Social Security Subcommittee Hearing Delayed

The House Social Security Subcommittee had a hearing scheduled for tomorrow on "Protecting and Preserving Social Security for Generations" but that hearing "has been delayed until further notice."

It Takes People To Provide Public Service

From Joe Davidson's Federal Diary column in the Washington Post:

During a period when federal employees have been targeted again and again, it's not surprising that House Republicans' "Pledge to America" would promise to freeze the federal workforce. ...

Promoting the plan on NBC's "Meet the Press," Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind), chairman of the House Republican Conference, was clear: "We can reduce government employment back down to 2008 levels."

Federal workers are always an easy target, but it's worth examining whether a freeze would come at the expense of public service....

[R]eturning to employment levels in effect at the end of George W. Bush's presidency could mean service backlogs in many government programs. Take the Social Security Administration for example. It provides payments to retirees, people with disabilities and others. The number of the agency's pending cases and the time it takes to process them has been a serious problem.

Recently, there has been progress as a result of agency hiring. ...

Technology is great, but it takes people to provide public service.

Why Do Republicans Now Oppose This?

From the New York Times editorial page:

Thousands of elderly and disabled refugees who receive cash assistance from the Social Security Administration are in danger of losing that lifeline. Their eligibility for benefits expires on Friday. Congress has granted temporary extensions before. It needs to do so again.

The welfare overhaul adopted in 1996 set limits on the time that refugees can receive Supplemental Security Income. Noncitizens normally do not qualify for payments, but refugees, who fled torture and war and could not work because of old age and infirmity, were among those granted an exception on the condition that they become citizens within seven years. That deadline came too quickly for some who were unable to pass the citizenship test in time. Many were homebound and had trouble negotiating paperwork or affording the fees. Others were stuck in limbo because of administrative backlogs.

Protecting the safety net for these immigrants — who include victims of sex trafficking, Jews who were persecuted in Russia, Hmong tribesmen who fought for the United States in Vietnam, Kurdish victims of Saddam Hussein — has been a bipartisan effort. President George W. Bush urged Congress in 2008 to extend eligibility for two years.

And Some People Think It's Real Easy To Get On Social Security Disability

From Bill McClellan's column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Marcella Myer, who is 52, was a clumsy child. Not that she remembers it that way. She shook her head when I asked if she ever felt there was something wrong with her. But her mother remembers. "She used to fall in the middle of the floor," said Delorse Knehans. ...

She has lived with her mother her entire life. She never married. After graduating from Lutheran South High School, she worked at a gas station and then in nursing homes. Then she got a job in the warehouse at Famous-Barr, which, of course, became Macy's. She lost that job in 2008. She told me she just couldn't keep up anymore.

By that time, Lisa [her niece] had noticed [Marcella's] condition deteriorating. Her gait was becoming increasingly unsteady. Her speech was slurred. She has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy. ...

Lisa suggested she apply for Social Security disability. "You just can't work any more," she said.

Marcella applied for disability. She was turned down. She had a hearing on that denial in March of this year.

Attorney Jeffrey Swaney was at the Social Security office representing another client when Marcella's case was called.

"I was sitting in the waiting room when they called her. I knew it was an appeal, and I remember thinking, 'How could this woman have been denied?' You could see she was profoundly disabled," he said.

Later that afternoon, Swaney got a phone call from Lisa. She had seen his ad in the Yellow Pages about Social Security disability claims.

"She said her aunt had just had an appeal and had been denied and she started describing it, and I said, 'I was sitting right behind you.'"

So Swaney took the case. He said the problem was a lack of medical documentation.

Incidentally, by this time, Marcella had suffered a series of strokes. She had difficulty speaking. She had to use a cane to walk.

A hearing was scheduled for August.

By then, Marcella was in the nursing home. A doctor from the nursing home wrote that she would never be able to return to the second-story condominium. Lisa and Marcella felt confident that Marcella would finally be approved for disability.

The administrative law judge declared there was not enough information upon which to base a decision. He gave Swaney 30 days to gather more information.

Swaney told me he sent in the additional information this past week. He said he felt optimistic.

I visited Marcella on Friday. Because her speech is slurred, Lisa was there to help interpret for me. Marcella said she has gone through her entire savings since she last worked two years ago. After she exhausted her savings, she began living on a credit card. She is about maxed out, she said. ...

When I got back to the newspaper, I called Swaney. I said I was surprised the judge needed more medical records. Marcella clearly seemed disabled to me, I said.

"If she's faking it," he said, 'she should be an Academy Award-winning actress."

New Hearing Office And Keeping A Committment

The Newton Citizen reports that Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue was in Covington, GA yesterday to open a new hearing office there. That is Regional Chief Administrative Law Judge Oliver Garmon with Astrue. According to the paper's caption for the photo, "Garmon had his head shaved earlier that morning to keep the commitment he made to go bald should his region reduce the wait time for appeals hearings to one year."

Commissioner Astrue and I have no choice on the baldness thing.

Fayetteville Hearing Office

Since I have started posting about the new Social Security hearing office opening in Fayetteville, NC, I suppose I will just keep posting updates until the office is fully open. The office was supposed to open in February 2010. The picture is of the building where the office is to be located and it is recent. However, the office has now opened at a temporary location not far away. It remains unclear whether any hearings will be held at the temporary location.

Update: I hear that the new office is not yet ready to handle electronic files, that for now all their cases will be paper files. I guess this is the sort of start-up problem that Mr. Sklar warned about last week. Local attorneys are struggling with an even more basic start-up problem at the moment. We do not know the telephone number of the new office. Even with the problems, we are happy to have the office open. It has been needed for at least 20 years.

Congressional Hearing Scheduled

The House Social Security Subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for September 30 on "protecting and preserving Social Security for generations." No word yet on the witness list.

Why Are My Disability Benefits Ending Now?