Hearing Scheduled On Social Security Appropriation

The House Appropriations Committee's Labor-HHS Subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday, April 14 at 10:00 on Social Security's administrative appropriation for fiscal year 2011, which begins on October 1, 2010. This is not an appropriation for the benefits paid by Social Security -- those require no appropriation -- but for the budget, or limitation on administrative expenditures (LAE) if you want to be technical, which Social Security needs to administer those benefits. Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue is scheduled to testify.

Fee Payment Stats

Social Security has released updated numbers on payments of fees to attorneys and others for representing Social Security claimants.

Fee Payments
Month/Year	Volume	Amount
Jan-10	32,227	$111,440,046.23
Feb-10	29,914	$105,708,101.59
Mar-10	34,983	$122,874,426.87

Statisticians Get Recognition

Amstatnews, the membership magazine of the American Statistical Association is running an article by William W. Davis, Social Security's Chief Mathematical Statistician, describing the work of the agency's Office of Research, Evaluation and Statistics (ORES). One key project for ORES at the moment is the plan to issue Social Security numbers randomly across the country instead of assigning the first three digits of the number geographically.

Field Offices, Your Time Has Come

The House Social Security Subcommittee has scheduled its first hearing since Congressman Earl Pomeroy became chairman. The hearing will be on April 15 at 10:00. Here are some excerpts from the press release:

So far this calendar year,weekly visits to SSA’s field offices have hit the one million mark five times, while in all of last year, visits hit the one-million mark only twice. The Government Accountability Office and others have concluded that resource shortages over the years have contributed to the development of unprecedented backlogs in disability hearings, and caused reduced staffing throughout the agency even as workloads have risen. By the end of 2007, agency staffing had dropped to almost the level in 1972 – before the start of the SSI program – even though SSA’s beneficiary population had nearly doubled since that time. This in turn has led to a decline in customer service and a buildup of unprocessed workloads in SSA local field offices.

In FY 2008 through FY 2010, Congress provided SSA with increased funding to begin to address the backlogs and other service delivery declines. These increased resources reflect Congressional concerns about the unacceptable backlog in disability claim processing, but have not been sufficient to address the growing amount of work that SSA has been forced to defer in order to process the increasing number of new claims on a timely basis.

Despite the hard work and dedication of SSA employees in field offices and teleservice centers, SSA’s level of service to the public has deteriorated. Field office managers report that they do not have sufficient staff to answer the phones, assist walk-in visitors, and produce the high-quality work the public deserves. In FY 2009, 58 percent of callers who tried to reach an SSA field office got a busy signal, up from 51 percent in FY 2008. As a result, more walk-in visits occur for matters that could be handled by phone. Field office managers and front-line staff also are increasingly concerned about declining quality in the work they produce. Nearly all resources are needed to process claims and assist SSA’s customers, and little is left to perform traditional quality-control and staff-training activities. ...

In announcing the hearing, Chairman Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) stated “the Social Security Administration (SSA) was right to prioritize reducing the disability claims backlog, but I am concerned that other services that SSA provides to the American people are not getting sufficient attention and resources. I am interested in knowing what steps SSA is taking to address these other growing and backlogged workloads, and how the Subcommittee can be instrumental in making sure that SSA is once again able to provide the top-notch customer service the public deserves.”

This helps explain the April 6 announcement of additional personnel for Social Security field offices.

Nice Try

From Investors Business Daily:

Come 2018, even Social Security's staunchest defenders will have no choice but to admit that the program faces an urgent crisis.

That's when Social Security's Disability Insurance Trust Fund is due to run out, resulting in benefit cuts for disabled workers and their families.

And those cuts would be sharp — roughly 8% in 2018 and 16% in 2019 relative to scheduled levels. ...

[E]ven if the OASI [Old Age and Survivors Insurance] trust fund is still officially flush, it won't be able to automatically shift its Treasury-issued debt to the disability program.

Just one problem with this: Congress has previously allowed interfund borrowing and will undoubtedly do so again. The article mentions that this has happened in the past but assumes that it will not happen in the future. That is a ridiculous assumption. For all practical purposes, the two trust funds are one. There is a long term funding problem for Social Security in general. I wish we would get on to addressing it. The disability trust fund is not going to be the trigger for this to happen.

It Takes Longer In Ohio

From the Dayton Daily News:

Ohio residents seeking Social Security Disability Insurance wait longer for a hearing than residents of any other state, says a study released Tuesday, April 6.

More than 19 months on average pass before disability claims are heard by administrative law judges who determine eligibility for benefits, said Allsup, an Illinois company that processes Social Security disability claims.

For more on this, see a Government Executive article.

Open Government

In response to a Presidential initiative, Social Security has posted an Open Government page online. I see nothing new completely here but it is a useful compilation of resources made available by the agency.

Do note how agency expenditures as a percentage of the Social Security trust funds have declined dramatically over the decades.

What The Managers Think

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, surveys its membership each year, asking about their experiences in managing Social Security field offices. Here is their summary of this year's survey:

• QUALITY OF WORK
• 87.4% of Survey respondents reported that they receive complaints weekly from the public about the accuracy or timeliness of the work being produced.
• 82.5% of managers report that the number of quality case reviews performed in their office is insufficient to ensure an accurate and timely work product.
• 71.9% of managers considered inadequate staffing to be the first or second greatest obstacle to ensuring a timely and accurate work product from their office. 61% said that competing operational priorities was the first or second greatest obstacle.

• FIELD OFFICE TELEPHONE SERVICE
• 64.6% of Field Office managers said that their offices were able to provide prompt telephone service less than half of the time.
• Virtually all of the managers (98.1%) receive weekly complaints about telephone service provided by their office. 72.8% said they receive up to four such complaints each week.
• 67.8% of the respondents said that the increased volume of visitors walking into their office is due in moderate or very large part to the inability of their office to provide prompt telephone service. 36.5% attribute the increased walk-in traffic in large part to the limited ability to answer the phones. The cause and effect is clear. 71.7% of managers said that they frequently or very frequently reassign staff from handling phone calls to helping in the reception area to reduce waiting times.
• Field Office managers overwhelmingly (88.7%) said that more staff was the most necessary element to improve telephone service in their office. Only 5.2% said that better telephone equipment was the single greatest need.

• STAFFING
• As in recent Surveys, the need for additional staff is the most significant concern for Field Office managers. 95.5% of the managers said that they need to hire at least one more employee to provide adequate public service; 89.2% said that they need to hire at least two more employees; and 71.2% said that they need to hire at least three more employees.
• Despite 1:1 staff replacements as a result of the FY 2010 SSA budget, 42% of the respondents indicated that they were not given authority to hire in FY 2010.