Virginia Attorneys Wants Closer Hearings

From The Roanoke Times:

Why should Covington [Virginia] residents seeking Social Security disability benefits have to drive 90 minutes -- to Beckley, W.Va. -- to plead their case?

That's the question a Covington lawyer [Bill Wilson] is asking in a campaign to get the Social Security Administration to hold hearings in Covington. Since March, residents of Covington and Alleghany and Bath counties whose disability claims reached the hearing stage have had to drive to Beckley.

Previously, they had to travel to Lewisburg, W.Va., a roughly 30-mile drive. The drive to Beckley is about 80 miles. ...

Aidan Diviny, spokesman for the administration in Philadelphia, said the hearings were moved to Beckley because the agency's lease on the Lewisburg building expired in April and because the Beckley office has two hearing rooms. ...

Watson said the Covington office handles about 130 disability claims a month from residents in Alleghany and Bath counties and the three West Virginia counties of Monroe, Pocahontas and Greenbrier. Most of the claimants, he said, are West Virginians.

Diviny said all claimants can request to have their hearings held in Roanoke instead of Beckley. However, the drive to Roanoke is about 60 miles from Covington, with a travel time of more than an hour.

But Wilson is agitated because when claimants travel all the way to Beckley, they don't plead their case live before an administrative judge -- the judge is sitting in a room in Charleston and the hearings are held via videoconference.

Government Shutdown Coming Next Year?

You may have noticed that Republicans are in a take no prisoners, make no compromises, our way or nothing mode. It has not made Republicans more popular but it has certainly made Democrats less popular by making it difficult for them to govern. There are frighteningly plausible Republican plans to shut down government next year to try to stop health care reform.

Take The Quiz!

Take Dean Baker's Social Security quiz. It might surprise you.

Commissioner's Message For Labor Day

From: Commissioner Broadcast
Sent: Fri 9/3/2010 2:19 PM
To: Undisclosed recipients
Subject: COMMISSIONER'S BROADCAST--09/03/10

A Message To All SSA [Social Security Administration] And DDS [Disability Determination Services] Employees

Subject: Labor Day

I want to wish you a safe and happy Labor Day, a holiday that is our national tribute to the contributions of American workers to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. In this year of so much economic stress, you have had to step up your efforts, so you deserve this tribute even more than in past years.

As a group, our DDS colleagues have had the most difficult year; many of them have been subjected to across-the-board furloughs by governors and state legislators. We recently submitted legislation to Congress that would fix that problem, and I urge all of you - not just DDS employees - to use every opportunity you have to educate Members of Congress and their staffs about the unnecessary trauma furloughs cause for our DDS employees and the citizens they serve. For more information about this legislation, go to http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pressoffice/pr/furlough-legislation-pr.htm.

I also want to congratulate Jim Hill, who has been our national NTEU [National Treasury Employees Union] representative for many years. He will soon be sworn-in as an administrative law judge for the new Akron hearing office, and I am confident that he will bring to the bench the same passion, civility, and judgment he brought to his service as a labor leader.

I was particularly pleased to hear this week that, despite the pressures brought on by our increased workloads, we remain one of the Top Ten Best Places to Work in the Federal Government for the third consecutive time, and received our highest ranking ever. Thank you for all you do to make SSA a great place to work.

Again, have a safe and happy Labor Day.

Michael J. Astrue

FICA Holiday?

From the Washington Post:

With just two months until the November elections, the White House is seriously weighing a package of business tax breaks - potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars - to spur hiring and combat Republican charges that Democratic tax policies hurt small businesses, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.

Among the options under consideration are a temporary payroll-tax holiday ...

[A] payroll-tax holiday - a top priority of many business groups - could be applied only to new hires or extended to current employees. It could be limited to small businesses or extended to larger firms.

Death Of ALJ Maggard

Retired Social Security Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Glay Maggard of Dauphin Island, AL passed away on August 25. Maggard had served as an ALJ in Mobile, AL, as well as Louisville, and Lexington, KY.

Illegal Immigrants And Social Security

From Edward Schumacher-Matos writing on the Op Ed page of the Washington Post:

The contributions by unauthorized immigrants to Social Security -- essentially, to the retirement income of everyday Americans -- are much larger than previously known, raising questions about the efforts in many states and among Republicans in Congress to force these workers out.

In response to a research inquiry for a book I am writing on the economics of immigration, Stephen C. Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration and someone who enjoys bipartisan support for his straightforwardness, said that by 2007, the Social Security trust fund had received a net benefit of somewhere between $120 billion and $240 billion from unauthorized immigrants.

That represented an astounding 5.4 percent to 10.7 percent of the trust fund's total assets of $2.24 trillion that year. The cumulative contribution is surely higher now. Unauthorized immigrants paid a net contribution of $12 billion in 2007 alone, Goss said....

"If for example we had not had other-than-legal immigrants in the country over the past," Goss e-mailed me, "then these numbers suggest that we would have entered persistent shortfall of tax revenue to cover [payouts] starting [in] 2009, or six years earlier than estimated under the 2010 Trustees Report."

Looks like it is the illegal immigrants who are supporting us Americans. Should we be so eager to deport them?

OIG Report On Stimulus Act Hiring

Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a report on hiring under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the large economic stimulus bill passed last year. The agency hired 2,115 new employees under ARRA. The report indicates that 74% of the "operations" employees hired under ARRA were hired under the Federal Career Internship Program (FCIP). About 16% of the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) hires were made under FCIP.

FCIP hires are controversial since there is no public listing of such positions. There have been concerns that this allows favoritism and other shenanigans. The explanation given for the heavy use of FCIP is that it is quicker to hire under FCIP and that FCIP hires have a longer period of evaluation. Somebody needs to take a hard look at federal hiring policies. At best, secretive hiring reduces the applicant pool which makes it harder to hire the best possible employees. At worst, secretive hiring can lead to scandals.