Social Security has released a new issue of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication. One article is of particular interest for the long term. Social Security has been doing a demonstration project which has allowed a few people approved for Disability Insurance Benefits by Social Security to go on Medicare immediately without the brutal two year and five month waiting period. This is the first report on that project. Not surprisingly, those few who received early Medicare reported better health care.
Nov 12, 2010
Virginia Attorney Accused Of Misappropriating $450,000 In Social Security Fees
From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
A Richmond attorney who was fired for theft this year from the law firm of Marks & Harrison has surrendered her law license after admitting to the Virginia State Bar that she misappropriated at least $450,000 from her former employer.
The case involving Kyle Cornelia Leftwich is now in the hands of Hopewell Commonwealth's Attorney Richard K. Newman, who said yesterday that he intends to seek criminal charges against Leftwich after the matter was referred to his office by the Virginia State Bar. Leftwich worked at Marks & Harrison as a disability-law specialist from September 1994 until her termination in June. ...
According to a disciplinary board affidavit, Leftwich's practice included representing disability claimants before the Social Security Administration. When she successfully concluded a claim, the government would issue a check for legal fees payable to her as the claimant's attorney.
Although the checks were made payable to her, they were the property of Marks & Harrison, in accordance with her employment agreement. Beginning in 2003, however, Leftwich began diverting some of these checks for her own use rather than delivering them to the law firm, the affidavit says. ...
Chamberlain, Edmonds Sold
I missed this story from the Atlanta Business Chronicle from September:
Emdeon will acquire Atlanta-based Chamberlin Edmonds & Associates for $260 million.
As many readers know, Chamberlin, Edmonds provides representation on Medicaid disability cases that are closely related to Social Security disability claims.
Hypocritical?
The co-chair of the President's budget deficit commission, Erskine Bowles, is from my state, North Carolina. Bowles has a day job. Although he will be retiring shortly, he is President of the Consolidated University of North Carolina, meaning that he is in charge of 16 state colleges and universities which have about 200,000. students. North Carolina, like other states, has been hit hard by the ongoing recession. This has reduced tax revenues and created massive budgeting problems for all NC state agencies, including state colleges and universities. Given that Bowles seems largely unconcerned by the possibility of massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare, you would think that he would be hard at work cutting deeply into the budgets of the colleges and universities he controls, making the politically unpalatable decisions that must be made. You might think that but you would be wrong. Despite the fact that the state constitution requires that the legislature "shall provide that the benefits of The University of North Carolina and other public institutions of higher education, as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense," Bowles has embarked upon massive tuition hikes at state colleges and universities.
By the way, I wish I could link to the "Erskine bowls" ad that Bowles ran during his race for the Senate in 2002, but alas, it is not available on youtube. The ad showed Erskine Bowles bowling. It was a feeble attempt to show that he had the common touch. It failed as did his Senate campaign.
By the way, I wish I could link to the "Erskine bowls" ad that Bowles ran during his race for the Senate in 2002, but alas, it is not available on youtube. The ad showed Erskine Bowles bowling. It was a feeble attempt to show that he had the common touch. It failed as did his Senate campaign.
Nov 11, 2010
The Real Problem
From Kevin Drum's blog:
I've been trying to figure out whether I have anything to say about the "chairman's mark" of the deficit commission report that was released today. In a sense, I don't. This is not a piece of legislation, after all. Or a proposed piece of legislation. Or even a report from the deficit commission itself. It's just a draft presentation put together by two guys. Do you know how many deficit reduction proposals are out there that have the backing of two guys? Thousands. Another one just doesn't matter.
But the iron law of the news business is that if people are talking about it, then it matters. So this report matters, even though it's really nothing more than the opinion of Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles. So here's what I think of it, all contained in one handy chart from the Congressional Budget Office:
Here's what the chart means:
- Discretionary spending (the light blue bottom chunk) isn't a long-term deficit problem. It takes up about 10% of GDP forever. What's more, pretending that it can be capped is just game playing: anything one Congress can do, another can undo. So if you want to recommend a few discretionary cuts, that's fine. Beyond that, though, the discretionary budget should be left to Congress since it can be cut or expanded easily via the ordinary political process. That's why it's called "discretionary."
- Social Security (the dark blue middle chunk) isn't a long-term deficit problem. It goes up very slightly between now and 2030 and then flattens out forever. If Republicans were willing to get serious and knock off their puerile anti-tax jihad, it could be fixed easily with a combination of tiny tax increases and tiny benefit cuts phased in over 20 years that the public would barely notice. It deserves about a week of deliberation.
- Medicare, and healthcare in general, is a huge problem. It is, in fact, our only real long-term spending problem.
To put this more succinctly: any serious long-term deficit plan will spend about 1% of its time on the discretionary budget, 1% on Social Security, and 98% on healthcare. Any proposal that doesn't maintain approximately that ratio shouldn't be considered serious. The Simpson-Bowles plan, conversely, goes into loving detail about cuts to the discretionary budget and Social Security but turns suddenly vague and cramped when it gets to Medicare. That's not serious.
Proposal To Cut Social Security
The co-chairs of the fiscal commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson have released their draft of recommendations for the Commission. It is important to note that this is only the draft of the co-chairs, not the final Commission recommendations. The co-chairs have these recommendations for Social Security:
- Index the retirement age to longevity -- i.e., increase the retirement age to qualify for Social Security -- to age 69 by 2075.
- Index Social Security yearly increases to a lower inflation rate, which will generally mean lower cost of living increases and less money per average recipient.
- "Increase progressivity of benefit formula" -- i.e., reduce benefits by 2050 for middle, and, especially, higher earners, relative to current benefits.
