Q And A On Economic Stimulus Payments

The Social Security Administration has finally put out a fairly comprehensive list of questions and answers on the $250 economic stimulus payments to recipients of Social Security benefits. One point of mild interest is that Social Security overpayments may not be collected out of the economic stimulus payments, but other federal debts and child support payments may be.

I'm Not Buying This, But ...

From a Talk of the Town piece by Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker:

... [L]urking underneath the anti-spending, pro-tax-cutting cant [of Republicans] is one idea that might truly have merit. ...

“If you want a quick answer to the question what would I do [about the recession], ” Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said recently, “I’d have a payroll-tax holiday for a year or two. That would put taxes in the hands of everybody who has a job, whether they pay income taxes or not.” ...

The payroll tax now provides a third of federal revenues. And, because it nominally funds Social Security and Medicare, some liberals regard its continuance as essential to the survival of those programs. That’s almost certainly wrong. Public pensions and medical care for the aged have become fixed, integral parts of American life. Their political support no longer depends on analogizing them to private insurance. Besides, the aging of the population, the collapse of defined-benefit private pensions, the volatility of 401(k)s, and pricey advances in medical technology mean that, no matter what efficiencies may be achieved, Social Security and Medicare will—and should—grow. Holding them hostage to ever-rising, job-killing payroll taxes is perverse.If the economic crisis necessitates a second stimulus—and it probably will—then a payroll-tax holiday deserves a look. But it’s only half a good idea. A whole good idea would be to make a payroll-tax holiday the first step in an orderly transition to scrapping the payroll tax altogether and replacing the lost revenue with a package of levies on things that, unlike jobs, we want less rather than more of—things like pollution, carbon emissions, oil imports, inefficient use of energy and natural resources, and excessive consumption. The net tax burden on the economy would be unchanged, but the shift in relative price signals would nudge investment from resource-intensive enterprises toward labor-intensive ones. This wouldn’t be just a tax adjustment. It would be an environmental program, an anti-global-warming program, a youth-employment (and anti-crime) program, and an energy program.

Astrue Speaks At NADR Conference

Commissioner Astrue spoke at the convention of the National Association of Disability Representatives (NADR) yesterday. I am told that he announced:

• The fees paid to Vocational Experts for testifying at Social Security hearings will rise by 10%.
  
• Fees paid to Medical Expert witnesses for their testimony are under review.
• The current process by which those who represent Social Security claimants notify the agency of their identifying information using form 1695 will be phased out. Apparently, Astrue did not discuss what will replace it.
• Astrue expects that sometime next year Social Security will adopt regulations which will recognize entities as representatives of claimants.
• New hearing offices will open this year. A new office for Fayetteville, NC is to be in the second round of office openings, but is still likely to open this year.
  

OIG Criticism For Barnhart

From a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General(emphasis added):

SSA contracted with Abt to develop the Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND) project to test alternate methods of treating work activity in the Title II disability program. The contract states that after the design is completed, subsequent phases of this demonstration are to be awarded to the same contractor on a sole-source basis for the project's implementation, data collection, and evaluation and management. This award will be contingent upon successful performance of the design phase. A $2.4 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract was awarded to Abt with a period of performance from September 2004 to September 2006. Because of contract modifications and additional task orders, the contract was extended to September 2008 at a total cost of approximately $10.6 million. ...

We found that Abt generally adhered to the terms of the contract and delivered the services and final design options that SSA asked for under the contract. However, we have several concerns about the delays and costs associated with the design phase. While SSA is required by law to continue with the demonstration project, we are concerned that the multiple modifications extended the contract period from 2 to 4 years, and the design phase costs increased to $10.6 million, or $8.2 million more than initially expected. We believe approximately $5.3 million, or half of the total costs, could have been put to better use had the contract been better focused and completed within the initial timeframe. ...

Prior SSA management [when Jo Anne Barnhart was Commissioner of Social Security] demonstrated inadequate oversight of the contract's planning, scope and expenditures. ... For instance, while the Office of Management and Budget requires enhanced controls over cost-reimbursement contracts, in our review of invoices, we were unable to determine whether the contractor over- or under-billed for a specific task due. Furthermore, the contract was not monitored in a way that allowed for quickly detecting or avoiding cost overruns for tasks. Moreover, we found that SSA did not perform timely interim contractor performance evaluations, as required by the contract and recommended by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR).

This is the sort of report that the current Inspector General just did not do while George W. Bush was President. He seemed to regard criticism of contractors or high Social Security officials as out of bounds. Now he is only criticizing what happened when Social Security had a different Commissioner. When George W. Bush was President, the Inspector General reports seemed to focus on overpayments to claimants with the strong implication that any overpayment was the result of fraud. Overpayments are a valid area of inquiry for the Inspector General, but in an agency the size of Social Security there are bound to be blunders made in contracting and those blunders are also a valid area of inquiry. When it comes to overpayments, few of them are due to out and out fraud. Much of the time Social Security itself is at least partly to blame for the overpayment.

