Where Do The Election Results Leave Social Security?

The election results do not change the prospects for major Social Security legislation. There is virtually no chance of that happening in the next two years. We will see if Republicans in the House of Representatives want to do something less major. Nothing comes to mind. Republicans keep talking about Social Security going broke but are seldom interested in more mundane Social Security matters.

The more likely effect of the election is to give Social Security a real appropriations headache. House Republicans have promised to roll back appropriations to the 2008 levels. Social Security would be devastated by that. Thousands of employees would be furloughed. It would be hard to keep the doors open. Fortunately, rolling back appropriations to 2008 levels might pass the House of Representatives but could not possibly pass the Senate much less be signed by the President.

Some Republicans have declared that they are willing to shut down the government by refusing to act on appropriations if they do not get their way on appropriations. That did not work so well for Republicans when they tried it in 1995. I would be surprised if they try it again. However, Republicans have also promised to block appropriations for implementation of health care reform. Social Security's appropriation is part of the Labor-HHS appropriation bill so it could be caught up in this fight. Republicans may be somewhat less unlikely to shut down some agencies in an attempt to make it impossible to implement health care reform. A shutdown even for a few days would be awful.

If there is no governmental shutdown there are two possibilities. Either an appropriations bill that includes Social Security will be passed that the President will sign or Social Security will be on a continuing funding resolution for the entire fiscal year (FY), perhaps for two entire FYs. Under a continuing resolution (CR) the agency would continue to operate but would be limited to fiscal year 2010 budget levels.

A CR is not that bad for most agencies. Appropriations have gone up substantially since FY 2008. There is little or no inflation. Most agencies can get by fairly well on their FY 2010 appropriation. Social Security is not most agencies. Social Security's workloads are going up substantially, primarily due to the aging of the baby boom population. Social Security needs and deserves more money to deal with increased workloads.

At best, there will be a prolonged struggle over FY 2011 appropriations, leaving Social Security operating on a CR for many months into the future. There is a good chance that Social Security will be operating on a CR for two years. This may cause major problems at Social Security. We will see if Republicans are indifferent to these problems.

Pomeroy Loses

Earl Pomeroy, the Chairman of the House Social Security Subcommittee, has lost his race for re-election to the House of Representatives.

Better But Not Good Enough

From Customer Waiting Times in the Social Security Administration's Field Offices, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

... [W]e believe SSA [Social Security Administration] is focused on providing timely service to its customers—and, the majority of customers we interviewed agreed that SSA was successful in this goal. However, SSA faces many current and future challenges in maintaining and improving this level of service.

For example, a significant number of customers still waited more than 1 hour for service. Additionally, many others left SSA field offices before receiving service. Specifically, during the period March 1, 2009 through April 30, 2010 (the last 14 months of our audit period), about 3.1 million visitors waited more than 1 hour for service, and of those visitors, over 330,000 waited more than 2 hours. Further, in FY 2009, about 3.3 million visitors left a field office without receiving service. ...

To SSA’s credit, wait times improved during our audit period. During the first 14 months of our 21-month audit period, 7.5 percent of visitors waited more than 1 hour for service. In comparison, during the last 14 months of the audit period, the percentage of customers who waited more than 1 hour decreased to 6.1 percent. This improvement occurred despite an increase of over 1 million visitors. Additionally, the average visitor wait time for customers without appointments decreased from 21.8 minutes in FY 2009 to 20.1 minutes during the first 7 months of FY 2010.

That's A Big Mistake

From Bloomberg Businessweek:

The Social Security Administration asked its inspector general to investigate how a $32.3 billion mistake skewed its statistics on 2009 wages in the U.S.

Two people were found to have filed multiple W-2 forms that made them into multibillionaires, an agency official said yesterday. Those reports threw statistical wage tables out of whack and, in figures released Oct. 15, made it appear that top U.S. earners had seen their pay quintuple in 2009 to an average of $519 million.

The agency yesterday released corrected tables that showed the average incomes of the top earners, in fact, declined 7.7 percent to $84 million each.

Social Security spokesman Mark Lassiter provided few details about the W-2 forms and declined to answer questions about how they were filed, how many were filed by the same two people, or if a hoax was suspected. “We call it erroneous, you call it fictitious. It’s the same thing,” Lassiter said. “There were some invalid, I guess is the best way to put it, W- 2s.”

