Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign issued a press release criticizing President Bush's recent veto of an appropriations bill that would have increased Social Security's funding.

Appropriations Wrangles Continue

From Fox News:

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., had been working with moderate Republicans to try to generate momentum for a catchall spending bill that split the differences between increases sought by Democrats and the strict budget submitted by President Bush in February.

But after a White House veto threat over the weekend, a frustrated Obey said he would rip up the compromise bill and devise a new one using the strict spending ceiling set by Bush — but would reach it by whacking GOP priorities and stripping the measure of billions of dollars in pet projects for lawmakers in both parties. ...

"Short of having somebody in authority sit down and say, 'OK, we will work out a reasonable compromise,' I don't see any point in prolonging the agony," Obey said. "I don't see how we have any choice but to go to the president's numbers on appropriations to make clear that we aren't going to link the war with token funding on the domestic side."

Obey's sentiments weren't universally shared among Democrats. Senate Appropriations Chairman Byrd still hoped to work out an agreement, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., met Monday afternoon with GOP counterpart Mitch McConnell of Kentucky in hopes of putting the omnibus measure back on track. ...

Obey's comments appeared aimed in part at encouraging the sizable bloc of pragmatic Republicans supporting the split-the-differences bill to press GOP leaders to make concessions or risk losing funding for favored programs and hometown projects.