Trying To Shift The Blame

From the Associated Press:

Social Security efforts to trim a disability claims backlog haven't done enough to halt personal ordeals for disabled people awaiting government help, a Senate oversight committee told the head of the agency Monday.

For people in need and awaiting claims, "Your heart goes out to them," U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, Republican of Ohio, said at a Senate subcommittee field hearing on disability claim backlogs of two years or more.

If Voinovich's party has its way on appropriations, expect these backlogs to grow over the next two years. That is not what Voinovich or his party really want but that would be the inevitable effect if Social Security's appropriations are cut back to 2008 levels. That is what the Republican Party ran on in the last election.

Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue, for his part, testified at the hearing that:

We have been chronically underfunded for 15 straight years, beginning in the early 1990s ... [I]t was a bipartisan thing. It didn't matter the party of the president or the party of Congress, our administrative funding was just not as sexy as a lot of other things that Congress wants to spend money for.

Baloney. Republicans were in control of either the White House or Congress for that entire time period until the last two years. Democrats fought for higher administrative budgets for Social Security for the entire time period. They were consistently blocked by Republicans until the last two years. It has only been in the last two years that Social Security has made any real progress on its backlogs. Republican control of the House of Representatives will allow Republicans to once again block adequate appropriations for Social Security.

New Homepage For Social Security

The Social Security Administration unveiled its new homepage today.

It looks less cluttered to me. What do you think?

Senate Hearing In Ohio

The Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs held a hearing today in Akron, Ohio. Here are the prepared remarks:

Witnesses

Panel 1

• The Honorable Michael Astrue [view testimony]
  Commissioner
  Social Security Administration
• The Honorable Patrick P. O'Carroll, Jr. [view testimony]
  Inspector General
  Social Security Administration

Panel 2

• Mr. Richard Warsinskey [view testimony]
  Cleveland Downtown District Office Manager and Past President
  National Council of Social Security Management Associations
• Mr. Randy Frye [view testimony]
  President
  Association of Administrative Law Judges

Wednesday Is Final Day For Comments On Proposed Changes To Mental Impairments Listings

Wednesday, November 17 is the final day for comments to be made upon Social Security's Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) that would alter its mental illness listings used in determining disability. Over 1,200 comments have already been filed. Most seem to have been inspired by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). You can see their recommended comments at the NAMI website.

Comments may be made online. Here are the instructions sent out by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives for filing comments online:

SSA strongly recommends submission of comments via the eRulemaking portal at www.regulations.gov. On that site, follow these directions:

• Click on "submit a comment"
• In the space for "Enter keyword of ID," type in: SSA-2007-0101. Then click on "Search."
• One result should appear - the SSA mental disorders NPRM. On the right side, click on "Submit a Comment."
• Complete the form. It allows you to type in a comment (2000 characters maximum) or attach a document. To attach a document, first you "browse" and then must click on "attach."

NOSSCR's own comments are an excellent resource to use in preparing your comment since they include essentially all of the objections that people have made to the NPRM.

ALJs Complain Of Threats

From the Associated Press:

Judges who hear Social Security disability cases are facing a growing number of violent threats from claimants angry over being denied benefits or frustrated at lengthy delays in processing claims.

There were at least 80 threats to kill or harm administrative law judges or staff over the past year — an 18 percent increase over the previous reporting period, according to data collected by the agency.

The data was released to the Association of Administrative Law Judges and made available to The Associated Press. ...

A Senate subcommittee is expected to hear testimony on Monday at a field hearing in Akron, Ohio, about the rising number of threats, as well as the status of the massive backlog in applications for disability benefits, which are available to people who can't work because of medical problems.

Why Didn't You Do This Before The Election?

From CNN Money:

When House Democrats return to Washington on Monday, a top priority will be putting a $250 dollar check in the mail to 58 million Social Security recipients.

Democrats plan to vote early in the lame-duck session on a bill that would provide Social Security recipients with a one-time payment, according to the office of Earl Pomeroy, a Democrat from North Dakota who authored the legislation.

Concerns Over Proposed Mental Illness Listings Changes

From the Chicago Tribune:

Deep inside a 34-page proposed federal regulation are a few sentences that are causing nightmares for mental health advocacy groups.

The regulation, from the Social Security Administration, could change how people with mental illnesses are evaluated for disability payments.

The angst is over whether standardized testing will be required to determine such payments. The proposed regulation is not clear on that controversial subject. At one point is says standardized tests will not be required but then goes into detail on how the exams would be used to determine a person's fitness for work.

The confusion over the wording — and fears that it will be interpreted to require testing — has advocates by the hundreds calling in comments to the Social Security Administration, which will accept them until Wednesday....

"We don't have good tests for this, and the way they are describing how the tests would be used suggests the goal and likely effect is to dramatically reduce the number of people who are eligible for disability," said Mark Heyrman of the Mental Health Summit, a Chicago-based advocacy group. ...

Tom Yates, an attorney with Chicago's Health and Disability Advocates, has a benign interpretation of the proposed rules. He thinks Social Security wants only to clarify its expectations for the few times a standardized test might be used in a mental illness disability claim.

For the record, I have only mild concerns about this aspect of the proposal. In my mind there is a more serious problem that has to do with substituting the word "and" for the word "or." I will write more about this in the near future.

CBO Study On Social Security Disability

From a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Study(footnotes omitted):

Between 1970 and 2009, the number of people receiving DI benefits more than tripled, from 2.7 million to 9.7 million. That jump, which significantly outpaced the increase in the working-age population during that period, is attributable to several changes—in characteristics of that population, in federal policy, and in opportunities for employment. In addition, during those years, the average inflation-adjusted cost per person receiving DI benefits rose from about $6,900 to about $12,800 (in 2010 dollars). As a result, inflation-adjusted expenditures for the DI program, including administrative costs, increased nearly sevenfold between 1970 and 2009, climbing from $18 billion to $124 billion (in 2010 dollars). Most DI beneficiaries, after a two-year waiting period, are also eligible for Medicare; the cost of those benefits in fiscal year 2009 totaled about $70 billion.

Under current law, the DI program is not financially sustainable. ... Without legislative action to reduce the DI program’s outlays, increase its dedicated federal revenues, or transfer other federal funds to it, the Social Security Administration (SSA) will not have the legal authority to pay full DI benefits beyond [2018].