ALJ Association Rebuttal

From a statement filed with the House Social Security Subcommittee by the Association of Administrative Law Judges (AALJ), a union which represents many Social Security ALJs (emphasis in original):

For the April 23 2008 hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee on Clearing the Disability Backlog, Commissioner of Social Security Michael J. Astrue submitted a written statement and testified. The Association of Administrative Law Judges (AALJ) believes significant portions of the Commissioner’s statements were incorrect, misleading or irrelevant to the backlog issue. This statement is submitted in rebuttal. ...

It is critical to understand that currently, of the 758,000 total pending cases, 446,000 of them, 59% of the total backlog, are waiting in the hearing offices to be worked up for a judge to review. This is the precise location of the blockage causing the backlog. ...

The Commissioner’s statement that since he took office in early 2007 he has increased the number of support staff from 4.1 to 4.4 is a surprising statement. Of course any attrition in the number of judges would increase the ratio of staff to judge. To increase the ratio to 4.4 would require a net addition of about 300 staff, or approximately 2 per hearing office. It is quite possible that staff personnel have been added in administrative offices, not working on programs, but such personnel cannot legitimately be considered to be staff supporting the work of the judges. This statement needs clarification and supporting data. ...

Smoke and Mirrors
Many of SSA’s highly publicized “Initiatives to Reduce the Backlog” in fact can have little if any effect on actually reducing the backlog. A few examples:

• The National Hearing Center took five judges from several offices and put them together in a new office in Falls Church. Moving five judges does nothing to reduce the backlog.
• As explained above, hiring 175 new judges without adding adequate staff is a hollow gesture. It is equivalent to purchasing 175 new trucks and fuel for 20.
• SSA has expended approximately 50,000 hours of overtime to aid ODAR in getting its work done. The faults are that the money was spent on non-ODAR personnel who do not know the ODAR work and the overtime was viewed as a benefit and thus rotated among field office personnel. The personnel who learned the job this week were replaced the following week by new personnel who did not know the job. With time lost for on-the-job training plus overtime premium, the cost to SSA has been excessive and the production sub-standard.
• Even the initiative to clear out all cases more than 1,000 days old, while commendable, did not reduce the backlog. Dozens of pages in releases and reports have been devoted to hailing this as reducing the backlog when in fact it merely shifted the production effort from one group of claims to another.

SSA’s Public Relations machine is endeavoring to convince Congress and the public that it is reducing the backlog but a review of the initiatives discloses that, while they may give the appearance of reducing the backlog, in fact they do not. ...

(This is not available elsewhere online at this point to the best of my knowledge)

Mother's Day Message From Social Security

From The Star in Shelby, NC, but obviously from a Social Security press release:

"I helped my mom save $3,600 on prescription drugs and you can too."

As millions greet their moms Sunday with a "Happy Mother's Day," the Social Security Administration is using the tagline above to spread the word of how they're helping cut Medicare drug costs for those in need.

Have a parent on Medicare and with limited income? According to Paul D. Barnes, the Social Security Administration's regional commissioner, his office wants to hear from you.

Barnes, from his Atlanta office, said Congress passed a law in January 2006 for Medicare to expand to cover prescription drugs. And when Congress approved that motion, they also allowed Medicare beneficiaries to apply for extra help if they needed it.

The only problem? Not enough people know they're eligible. ..

Actually, I think there is another problem, lack of Social Security personnel to help with Medicare issues.

ACLU Gets involved

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is starting to pay attention to Social Security's backlogs and staffing problems. They put out a press release on April 23. They just put out filed a statement with the Senate Finance Committee yesterday.

Allsup Responds On Its Role As Debt Collector

I posted on April 21 about a Social Security Administration notice in the Federal Register seeking comments on the use of "master" and "sub" accounts as well as pre-authorization of drafts immediately after benefits are deposited as a means of collecting debts out of Social Security benefits. I mentioned that this seemed to me to raise questions about Allsup's "Overpayment Recovery Service." Allsup represents Social Security disability claimants mostly on behalf of Long Term Disability (LTD) insurers.

LTD plans always contain an offset for Social Security disability benefits. Many people win Social Security disability benefits only after a lengthy struggle. In these cases there are large amounts of back benefits. When the back benefits are paid, the LTD insurer has its hand out wanting back what it had earlier paid. Collecting this offset from the insured might be a problem. Allsup describes its Overpayment Recovery Service as "Withdraw overpayment funds directly from claimant’s bank account using our patented electronic process." I cannot say exactly how this "patented electronic process" works, but it seems obvious that the notice that Social Security published has to do, in part, with what Allsup is doing.

