Rescission Of Acquiescence Ruling

From today's Federal Register:

On July 11, 1994, we issued SSR 94–4p which implemented the decisions in Buffington, et al. v. Schweiker and Califano v. Yamasaki, and provided that prior to the denial of waiver of recovery of an overpayment ...

In order to fulfill our stewardship responsibilities to the Social Security trust fund, we must employ methods that will simplify our personal conference procedures and use our resources most efficiently. We should be using all available technology when we conduct personal conferences. Therefore, elsewhere in this Federal Register, we published the final rule ‘‘Methods for Conducting Personal Conferences When Waiver of Recovery of a Title II or Title XVI Overpayment Cannot Be Approved’’ which revised the regulations to allow for personal conferences to be conducted face-to-face at a place we designate (usually in the
field office), by telephone, or by video teleconference.

Final Regulations On Overpayment

From today's Federal Register:

We are revising our title II regulations and adding title XVI regulations on personal conferences when waiver of recovery of an overpayment cannot be approved. These final rules allow for the conferences to be conducted face-to-face, by telephone, or by video teleconference in these circumstances.

DATES: These final rules are effective February 11, 2008.

Cleveland Gets Help

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

If you're one of the 14,000 people in Northeast Ohio who have been waiting months -- or years -- for a judge to decide if you qualify for government disability checks, 2008 could bring good news.

A number of improvements have been launched to try to reduce lengthy waits for disability hearings in Cleveland and across the country.

One of those changes was the opening Dec. 17 of a National Hearing Center in Virginia. Five hundred Cleveland cases were transferred to the center, where they will be handled in video hearings, according to Mark Hinkle, a spokesman for the national Social Security Administration office in Maryland. And, Hinkle said in an e-mail, an additional 120 Cleveland cases will be sent there each month. ...

Since he was sworn in about a year ago, Astrue has been working on solutions.

Among them, Hinkle said, is adding six judges to the nine who now hear cases in the Cleveland hearing office. ...

Those judges will be among 150 added across the country, Hinkle wrote in an e-mail response to questions from The Plain Dealer. "Training for the first new hires is scheduled to begin in mid-April 2008," he wrote. So it will be months before they begin hearing cases.

As deserving of extra help as Cleveland is, Atlanta is even worse. Is Atlanta getting extra help with its backlog which is even worse? Of course, the Atlanta newspaper has not been running articles on the backlog. Is help being allocated based upon who needs it most or on who yells the loudest?

Even though Social Security is getting $150 million more than the President asked for and Commissioner Astrue asked for and planned for, according to this article the number of Administrative Law Judges to be hired is staying at 150, which is little more than needed just to cover attrition over the two year time period from the time President Bush introduced his budget plan until there is a new budget.

More Comments On Proposed Procedural Regulations

Probably there are still more comments mailed to Social Security waiting to be processed, but here are two recently posted comments from Senators.

• Senator John Kerry
• Senator Joseph Lieberman

Treasury Still Trying To Promote Privatization

The Department of the Treasury has released its "Issue Brief No. 3 Social Security Reform: Benchmarks for Assessing Fairness and Benefit Adequacy."

Bomb Threat In Ohio

There seems to be a lot of this going around. From the Daily Jeffersonian:

A bomb threat was reported this afternoon at the Social Security office on Woodlawn Avenue in downtown Cambridge [OH].

Local law enforcement and emergency personnel responded to the scene and an explosives sniffing dog was brought in.

No explosives were found and there are no reports of injuries.

The FBI is conducting an investigation.

AARP Comments On Proposed Procedural Regulations

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has submitted comments on the proposed procedural regulations changes. I have reproduced the AARP comments on the separate Social Security Perspectives Blog, since I have not yet seen them on the federal website where all these comments are supposed to be displayed. Perhaps I missed it or perhaps Social Security is still uploading these.

In the unlikely event you did not already know it, AARP is an 800 pound gorilla when it comes to Social Security. It would take a brave Commissioner to adopt these proposed regulations in the face of such strong opposition from AARP, but the Bush Administration has not been shy about doing things that a basketball fan such as myself would describe as "in your face."

Social Security Subcommittee Hearing

From the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee:

Congressman Michael R. McNulty (D-NY), Chairman, Subcommittee on Social Security of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing to examine Social Security provisions affecting some public employees and other workers and their families who face hardships in retirement, or in the event of disability or death. The hearing will take place on Wednesday, January 16, 2008, in the main committee hearing room, 1100 Longworth House Office Building, beginning at 10:00 a.m.