$1 Billion In First Year?

I do not understand the difference between this and the GAO study, but this is from the written statement of Barbara Kennelly, of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare to the House Social Security Subcommittee:

The National Committee was dismayed to learn that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the cost to SSA of the major immigration proposal would be more than $1 billion – nearly 10 percent of the agency’s administrative budget – in just the first year of implementation. Over 10 years, the plan would cost over $9 billion.

Cost Of Mandatory E-Verify

From a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress:

SSA has estimated that implementation of a mandatory E-Verify program would cost a total of about $281 million and require hiring 700 new employees for a total of 2,325 additional workyears for fiscal years 2009 through 2013.

Roundup Of News Items

There are too many news items on Social Security backlogs and office closures today to give each its own post, which is an interesting milestone in and of itself. Here are today's items:

• The Times Observer of Warren, Pennsylvania is running a story on Kathy Bimber who says she was left legally blind by a tumor, but who was denied Social Security disability benefits. She has contacted many elected officials without success. She is draining her family's savings as she waits for a hearing that may be two years off. Mrs. Bimber cannot understand since she says "I don't want welfare."
• CBS 46 in Atlanta reports on the delays in obtaining a hearing on a Social Security disability claims. I had wondered when a news outlet in Atlanta would finally report this story. Atlanta has the worst backlogs in the country.
• The Galveston News has an editorial on the decision to close the local Social Security field office. I would suggest that the paper start asking their Congressional representatives what they plan to do to prevent this office closure. See below.
  
• The Quad-City Times is running an article on the successful effort to keep the Clinton, Iowa Social Security field office open. The effort was successful due to the efforts of the state's Congressional representatives, particularly Senator Harkin.
  

Growth At Memphis ODAR Office

From the Memphis Business Journal:

The Social Security Administration Office of Disability, Adjudication and Review [ODAR] will move ... by the end of June.

The government agency ... will employ 45 people in the Downtown office building.

The Social Security office ... had outgrown its space.

House Social Security Subcommittee Hearing This Morning

The House Social Security Subcommittee has a hearing this morning (May 6) at 10:00 on "current and proposed employment eligibility verification systems and their impact on the ability of the Social Security Administration (SSA) to fulfill its core mission of administering Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits." No representative of SSA will testify, but there will be many witnesses, mostly speaking about problems with the Bush Administration "no-match" proposal.

The hearing should be available in streaming video.

NADE Newsletter: Meetings, OIG Investigation, Legislative Proposal?, Differing Viewpoints On Testing For Malingering

The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of Disability Determination Service employees, has issued its Spring 2008 Newsletter.

Some nuggets from the newsletter (with a couple of comment in brackets]:

• A description of a meeting between NADE leaders and Michael Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security
• A reference to a "closed" meeting between Astrue and members of the House Social Security Subcommittee
  
• "The Inspector General is doing an audit of SSA and state DDSs in response to the CBS program which indicated there is a 'climate of denial'. The IG staff plan to speak with DDS examiners in several states and people have left the state DDS agencies." [I will make a fearless prediction that Social Security's Inspector General will not find a "climate of denial."]
• "Legislation is being developed to allow SSA to request health records without an actual release form. The legislation will offer the assurance that SSA has an Electronic signature on file. Legislation has also been proposed to require attorneys to use iAppeal, the internet appeal process." [Legislation? I had heard that Social Security was considering requiring attorneys to file appeals via the internet, but I had assumed that regulations would be proposed. Did NADE misunderstand? If it is legislation, what else would be in this legislative proposal?]
  

The newsletter contains what is described as an "independent response" that will be of interest to some. Here is an excerpt:

A RECENT POLICY CLARIFICATION to a DDS questioner by the Social Security Administration on whether “tests of malingering” have any value for SSA evaluations will have a chilling effect on the scientific responsibility of psychology examiners to assess the validity of their findings. We believe this policy to be misguided, for it leads to inaccurate assessment in psychological consultative examinations (PCEs), and it can actually be harmful in permitting fraud, waste, and abuse of the system.

The policy statement claims that “malingering cannot be proven with tests,” and “malingering is one aspect of the larger sphere of inaccurate self-report.” The writer also said that the claimant who is likely to be malingering may have true impairment, and thus it is difficult to distinguish limiting effects of impairment from evidence that the impairment is fabricated or exaggerated. Echoing statements to the Administrative Law Judges (2005) by Dr. Terrence Dunlop, chief psychologist for DDS, the writer concludes that Symptom Validity Tests (SVT) are not “programmatically useful” in resolving the issue of credibility of claimants, and that there is no “gold standard” for establishing symptom validity.

This policy ignores the rigorous scientific development of symptom validity testing and malingering assessment over the last 10-15 years ...

On Hold

From the Raleigh, NC News and Observer:

The Social Security Administration's has reduced its staffing by more than 5 percent since 2003, to about 60,000.

That means seniors such as Early L. Graham of Raleigh have dealt with long hold times and promises of call backs that never come.

"I had to call three different numbers before I got anyone on the phone," Graham said.

Brian Simpson, a spokesman at the Social Security office in Raleigh, said he hears similar complaints all the time.

Trying to handle customer demand with fewer employees, the agency has shifted some workers away from phone lines to front desks to assist walk-in clients.

Graham, 64, said he has tried for more than a year to resolve a complicated issue regarding his Social Security payments. On the rare occasions when he has gotten someone on the phone, he has had to explain his situation from the beginning.

Success In New Jersey

From the New Jersey Herald:

It was an unexpected and totally welcome surprise.

Cassandra Kutner, a Lafayette wife and mother of two who was caught in a cycle of debt and unpaid bills, feels like she "won the lottery" when she got a call Monday from Social Security informing her that she had been approved for disability payments.

Kutner and her family had been living without her income since her multiple sclerosis worsened to the point that she could no longer work as a paralegal. She applied for disability in July 2007, and received a denial in February. In the meantime, bills kept piling up on the counter, and the family had even started using a wood-burning stove to lower their heating bills. But Kutner hired a lawyer, and the New Jersey Herald covered her story. ...

[I]n a little over two months, she got the call from Social Security telling her she'd received disability.

"It was way, way sooner than we had thought ... it was way earlier than we had expected," she said.