Allsup has belatedly responded to my post.

My opinion is that what they are doing is abusive, especially when one considers that they are both trying to represent a Social Security disability claimant and collect a debt from the claimant. This is a hopeless conflict of interest. More directly, what they are doing is a subterfuge to avoid the statute that makes assignment of Social Security benefits illegal:

The right of any person to any future payment under this title shall not be transferable or assignable, at law or in equity, and none of the moneys paid or payable or rights existing under this title shall be subject to execution, levy, attachment, garnishment, or other legal process, or to the operation of any bankruptcy or insolvency law.

No Match Letters To Cause "Massive Disruption Of The Work Force"

From David Hendricks at the San Antonio Express-News:

Letters listing millions of Social Security “no-match” workers are ready to mail to employers.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency personnel are trained and ready. Buses and vans are standing by for raids. Detention facilities have expanded.

All that is lacking is clearance from the courts.

Employers should be prepared in the coming months for immigration raids on scales never before staged by the federal government. ...

Austin lawyers Kevin Lashus and Robert Loughran compare the federal government's preparations for increased worksite enforcement to an army practicing for battle.

“The government expects a massive disruption of the work force,” Loughran said. “A climate of fear is the strategy of this administration.” ...

Lashus, a former ICE official, has been involved in some of the agency's previous workplace raids. Loughran is a longtime specialist in employer sanctions law.

Whereas ICE has routinely conducted about 10 raids a month, the lawyers expect the pace to rise significantly once the Social Security Administration mails the letters. ICE could strike workplaces 20 to 30 at a time in any given city. The agency would pause to process the cases, then begin new rounds of raids, Lashus said.

Homeland Security wanted to implement its plan last fall, but a U.S. district judge blocked Social Security's no-match letters after labor unions and other organizations contended the plan would disrupt companies and harm innocent workers. ...

Homeland Security appealed the judge's decision but in March proposed to go ahead on its plan. Any day now, the Arizona judge must decide whether to lift the injunction or make it permanent.

If the injunction becomes permanent, Social Security will hold the letters while Homeland Security again appeals. If the injunction is lifted, the no-match letters could be mailed within days.

So what happens at Social Security if this "massive disruption of the work force" goes forward? My best guess is massive disruption. Illegal immigrants will not be contacting the Social Security Administration. It will be U.S. citizens whose careers will be jeopardized by errors in databases and the simple failure to notify the Social Security Administration of name changes. These U.S. citizens will be unable to get through on the telephone. They will find impossibly long lines outside the doors of Social Security field offices. If my guess is correct, I think some people may be asking Michael Astrue why he did not give a stark public warning about what was going to happen.

Senator Snowe On Social Security Funding

Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, was present and asked questions at today's hearing. This afternoon, she posted the following on her blog at The Hill:

Both Congress and the Administration have failed mightily to provide the Social Security Administration the resources it needs to assist the millions of Americans who rely on its services. Consequently, the Agency has been unable to hire new employees to replace the 10 percent of its workforce that has retired in just the last two years.

As baby boomers begin applying for Social Security and disability claims increase, it is absolutely critical that Congress provide the appropriate funding to address this shortfall and prepare for future challenges. Our constituents deserve nothing less, and we must not fail to act on this priority.

What Struck Me About Today's Hearing

I have not yet been able to watch all of today's hearing. The thing that struck me most about what I was able to watch was the comments made by Senator Bunning. Bunning had previously been most insistent that Social Security's hearing backlog, at least, had nothing to do with budget. At this hearing Bunning talked about how getting the Social Security Administration $240 million above the President's recommended budget for the next fiscal year is "essential." He browbeat Linda McMahon about why her agency had not been more independent about submitting its own budget to Congress. I have seen Bunning browbeat other witnesses in the past and did not like it. I found his browbeating of McMahon especially unfortunate, since she is not responsible for Social Security's budget submissions. Perhaps I had misinterpreted some comments he made earlier or perhaps he is now seeing the light. Clearly, he now realizes that Social Security has a big budget problem. Perhaps, it is the office closures and the telephones not being answered. It has to be hard for a Senator to ignore that. If a fairly right wing Senator like Bunning is talking like this, things are changing.

