$2.4 Billion More Needed Just To Get Current On Continuing Disability Reviews

From The Oregonian:

The Social Security Administration has fallen behind in reviewing the medical conditions of 1.7 million Americans on its disability rolls, potentially paying up to $11 billion in benefits to people who are no longer disabled.

The agency's failure to tackle those pending disability reviews allows tens of thousands of undeserving people to bleed government funds that Americans count on when they become too sick or injured to work, The Oregonian found in an ongoing investigation of Social Security.

"It's lost money to taxpayers," said Rick Warsinskey, past president of the association representing Social Security's field managers. "There's going to be less money available to pay people their Social Security. We're setting aside money for them. ... It's going to be spent." ...

The reviews have a phenomenal rate of return, last year saving $11.74 for every $1 spent, according to agency records. But Social Security's leaders have pushed those potential savings aside to confront another embarrassing backlog -- 766,905 people waiting to plead cases for benefits before the agency's corps of judges.

Social Security's chief priorities -- speeding up disability claims and serving customers -- leave the agency scarce funds to conduct disability reviews. The agency processed about one in three that came due last year, says Kelly Croft, the agency's deputy commissioner for quality performance....

Officials at Social Security's Baltimore headquarters say 1.7 million medical disability reviews are now overdue. Another 1.7 million of them will come due next year, but the agency says that it expects only enough funding to process 1 million. ...

Astrue, confirmed as commissioner in early 2007, declined through a spokesman to be interviewed about the disability review problem, saying he was too focused on the agency's budget and backlog of disability claims. ...

Astrue's budget officers now estimate that Congress would have to make special appropriations of $2.4 billion just to get current with medical disability reviews and return the agency to its historic volumes of SSI eligibility reviews. And they estimate, even with that funding, it would take until 2013.

Agency officials acknowledge that the Bush administration hasn't sought nearly enough money from Congress to fix the disability review problem.

If $2.4 billion is how much is needed to get up to speed on continuing disability reviews (CDRs), how much is needed to get up to speed on holding hearings for disability claimants and answering the telephones at Social Security?

Potemkin In Indiana

Here is another example of the Potemkin effect, this time in Indiana. A TV story on Sheila Dorrel, a claimant who had been waiting for three years to receive Social Security disability benefits, brought about a quick and happy resolution for Ms. Dorrel. Social Security told the TV station that they could not move up a specific case, but apparently did, approving Ms. Dorrel shortly after the TV story. If we could just get several hundred thousand media stories on invididual cases we could solve the backlog.

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.