Results Of Last Week's Unscientific Poll

Some unions have called for Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue to resign. Would you be pleased if Astrue were to resign?

Yes (92)	47%
No (102)	53%

Total Votes: 194

Congressional Hearing Set For March 24

From the House Ways and Means Committee:

Congressman John S. Tanner (D-TN), Chairman, Subcommittee on Social Security, and Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA), Chairman, Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, today announced a joint hearing on the Social Security Administration’s (SSA’s) large backlog in disability claims and other service delivery declines, including backlogs in program integrity activities. The hearing will take place on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 in the main Committee hearing room, 1100 Longworth House Office Building, beginning at 10:00 a.m. ...

In recent years, SSA’s backlog of claims for Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits has reached unprecedented levels, with more than 1.3 million Americans currently awaiting a decision on their case. The problem is particularly severe at the hearings level, where the backlog has more than doubled since 2000 – from about 310,000 to more than 765,000 – and the average waiting time is now almost 500 days.

These backlogs have resulted from years of underfunding as SSA’s workload increased due to the aging of the population and additional responsibilities given to the agency. Resource shortages have also led to service delivery declines in other areas. SSA has significantly cut back on program integrity activities such as continuing disability reviews and SSI redeterminations, even though these activities have been demonstrated to generate considerable savings, as much as $10 in program costs for every $1 in administrative expenditures. In addition, service to the public has declined in SSA’s field offices, as noted in a January 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and the backlog problem is of such severity that GAO included it in its biennial “high risk” list of federal programs.

In the past two years, Congress has provided additional funding to begin to address these problems, and SSA has begun to implement a plan to eliminate the hearings level backlog by 2013. However, the agency continues to face new challenges. Disability and retirement claims are increasing due to the economic downturn in combination with demographic changes. From FY 2008 to FY 2009, initial disability claims are projected to increase by more than 12 percent and retirement claims by more than 8 percent, and both are expected to increase even further in FY 2010 and FY 2011.

Finally, two provisions designed to increase access to professional representation for disability claimants are scheduled to expire during the 111^th Congress; and legislative proposals have been offered relating to the disability determination process, such as changing how claimants give consent to release medical records.

Union Attacks Career Intern Program At Social Security

I have posted about the fact that many, perhaps most, job openings at Social Security are not being posted on USA Jobs. Here is some background from Alyssa Rosenberg at Government Executive on a major reason why that is:

The National Treasury Employees Union is continuing its long-standing battle against the Federal Career Intern Program by supporting a veteran who claims the program cost him a job with the Social Security Administration.

The union has filed an amicus brief in the Merit Systems Protection Board case Alvern C. Weed v. Social Security Administration, arguing once again that FCIP illegally undermined veterans preference laws. The union claimed SSA improperly denied Weed, a disabled veteran, a chance to apply for claims and service representative positions by turning to FCIP during a second round of hiring.

"The FCIP was designed as a special-focus hiring authority to provide structured, two-year developmental internships," NTEU President Colleen Kelley stated. "Instead, we now find agencies using it as the principal, and in some cases only, means of hiring." ...

At issue in Alvern C. Weed v. Social Security Administration was SSA's failure to post a vacancy announcement during its second round of hiring. Weed had applied for the job during the first round by responding to an advertisement on the federal recruiting site USAJobs.gov, and was added to a list of candidates who had preference because of their veteran status. But the supervisor in charge of filling the position ignored that list and instead selected two candidates who responded to a newspaper advertisement.

Can someone explain to me why Social Security wants to avoid making job openings as widely known as possible? I may be naive but spreading the net as wide as possible sounds like a good idea to me. It also seems like the right thing to do even if there might be some inconveniences to it.

At least the federal Office of Personnel Management has decided to protect vets with service connected disabilities.

Update: The Senior Deputy General Counsel of the National Treasury Employees Union has just been hired as the General Counsel of the Office of Personnel Management. That might lead to a change in OPM's position on the litigation.

Congressional Hearing Next Week

The Orange County Leader reports that Congressman Kevin Brady (R-TX) recently met with Social Security's Inspector General in advance of a Congressional hearing next week. The article says that the hearing concerns fraud in the Social Security disability programs. Brady is a member of the Social Security Subcommittee. The Subcommittee website does not yet list the date or time of that hearing.

It might be noted that the Subcommittee Chair is John Tanner of Tennessee, a prominent Blue Dog Democrat. However, even though I regard Social Security's backlogs as the biggest problem, the agency's lack of adequate staffing also leads to overpayments and these overpayments are not a minor matter. I wish that the term "fraud" would not be tossed about lightly. Certainly, there is some fraud at Social Security, but most overpayments are not the result of fraud. Many are the result of mistakes made by the Social Security Administration itself.