Social Security News

Mar 30, 2011

Where Do We Stand?

There is lots of news on the budget front but where it leaves us is most unclear.

From the Washington Post:

Having difficulty finding consensus within their own ranks, House Republican leaders have begun courting moderate Democrats on several key fiscal issues, including a deal to avoid a government shutdown at the end of next week.
The basic outline would involve more than $30 billion in cuts for the 2011 spending package, well short of the $61 billion initially demanded by freshman Republicans and other conservatives, according to senior aides in both parties. Such a deal probably would be acceptable to Senate leaders and President Obama as long as the House didn’t impose funding restrictions on certain social and regulatory programs supported by Democrats, Senate and administration aides said.
The fact that Republican leaders have initiated talks with some Democrats shows some division within House Republicans just two months after taking over the House.

From The Hill:

Conservatives are turning to a new message in the escalating budget fight: A government shutdown is not actually a shutdown.
It’s a “slowdown,” according to the new refrain from Tea Party leader Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). Or as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) put it on Monday, the stalemate over spending could cause the government “to partially shut down.”

From the New York Times:

The most visible element of the budget fight in Congress is the one over the scale of spending cuts this year. But increasingly, other deeply contentious policy issues that House Republicans insist must be addressed in any budget deal are as much of a stumbling block as the final dollar figure.

They include efforts to take away money to carry out the new health care law, to limit regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency and to cut federal financing for organizations like Planned Parenthood that provide abortions. ...

While two sides can ultimately agree on dollars, coming together on ideologically polarizing policy matters is far more difficult: Some things you are either for or against.

From the National Journal:

In a purely symbolic move in the ongoing budget and spending cut negotiations, House Republicans plan to pass on Friday a measure called the “Prevention of a Government Shutdown Act. Passage will do nothing to avoid a government shutdown ...

According to TPM, the Prevention of a Government Shutdown Act "would deem controversial Republican spending cut legislation the law of the land if Congress blows past an April 6 deadline."

From the Associated Press:

Democrats indicated Tuesday they may be willing to accept Republican-backed curbs on the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal regulators as part of an overall deal on spending cuts, a rare hint of compromise in private negotiations marked by public rancor.

Santorum Says That Social Security's Problems Are Caused By Abortion

From the Los Angeles Times:

Social Security's future insolvency problem is caused in part by abortion, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said Tuesday.

The presidential aspirant and devout social conservative told a New Hampshire radio station on Tuesday that the cash shortfalls facing the 76-year-old Social Security system could be lessened if not for the country's "abortion culture." He was responding to a caller who made similar comments.

"Well, a third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion," he said. "We are depopulating this country, and we're seeing the birth rate is below replacement rate for the first time in history."

Mar 29, 2011

Shutdown Looking Inevitable

TPM says that a government shutdown is looking inevitable and that Republicans and Democrats are blaming each other.

Fighting For An Adequate Budget

From the Washington Post:

Claims for Social Security and disability benefits have grown in recent years, the result of baby boomer retirements and high unemployment. The Social Security Administration received 10 million new claims in 2009, up from about 8.2 million in 2004.

With 65 percent of new disability claims initially denied, appeals began piling up, and administrative law judges who hear these cases were overwhelmed.
By August 2008, an appeal took an average of 532 days to resolve. The agency hired judges and support staff to speed up the process, and by last year the average appeal took 390 days. There was still a backlog of 705,370 pending hearings.
But progress has been undermined by the budget impasse affecting most federal agencies, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. Without a budget for the current fiscal year, the Social Security staff has had to cut short its efforts to improve efficiency. ...
The report also says that President Obama’s budget requests for the Social Security Administration in recent years have not covered the increases in claims and backlog in appeals. ...
In response, the Social Security agency has suspended efforts to open eight planned hearing offices to process claims in Alabama, Minnesota, Indiana, Michigan, Texas, Montana, California and New York, spokesman Mark Lassiter said. Overtime has been largely eliminated, and a hiring freeze has blocked new staff to process appeals.
The extended stopgap measures have “made it much more difficult” for the agency to reduce the backlog in disability claims, he said.
“We have many high-traffic offices where all day long, our employees interview people filing for benefits,” said Witold Skwierczynski, president of the union representing local Social Security field offices. “Then they have to process a case. That takes time.”

This sort of article seldom appears spontaneously. Some member of Congress asked for that Congressional Research Service report. Probably, someone asked that member of Congress to ask for that report. Someone pointed out the report to the Post. Someone fed the Post information about backlogs at Social Security. Someone told them that even the Obama budget for Social Security is inadequate. We cannot know for sure but there is a good chance that Social Security's press office was involved in planting this story since they are quoted. I am glad to see that a good fight is being put up to get Social Security an adequate operating budget. This is exactly the opposite of what happened when Jo Anne Barnhart was Commissioner of Social Security.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has a need to acquire consulting services in the field of Industrial Organizational (I/O) psychology or an equivalent field in support of the design of an Occupational Information System (OIS).

Can anyone explain this one?

April 8

From Ezra Klein, writing in the Washington Post:

April 8th. That’s the deadline for Republicans and Democrats to reach a deal on funding for the remainder of 2011. No deal? Then the government shuts down. And if I were a betting man, that’s where my money would be right now: the negotiations have become too acrimonious, the issues at their heart too numerous and personal to the parties, to make a deal likely even in normal circumstances. But in circumstances in which newly elected Republicans are trying to prove to their base that they won’t catch Beltway fever and compromise while Democrats are trying to prove they won’t get pushed around by a party that controls a minority of the federal government? A deal seems near impossible.