To make it clear, this was a mistake in a statistical table. This would have had no effect upon anyone's Social Security benefits. I cannot guess why anyone would do this intentionally.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (emphasis in original):

Three years ago, the Social Security Administration’s Atlanta offices had the nation’s worst backlog of pending disability cases. Some very sick people, who initially had been turned down for Social Security benefits and were awaiting appeals, were losing their homes, or even dying, before getting a cent. ...

But these days, the average wait time to get an appeal hearing has been cut by more than half. The Social Security Administration has hired more staff; opened its third hearing office in the Atlanta area, in Covington; and overhauled its operations here and around the country. ...

Social Security’s downtown Atlanta office now takes 366 days on average to resolve a claim, down from 900 days — almost 2 1/2 years — in 2007, when it often had the worst turnaround time in the nation. It’s now in the middle of the pack among Social Security’s hearing offices. ...

But such numbers only count the time people spend waiting for a hearing, and don’t count several months that most cases spend in the initial phases. ...

In Georgia, the average time at the initial stages jumped from about 86 days in 2007 to 141 days this year — now a month longer than the national average. The Social Security Administration is shifting cases to other states to catch up.

Report On Representative Payees

The Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB) has issued a report on representative payees at Social Security. Here are the recommendations:

• SSA [Social Security Administration] should expand its recent efforts to identify cases with the greatest risk of misuse by making greater use of available data, in order to target selection and monitoring activities in the most efficient way.
• SSA should establish criteria for data-driven selection and monitoring of representative payees. The agency is legally required to obtain from representative payees an annual accounting for benefit payments. It should develop a data-driven approach to obtain those accountings in a way that is tailored to different risk groups.
• SSA should increase its efforts to avoid selecting as payees people or organization that have interests which conflict with the best interests of the vulnerable beneficiaries whom they would be serving.
• SSA should implement an annual quality review sample of its payee activities, including capability determinations, payee selections, and misuse determinations.
• SSA’s Inspector General should annually review a sample of site visits to organizational payees to ensure that those visits are effective in preventing misuse and ensuring compliance with SSA policies.
• SSA’s Inspector General should examine a sample of beneficiaries with fee-for-service payees to see how the payee’s fee impacts meeting the beneficiaries’ food, shelter, and personal needs.
• SSA should take steps to improve coordination and establish automated data exchanges with other agencies that also serve SSA’s beneficiaries. There are numerous agencies that use payees or other fiduciaries or that provide protective services. The Veterans Administration, state courts, state Adult Protective Service agencies, Protection and Advocacy agencies for people with disabilities, and state foster care agencies all serve populations that include SSA beneficiaries. Improved coordination and data exchanges can better protect the people that each agency serves.

India To Press For Social Security Treaty

From the Hindustan Times:

India will press with the US during President Barack Obama's visit here next week for a social security pact aimed at providing relief from double taxation to over one lakh [100,000] Indians working there who pay nearly $ one billion annually as social security tax. ...

If the pact comes through, then Indian professionals working in the US on short term contract up to five years will not require to make any social security contribution provided they continue to make the payment in India.

The US has not been forthcoming in signing such a pact with India as US gets over $ one billion as social security tax from the Indians working. However, top Indian IT companies including Infosys and TCS have been pushing for such a pact with the US.

"Compared to Indians working in the US, the number of American professionals working here is very less. So US feels the pact will only benefit India but we have argued that as nuclear commerce with US expands, lot many US professionals will require to work here and they will also be benefited from the pact," the official said. ...

"There are indications that formal negotiations will begin following Obama's visit," said the official. Obama will be in New Delhi on November 7 and 8 during which he will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other leaders.

New Hearing Offices In Michigan

From the Central Michigan Morning Sun:

Michigan residents have been waiting two or even three years to have their disability cases heard before the Social Security Administration.

New Social Security hearing offices in Mt. Pleasant and in Livonia are intended as ways to alleviate those long waits.

The Mt. Pleasant office opened Oct. 19; Livonia's opened in August. ...

"We already have reduced the average time it takes to process hearings in Michigan from 693 days in fiscal year 2008 to 533 days this year."[said Carmen Moreno, Regional Communications Director for Social Security] ...

A new office in Marquette is planned next year.