Written Statements At Senate Finance Committee Hearing

From the Committee Chairman, Max Baucus:

My staff found that many Montanans who tried to phone the field offices got busy signals for weeks. In desperation, these Montanans gave up trying to telephone the local field offices. They drove hundreds of miles to the offices and back. This is not acceptable.

In 2006, Social Security surveyed people who reached the field offices by telephone. They found that most callers — 51 percent — had encountered busy signals earlier that day.

And the 51 percent figure is only the tip of the iceberg. Social Security could survey only the people who actually got through to the field offices’ automated answering services or to an employee. If you got a busy signal for weeks on end, and never got through, you were not even part of the survey sample. ...

By the end of last year, Social Security indicated that there was already a backlog of 1,000 workyears for the workloads that are being deferred. That’s not even including the deferred medical continuing disability reviews and SSI redeterminations. By the end of next year, that backlog is expected to grow to 8,100 work-years.

From the Ranking Member, Charles Grassley:

I recently instructed my staff to begin a comprehensive review to identify ways to reduce administrative complexity and improve program integrity [at Social Security]. This is an ongoing effort that is still in progress. I hope to introduce legislation before the end of this summer.

From Linda McMahon, Deputy Commissioner for Operations (somebody screwed up since her statement still has a "Draft" watermark on it):

Although the President's budget will allow us to process more continuing disability reviews and SSI non-disability redeterminations, we still will be unable to address as much of this important workload as we did just a few years ago. ... Although the [President's proposed] FY 2009 budget will allow us to make important strides in core areas, the backlogs of our less visible work, which is generally performed after an individual is approved for benefits, will continue to grow.

This sounds like she thinks her agency needs more money than the President proposed.

From Rick Warsinskey, Past President, National Council of Social Security Management Associations:

We are very skeptical that any computer program could be designed to fully substitute for the in-depth review and analysis that our Claims Representatives conduct for claimants filing for benefits. Again, we are discussing a quarter of a million dollar worth of benefits and the options on selecting these benefits are varied and can be very complicated. Would individuals turn over investing their own money to a computer without any human analysis? We don’t believe SSA has developed a thinking computer, we are nowhere close. We do believe that new estimating software being produced by SSA can assist in educating the claimants on their choices. But this should be backed up by someone who is an expert at providing this assistance. ...

A key concern we have at this time is that there is intense pressure on our employees to increase internet utilization in SSA at the same time the back end of the product we receive isn’t fully ready for prime time. Once a tested and proven internet claims product that works better is released it would be more appropriate to market and try to increase utilization. But all claimants should have the choice to file a claim on the internet and not be pressured to do so. We are aware of instances where some claimants come into a Field Office to file but are encouraged to go back home and file their claim on the internet. We believe this practice is occurring to meet intense pressure to attain internet percentage goals that are often set at regional and area levels.

From Witold Skwierczynski, President of the American Federation of Government Employees National Council of Social Security Administration Field Operations Locals:

Employees who work on the SSA front lines and interact with the public are assigned impossible workloads. They are expected to increase their productivity, interview more and more claimants, maintain a high level of accuracy, provide friendly and compassionate service when interacting with the public while Congress and the President not only assign more programs and workloads to the Agency but do so while reducing staff. Dedicated veteran employees are fed up with the deteriorating stressful work environment and count the days till they can retire. SSA changes priorities and engages in crisis management efforts to plug the rapidly multiplying holes in the dam. ...

SSA staffing shortages have encouraged 3rd party businesses to fill the void and offer to assist claimants in their interactions with SSA. Such assistance, of course, is for a price. Few claimants attempt to navigate the SSA hearings appeal system without representation. However, SSA has plans to encourage and assist 3rd parties in expanding the menu of services that they offer claimants for a fee. ...

SSA asserts that 2.5 million electronic transactions were completed by the public in FY 07. However, a substantial number of these electronic transactions were problematic to the degree that SSA employees were required to recontact the transactor. SSA employees are very concerned about the direction of the Agency strategy toward unreviewed Internet transactions because few Internet applications are completed accurately and, consequently, require recontact by SSA employees.

Barbara Bovbjerg of the Government Accountability Office also testified. It is impossible for me to copy anything from her report. Read it online, however.