Bush Budget Message Coming In Early February

The Disability Policy Collaboration Capitol Insider reports that President Bush's budget for fiscal year (FY) 2009, which begins on October 1, 2008, will be released on February 4. Commissioner Astrue's requested budget for the Social Security Administration should be released at about the same time.

Lack Of Planning

From an editorial entitled "Lack of Planning" in the Las Vegas Sun:

Federal auditors say the Social Security Administration lacks a sufficient plan to address its backlog of hundreds of thousands of disability claims. ...

The report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, says 1.5 million claims remained unresolved at the end of 2006 and 576,000 of those were backlogged meaning they had exceeded the amount of time generally needed for resolution of claims. ...

Social Security Administration officials have said that in order to hire enough staff to adequately process the backlog, the agency needs $100 million beyond the $275 million increase that Congress approved in December. Both amounts are more than President Bush has proposed in his 2008 budget, which calls for funding at the existing level.

The GAO, however, said that regardless of whether funding is increased, the agency needs to improve the poor communication that exists among the agency’s state offices, where initial claims are handled. ...

Social Security Administration officials also must improve the monitoring of claims as they enter the appeals process, the GAO says, and must adequately plan and execute programs to address the backlog something the agency has failed to do.

It is sad to think that Americans who are unable to work because of injury or illness are helplessly watching bills pile up and mortgages go into arrears while waiting years for the federal government to decide whether assistance will be granted. Congress must see to it that the GAO’s recommendations are carried out.

Note here that the GAO report has succeeded in convincing a newspaper editorial writer that most of the backlog problem at Social Security is due to poor leadership at the Social Security Administration. In a sense this is true. Social Security's leaders have been unwilling to exhibit leadership by speaking up and telling the world that they lack adequate funding. Their inability to speak the truth has been coupled with a willingness to come up with increasingly desperate "Hail Mary passes" such as re-engineering, Hearing Process Improvement (HPI) and Disability Service Improvement (DSI) to create the illusion that there is a plan to address the backlogs. We are to the point now that the current Commissioner can only come up with pathetic, meaningless phrases such as "compassionate allowances" that, even on their face, offer no solution to the backlog problem.

While Congress was considering Social Security's operating budget for the current fiscal year, Astrue was willing only to hint that his agency needed more operating funds than provided for in the President's budget, even though he knew well that Bush's budget might not even be enough to keep the backlogs from growing. This is poor leadership indeed.

CBS Promotes Allsup

The CBS News website contains a fair amount of material promoting Allsup, Inc., a large non-attorney representative group.

16,000 Have Died Over The Last Two Years

The first part of the CBS News story on the Social Security disability backlogs ran tonight. If you missed watching it, you can check out the video online.

The report contained the news that 16,000 Social Security disability claimants had died while awaiting a hearing in the last two years.

Astrue On Upcoming CBS Report On Backlogs

An e-mail distributed to Social Security employees:

^Commissioner Broadcast
Monday, January 14, 2008 12:36 PM
COMMISSIONER'S BROADCAST--01/14/08

A Message To All SSA And DDS employees

Disability Story

I wanted all of you to know that the CBS Evening News is doing a two-part investigative series on the disability backlog tonight and tomorrow night.

Part of what CBS will report is precisely what I told Congress in May of last year. I testified, "The length of time many people wait for their final disability decision is unacceptable. Further I said, "For some, the long wait for their day in court leads to homelessness and the loss of family and friends. Sadly, people have died waiting for a hearing."

It appears from their promotional materials that the stories will focus heavily on the problems -- as you might expect from an investigative report. What is less clear is whether they will report on the solutions we have already started implementing.

Let me assure you we did our best to convey to CBS that we are attacking the problems with urgency and that we have made real progress in the past year despite declining resources and increasing demands. As I told CBS, we have dedicated employees who are doing their best to address these problems.

Results Of Last Week's Unscientific Poll

Will Michael Astrue stay on as Commissioner after George W. Bush leaves office?

Yes (37)	36%
No (19)	19%
Only if a Republican is elected President in 2008 (46)	45%

Total Votes: 102

Alleged Scams In Wisconsin

From the Associated Press:

An investigation of potential fraud netted 83 people in Wisconsin accused of bilking the U.S. Social Security Administration of some $663,000, an agency investigator said Wednesday.

According to state and federal prosecutors, the defendants falsely claimed they didn’t receive their benefit checks, and then cashed their replacement checks along with the originals.

Indiana Paper Reports On Backlogs

An excerpt from the first of a two part series in the South Bend Tribune:

Hunting clothes lie on the floor of his home -- his mother's basement -- and 50-year-old Robert Auer figures he'll sell those off, too. ...

A year ago, he was looking at his own stuff in the one-story bungalow on Milburn Avenue he gutted, remodeled and lived in for 12 years -- gone now in a foreclosure.

He laments that he would have been able to keep the house had he received monthly checks from Social Security Disability Insurance.

He first applied four years ago, then applied again, then again through a hearing, then through an appeal.

His is one of 26,820 disability cases that are pending in Indiana -- and more than 700,000 nationwide -- that are caught in agonizing delays, a backlog that the Social Security Administration says has mushroomed. ...

A Social Security report in September pointed out that some disabled people end up homeless or losing family and friends during their long wait to resolve their cases.

Is this "Social Security report" from September something the agency did or is it a reference to something in the media?