Budget Trouble Brewing

From the Capitol Insider, a publication of the Disability Policy Collaboration:

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) told human services advocates that the FY 2011 appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education could be cut by 2.3 percent. The escalating budget deficit and election year politics will make it extremely difficult to meet rising human service needs.

Social Security's administrative budget is part of the Labor-HHS appropriations bill.

AFGE Unhappy

The American Federation of Goverment Employees (AFGE), the labor union that represents most Social Security employees, is not happy with the progress of contract negotiations with Social Security. Having to negotiate with a Republican agency head during a time when Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress must be frustrating but, to be frank, the union seems perpetually outraged about something. That seems to be not merely their default mode but their only mode. Take a look at what the union has to say here, here and here.

Also, take a look at this notice withdrawing a story from the union's newsletter. There must be a story behind this. I will guess the story involves a threat of a defamation lawsuit.

OIDAP Extends Time Period For Comments

A notice received by e-mail from the Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel (OIDAP):

On May 4, 2010, the Social Security Administration published a Request for Comments on the recommendations contained in the report of the Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel entitled Content Model and Classification Recommendation for the Social Security Administration Occupational Information System, September 2009. The comment period is extended to June 30, 2010.

For additional information, or to provide comments on the report, please see the attached notice and visit http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#docketDetail?R=SSA-2010-0018. If you submitted comments prior to this notice, you will be contacted by project staff to determine if you wish to post your comment to the internet website.

I encourage anyone reading this blog to study the OIDAP report and to make comments. As our Vice President would say "This is a big ___ing deal." OIDAP is dealing with the most important policy issue faced by the Social Security Administration in more than 30 years. Something is going to happen. This is not going away. There is an excellent chance that this will bring about a complete redesign of disability determination by people whose main interest is the contracts they can obtain from Social Security, people who have no idea of the practical effects of what they are doing.

Texas Textbooks And Social Security

From TPM (emphasis added:

With the long-running Texas history textbooks standards fight scheduled to end with a final vote by the State Board of Education Friday, arch-conservative board member Don McLeroy is proposing a new set of changes that read like a tea party manifesto.

The new amendment (.pdf), which is expected to get a vote on Thursday, would require high school history students to "discuss alternatives regarding long term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, given the decreasing worker to retiree ratio" and also "evaluate efforts by global organizations to undermine U. S. sovereignty."

Regard The Scuttlebutt As True

Paul Mariani has written an article for First Things on Michael Astrue and his poetic alter ego, A.M. Juster. Mariani is a poet and professor at Boston College. First Things describes itself as "...an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society." I think it would be fair to say that First Things expresses primarily a right-wing, Roman Catholic perspective on the world.

Here are a few excerpts from the article titled, "Regard the Scuttlebutt As True" (a phrase of Astrue's invention):

[Astrue] belongs to a type of quiet and careful civil servant that Caesar Augustus would have recognized. As would Phillip II and Napoleon and Gladstone, for that matter. Powerful governments have always needed this kind of man: the senior administrator, the superior public official who (to reverse the entropy the Irish senator W.B. Yeats feared) makes the center hold and keeps things from falling apart. ...

This formal and clever poet must find some such sense of the comic necessary, as he changes places each morning with that formal and intelligent commissioner of Social Security—since, as you’ve probably already guessed, they are one and the same person. Michael J. Astrue is the best poet ever to hold a truly major appointed position in the American government. And A.M. Juster is the best senior civil servant of whom American poetry can boast.

The question, of course, is why this double life of a public persona? Why has this former head of a major biotech firm, a lawyer, and a public servant chosen to share the same shadow as this very private poet with the sensitivity of a W.H. Auden mixed with the scathing wit of a Jonathan Swift? An even more fascinating question is why Astrue has for so long insisted on keeping these two identities separate. Years ago, when the poet X.J. Kennedy asked him why he insisted on using a pseudonym, Astrue told him that the main reason was that he didn’t want to be known as a novelty act—which, in truth, is more a dodge than an answer. ...

While interviewing and researching Michael J. Astrue, I have come to see him as an admirable and even kenotically selfless individual. But poring over his poems and translations, I find something even deeper. There is, undoubtedly, a fascinating and nuanced self that operates on the linguistic and sonic levels in the man’s best poems. Even within their formal edifices, Astrue reveals someone who—like Lord Byron or the late Bill Matthews, and (perhaps more to the point) Jonathan Swift—has learned to manifest his own too human vulnerability while at the same time protecting himself with his savage wit. Think of John Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” in which the artist Parmigianino gestures with his hand in the painted convex surface, as if welcoming us, even as the figure in the mirror pulls away. ...

It’s worth mentioning that Astrue, like a surprisingly large number of the old New Formalist crowd, is a serious Catholic, a man who sees his work at the Social Security Administration as nothing short of a vocation to do “both the right and the compassionate thing.” ...

And make no mistake about it: Michael Astrue is a very private person. Even his poetry—clear as it is—offers as many unresolved questions as it provides us with answers. ...

There’s a moral precision about him as a man and as a public servant; without being prissy or showy in his moralism, he sets himself to the Stoic task of seeing that the jobs at hand are those that will be done. When the center holds in the midst of all the mess and madness of politics, it holds because quiet men do quiet work of public purpose.

Social Security Seeking iPhone App

From a contracting notice posted by Social Security:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is conducting a market survey to determine the availability and technical capability of qualified businesses with experience developing mobile applications for the iPhone and other mobile phone platforms. SSA is seeking contractor support with developing a mobile iPhone application that permits the public to access select periodic statistical records of SSA consistent with the Office of Management and Budget's direction for transparency and open government.

New Mental Listings Coming

Social Security and other federal agencies must obtain the approval of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is part of the White House, before publishing any proposal to amend its regulations. In the waning days of the Bush Administration, Social Security had obtained OMB approval for new Listings on mental disorders. The Listings are not the only way that people are approved for Social Security disability benefits but a very important one, especially for mental illness. The mental Listings changes approved during the Bush Administration were never published in the Federal Register. Now, a new version of the mental impairment Listings have been sent to OMB by Social Security. Probably, these are different than what the Bush White House approved but we will not know what they say until they appear in the Federal Register.

I Hate To Post This, But ...

The birthers, who claim that President Obama was born outside the U.S. , don't give up despite the existence of definitive proof that they are dead wrong. They are now claiming that there is some irregularity concerning the Social Security number assigned to Barack Obama. I have no idea what this would prove even if it were true. And did you hear that Google is trying to suppress this story?