- Increase the Social Security contribution ceiling: while people only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,800 of their wages today, that's only about 86% of the total potentially taxable wages. The co-chairs suggest raising the ceiling to capture 90% of wages.
- From the White House: "The President will wait until the bipartisan fiscal commission finishes its work before commenting. He respects the challenging task that the Co-Chairs and the Commissioners are undertaking and wants to give them space to work on it. These ideas, however, are only a step in the process towards coming up with a set of recommendations and the President looks forward to reviewing their final product early next month," said White House spokesperson, Bill Burton.
- From Nancy Pelosi: This proposal is simply unacceptable. Any final proposal from the Commission should do what is right for our children and grandchildren’s economic security as well as for our nation’s fiscal security, and it must do what is right for our seniors, who are counting on the bedrock promises of Social Security and Medicare. And it must strengthen America’s middle class families–under siege for the last decade, and unable to withstand further encroachment on their economic security.
- From Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat: "We're not going to have an up-or-down vote on this. There are proposals in there that are painful. I told them I said there are things in here which inspire me and others which I hate like the devil hates holy water. I'm not going to vote for those things."
- From Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican: "If we do the cuts, I'll go for it. We may have to go for some revenues at some point."
- From AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: "The chairmen of the Deficit Commission just told working Americans to 'Drop Dead,'"
- From Ezra Klein: The co-chairmen have some interesting policy ideas for how to balance the budget, but as of yet, they've not made any discernible progress on the political deadlock preventing us from balancing the budget. And it's the deadlock, not the policy questions, that they were asked to solve.
Nov 10, 2010
Bonuses To The Brass -- And A Weird Ring
The union that represents most Social Security employees, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), has issued its October newsletter. The newsletter has a brief and very odd article concerning a peculiar ring that it says that the manager of the Santa Rosa, California field office wears. Of wider interest, the newsletter includes the results of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information on bonus awards to Social Security brass. Social Security took 15 months to respond to the FOIA request so it is already out of date. Here are the numbers:
Atlanta Region:Paul Barnes, Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $22,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $22,000 March 14, 2008
Algeleon P. Rhodes, Asst/Deputy Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $8,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $8,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $8,125 March 14, 2008
Mary Ann Sloan, Regional Chief Counsel
Performance Award $10,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $14,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $14,750 March 14, 2008
SES Rank Award $32,680 December 30, 2008
Quittie C. Wilson, Asst Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $8,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $8,000 December 24, 2006
Boston Region:
Susan Harding, Deputy Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $9,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $11,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $12,500 March 14, 2008
Manuel Nunez, Asst Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $8,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $9,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $10,000 March 14, 2008
Manuel Vaz, Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $10,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $20,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $23,375 March 14, 2008
SES Rank Award $59,897 September 30, 2008
Chicago Region:
Kim L. Bright, Regional Chief Counsel
Performance Award $8,000 January 23, 2005
Performance Award $10,000 January 22, 2006
Danny L. Byrns, TSC Manager
Individual Suggestion $4,050 December 20, 2004
Donna L. Calvert, Regional Chief Counsel
Performance Award $10,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $7,700 March 14, 2008
Trudy A. Lewis, Asst Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $8,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $7,700 March 14, 2008
Mary D. Mahler, Asst Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $7,850 March 14, 2008
James F. Martin, Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $9,000 January 23, 2005
Performance Award $12,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $12,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $12,000 March 14, 2008
Marcia R. Mosley, Deputy Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $1,500 May 29, 2005
Performance Award $8,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $9,250 March 14, 2008
Dallas Region:
Earl Melebeck, Assistant/Deputy Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $10,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $10,000 December 24, 2006
Ramona Schuenemeyer, Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $24,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $8,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $21,750 March 14, 2008
SES Rank Award $32,975 September 30, 2008
Tina M. Waddell, Regional Chief Counsel
Performance Award $12,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $16,500 March 14, 2008
Denver Region:
Nancy A. Berryhill, Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $12,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $14,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $17,500 March 14, 2008
Yvette Keesee, Deputy Regional Chief Counsel
Performance Award $3,500 April 14, 2008
Katherine E. Kintz, Deputy Assistant Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $2,000 March 30, 2008
Martha J. Lambie, Deputy Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $8,125 March 14, 2008
Kansas City Region:
Michael Grochowski, Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $24,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $10,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $13,500 March 14, 2008
William K. Powell, Assistant/Deputy Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $8,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $8,500 March 14, 2008
Frank V. Smith III, Regional Chief Counsel
Performance Award $10,000 January 22, 2006
New York Region:
(No dates were given)
Beatrice Disman, Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $25,000
Performance Award $26,150
Paul M. Doersam, Deputy Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $15,000
Performance Award $16,500
Performance Award $15,000
Anne Jacobosky, Assistant Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $8,000
Performance Award $8,000
Philadelphia Region:
Steven G. DeMarco, Assistant Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $12,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $12,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $14,250 March 14, 2008
Lewis H. Kaiser, Deputy Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $12,000 December 24, 2006
Paula M. Newcomer, Deputy Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $8,125 March 14, 2008
San Francisco Region:
Stephen J. Breen, Assistant Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $8,000 January 22, 2006
Performance Award $8,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $8,500 March 14, 2008
Patricia E. Robidart, Deputy Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $8,000 December 24, 2006
Performance Award $8,200 March 14, 2008
Peter D. Spencer, Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $20,000 January 23, 2005
Performance Award $22,000 January 22, 2006
SES Rank Award $56,708 September 27, 2006
Performance Award $26,150 March 14, 2008
Seattle Region:
(No dates were given)
Carl L. Ruban, Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $10,000
Performance Award $10,000
Dennis S. Wulkan, Assistant Regional Commissioner
Performance Award $10,000
Performance Award $8,000
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