Memo From Chief ALJ On Dismissals

Published in the newsletter of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR). Click twice on each page to view full size.

Exactly

From Federal News Radio:

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) is about as mild-mannered a member of the upper chamber as one will find. He rarely raises his voice. His questions are of substance, not for show.

But at one his last hearings, Voinovich -- who retires in December -- took the opportunity to make a plea to federal managers.

"It just drives me crazy that more departments don't really stand up and start raising you know what when we don't give you resources you need to get the job done particularly in management," Voinovich said....

"For years we've complained about the social security disability [backlog] and when I met with [Michael] Astrue, [the commissioner of the Social Security Administration] Congress just slashed their budget without any consideration as to whether or not they can get the job done," Voinovich said. "And then when things didn't get done Congress beat them up and if you go back and look at it and say the reason why they couldn't do it is you didn't give them the resources and now you are complaining."

Democrats are certainly guilty of the same behavior but Republicans have raised it to the level of promoting anarchism: Underfund agencies, complain about their poor performance and use their poor performance as justification for cutting agency budgets further because government is horrendously wasteful and should mostly be abolished.

That's Odd

For more than three months the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been reviewing Social Security's proposal:

...[T]o establish a 12-month time limit for the withdrawal of an old age benefits application. We also propose to permit only one withdrawal per lifetime. These proposed changes would limit the voluntary suspension of benefits only to those benefits disbursed in future months.

OMB has gone beyond its own guidelines on the timeframes for these reviews and has had to officially extend the time for review. I did not think there was anything complicated or controversial about this. It is aimed at shutting down attempts to game Social Security by filing claims for old age benefits, receiving benefits for a term of years and then withdrawing the claim and paying back the benefits to get a higher benefit later.

Social Security Wants To Clarify

From a notice from Social Security to appear in the Federal Register tomorrow:

We are reopening for a limited purpose the comment period for the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that we published in the Federal Register on August 19, 2010 (75 FR 51336). We are reopening the comment period for 15 days to clarify and to seek additional public comment about an aspect of the proposed definitions of the terms “marked” and “extreme” in sections 12.00 and 112.00 of our Listing of Impairments (listings). We are reopening the comment period to accept comments about that issue only. We will not consider comments on any other aspects of the proposed listings for mental disorders that we receive during this reopened comment period. ...

Many commenters focused on two aspects of our proposed rule: 1) a definition of “marked” based on a standardized test score that is two standard deviations below the mean; and, 2) a separate definition of “marked” based on functioning that would be the equivalent of such a score if there were a standardized test. As discussed above, neither of these proposals represents new policy; both are based on our longstanding rules. However, some commenters said that our proposal would encourage our adjudicators to use standardized tests. Many said that we should drop all reference to standardized tests in the mental illness sections of the proposed rules and that the change would reduce the number of children and adults with serious mental disorders who qualify for disability benefits. Some who are already beneficiaries or who have family members who are beneficiaries were concerned that they would lose their benefits. ...

We did not intend for, and do not believe that, our proposed rules would do any of these things. ...

It looks like the other lines of criticism did not bother Social Security that much.

IE Fading Fast

Since there are signs that Social Security is having trouble making its internet services available to those who use browsers other than Internet Explorer, I thought I would take a look at the browsers my readers are using. The report is below. You need to note that about half of my readers are accessing this blog from computers at Social Security and all of them are using Internet Explorer. If you take them out of the equation, it looks as if Firefox is almost as big as Internet Explorer and that Safari and Chrome are growing rapidly.

Insisting that everyone use only Internet Explorer to access Social Security's online services is not an option.

1.	Internet Explorer		17,039	69.46%
2.	Firefox		3,993	16.28%
3.	Safari		2,327	9.49%
4.	Chrome		971	3.96%
5.	Opera		35	0.14%
6.	SeaMonkey		33	0.13%
7.	Mozilla Compatible Agent		27	0.11%
8.	Playstation 3		26	0.11%
9.	BlackBerry9530		23	0.09%
10.	BlackBerry8530		16	0.07%

What Are The Chances Of A Government Shutdown?

Jonathan Chait, writing in the New Republic:

I think a lot of people are underrating the potential for a government shutdown. Here is the dynamic. ...

You can't convince your base that the president is destroying freedom, undermining capitalism, and threatening 1920s Germany-style inflation, and then turn around and tell them to just wait things out for two years. ...

[I]t's worth delving a bit deeper into the GOP's historical understanding of the government shutdown [in 1995]. The Republican view of this episode -- and I remember this at the time, from my GOP staffer housemate -- was that the whole idea that Republicans shut down the government was a big lie concocted by the Clinton administration and abetted by the liberal media. Clinton, they believe, is the one who shut down the government. After all, if he had agreed to the Republican terms, there would have been no shutdown.

This is actually, as far as I can tell, a fairly unanimous belief among Republicans. ...

Are You Sure That Eleven Years And Nine Months Is An Adequate Test?

From today's Federal Register:

We are announcing the following demonstration project relating to the Social Security disability program under title II of the Social Security Act (Act). ...

In this project, we are testing the use of a benefit offset based on earnings as an alternative to certain rules that we currently apply to title II disability beneficiaries who work. Under the benefit offset, we will reduce title II disability benefits by $1 for every $2 that a beneficiary earns above a substantial gainful activity threshold amount. ...

DATES: The demonstration project will begin January 2011 and will end September 2022.

It seems obvious to me that Social Security isn't just slow walking this; they're slow crawling it. Why?

Social Security Workforce Increases

Below are the September 2010 figures for the number of employees at Social Security along with earlier figures for comparison purposes. Note that the workforce has increased by about 10% since Barack Obama became President.

I fear that we will be lucky to keep the workforce at this level over the next two years. Indeed, furloughs are not out of the question.

• September 2010 69,963
  
• June 2010 69,600
  
• March 2010 66,863
  
• December 2009 67,486
  
• September 2009 67,632
  
• June 2009 66,614
  
• March 2009 63,229
  
• December 2008 63,733
  
• September 2008 63,990
  
• September 2007 62,407
• September 2006 63,647
• September 2005 66,147
• September 2004 65,258
• September 2003 64,903
• September 2002 64,648
• September 2001 65,377
• September 2000 64,521
• September 1999 63,957
• September 1998 65,629