New Regs On Hold

On November 21, 2008, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) cleared proposed regulations to make "technical revisions to our rules on income and resources to conform with previous changes to the Social Security Act" and "to extend the home exclusion to individuals who leave a home because of domestic abuse."

Ordinarily, proposed regulations appear in the Federal Register within a week after they clear OMB. This one has not yet been published.

I can only surmise that the Obama transition team has asked Commissioner Astrue to put a hold on all regulatory activity until after the inauguration and that hold includes something as innocuous as this proposal seems to be.

Update: I spoke too soon. The proposed regulations will be in the Federal Register on December 9.

Can't Spend The Money Fast Enough

Take a look at this post by Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman to his blog at the New York Times. Krugman believes that our economy is losing jobs at an incredible rate. The new conventional wisdom is that we need massive infrastructure spending to prevent an economic calamity, but Krugman fears that it will take most of a year before infrastructure projects can kick in. We may be at double digit unemployment before infrastructure projects can even help the economy in any significant way.

As I read this, I wonder how Social Security would fit into a situation in which it becomes urgent for the federal government to spend money rapidly. A temporary moratorium on the FICA tax? Large bonus payments to Social Security recipients? Interim benefits for Social Security disability claimants? Massively increased operational budget for the agency? Obviously, every agency in government would be affected, but Social Security distributes more money than any other agency.

Social Security Retirement Woes

From Government Executive:

As 78 million baby boomers near retirement, the Social Security Administration faces double trouble; not only will it have to provide benefit and pension services to this large retiree population, it also must address a retirement wave within its own workforce.

While many federal agencies have not yet been shaken by the mass exodus of seasoned workers projected in the next eight years, Social Security expects its retirements to peak by 2010. Currently, about 25 percent of its 61,000 employees are eligible to retire, including 60 percent of senior executives. "The retirement wave has doubled for us," says Reginald Wells, deputy commissioner for human resources and chief human capital officer at Social Security. "As the baby boomers are retiring and moving into more leisure activities, they are coming to us to register for that retirement, and our employees are retiring in record numbers." ...

"Our workforce is the lowest it's been since the [1974] supplemental Social Security income came into being," Wells says. "We're down to 61,000 employees, down from 85,000 at one point." ...

And while Congress has offered Social Security a bigger budget and more staffing flexibilities, Wells says, the agency still cannot replace every position one for one, and it's the commissioner's and managers' responsibility to pinpoint where the most urgent hiring needs are.

Unions To Have More Clout Under Obama

From the Federal Times:

For eight years, federal unions have felt left out in the cold with an administration clearly at odds with organized labor. Now that Barack Obama is on his way, unions expect a warmer relationship — and more clout. ...

For federal managers, the change will mean the likely return of the Clinton-era formalized labor-management partnerships between senior government officials and union leaders. Those were dissolved within weeks of the Bush administration taking power....

Greg Heineman, a district manager for the Social Security Administration in Norfolk, Neb., who is also president of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations, worries that managers could lose some important authorities if partnerships aren’t implemented correctly.

“If we go back to the partnerships, it should be clearly defined what areas are open for partnership discussions and which areas are still management’s prerogative,” Heineman said. “Under [President Bill] Clinton, at least from the feedback we got from our members, a lot of the problem was that it wasn’t clear what the rules were.”

Heineman said unions sometimes had too much say in management decisions, such as choosing exceptional SSA employees for financial awards. SSA’s partnership allowed the American Federation of Government Employees to help decide who received awards, and Heineman said the union pushed to hand out smaller awards to more people. Managers wanted to hand out bigger awards to only the best employees, he said.

“It took the ability away from managers to reward employees doing an outstanding job, and the awards were more flat,” Heineman said.

If partnerships return, Heineman said managers will welcome the opportunity to exchange ideas with employees and unions. But he wants to make sure managers retain important authorities, such as the ability to assign work to employees as they see fit.

Of course, the extent of the President's ability to order an independent Commissioner of Social Security to cooperate with employee unions is unclear. Will Commissioner Astrue discover the indepedence of his office after President Bush leaves office and, if so, what the wouldCongress and President Obama do about the exercise of such indepedence?

Results Of Last Week's Unscientific Poll

How good a job do you think that Lisa de Soto did as head of ODAR?

Excellent (16)	15%
Good (6)	6%
Good, Considering (12)	12%
Fair (12)	12%
Poor (24)	23%
Terrible (34)	33%

Total Votes: 104

Allsup Plans Large Expansion

The Belleville News-Democrat has a story on sewer service to Allsup, one of the largest, if not the largest, entity providing representation to Social Security disability claimants. The sewer story itself is of little consequence to anyone who does not live in the area, but the reason behind the story is of more consequence to those interested in Social Security. Allsup needs sewage service changes because it wants to make a $10 million expansion that will create hundreds of jobs. Allsup is seeking a promise of service to an unlimited number of additional buildings. Allsup is threatening to do the expansion elsewhere if it does not get what it wants.

SES Jobs Increase While Other Jobs Cut At SSA

Even though the Social Security Administration's workforce has been shrinking, the number of high level managers (Senior Executive Service or SES) at the agency has been going up. This is from a GAO report on Diversity In the Federal SES And Process For Selecting New Executives:

2000

• Number of SES employees 118
• Women 35.6% %
• Minorities 33.1%

2007

• Number of SES employees 134
• Women41.8%
• Minorities 27.6%

Not much to complain about on the diversity front, but note the 14% increase in high level managers over seven years! This is at a time when other Social Security employees, including lower level managers, have been told to suck it up and just work harder and smarter as their ranks have thinned. Maybe there is a good explanation, but it does not look good. Any explanation that talks about increased responsibilities will not look good since field operations have had increased responsibilities as well.

Performance And Accountability Report FY 2008

The Social Security Administration has released its Performance and Accountability Report for fiscal year 2008. The report measures the agency against various criteria it has set for itself.

In a sense, it is hard to argue with the criteria used. These are reasonable criteria for Social Security given the budget the agency is working with. In another sense, the criteria are a glaring example of "defining deviancy downwards." Major problem areas such as telephone service and field office waiting time are avoided altogether. The criteria for judging success in holding hearings on Social Security disability claims are far, far below what anyone would judge to be acceptable.

By the way, hidden on page 104 is an admission that the Social Security Administration owes claimants over $2 billion as part of the SDW (Special Disability Workload), which is accumulated mistakes in paying benefits made over a long period of time that were discovered by analysis of Social Security's databases. The SDW backlog is being worked down over a long period of time -- many years. It is a labor intensive business that deserves public attention. It should have been done quicker, but the resources have not been available.