Updated Fee Payment Numbers

Updated numbers from Social Security on payments of fees to attorneys and others who represent Social Security claimants. These fees come out of claimants' back benefits.

Year 2011

Fee Payments
Month/Year	Volume	Amount
Jan-11	34,467	$113,459,847.04
Feb-11	33,305	$107,796,771.38
Mar-11	34,885	$112,463,768.46

ALJ Leopold Dies

I regret to pass on the news that Administrative Law Judge Richard L. Leopold of Charlotte died this morning of an apparent heart attack while playing golf.

Bad Time For a 25th Anniversary?

The National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) is planning a big celebration on June 8 for its 25th anniversary. There will be a dinner honoring Marty Ford, Director of Legal Advocacy at the Arc of the United States, Virginia P. Reno, Vice President for Income Security at the National Academy of Social Insurance, Wayne Vroman, Economist at The Urban Institute and James N. Ellenberger, President of the AFL-CIO Retirees Association.

NASI deserves to celebrate its anniversary and these fine folks certainly deserve to be honored but it is hard for someone who believes in the concept of Social Insurance to be in a celebratory mood at this point in our nation's history. The Social Security Administration's operating budget has been cut to the point that it is on a glide path to collapse. The whole concept of Social Insurance is under assault as never before. We are looking at serious Republican proposals to end Medicare, Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income. There are other proposals to dramatically cut Social Security and Unemployment Insurance benefits, almost certainly as a way station to ending them altogether. Many Republicans are pledging to do anything short of violence to achieve their ambitious agenda, including destroying the nation's credit.

The one thing that gives me hope is the conviction that Republican have greatly overreached and are bound for electoral disaster.

Bad Axe Service Gets The Axe

From the Huron, MI Daily Tribune:

BAD AXE — County officials learned April 1 the Social Security Administration no longer will send representatives to the county building on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month to help residents with Social Security business.

“Because the administration is cutting back on travel, they no longer will be sending a representative twice a month to the court house,” explained Huron County Board of Commissioners Executive Secretary Jodi Essenmacher, who received notice April 1 that effective that day, Social Security Administration (SSA) representatives no longer would be coming to the county.

Instead, the county on Tuesday entered into an agreement to allow SSA to set up a video terminal to service county residents.

Winners And Losers

From the Washington Post:

The Congressional Budget Office estimate shows that compared with current spending rates the spending bill due for a House vote Thursday [and which just passed] would cut federal outlays from non-war accounts by just $352 million through Sept. 30. About $8 billion in immediate cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid are offset by nearly equal increases in defense spending.

Got that? Social Security got budget cuts that leave it barely functioning while defense spending went up.

House Social Security Subcommittee Hearing

Theresa Gruber, Social Security's Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Operations, testified today before the House Ways and Means Committee on Social Security number verification and identity theft. Her written testimony is now available.

President On Social Security

From a White House summary of President Obama's speech today:

The President does not believe that Social Security is a driver of our near-term deficit problems or is currently in crisis. But he supports bipartisan efforts to strengthen Social Security for the long haul, because its long-term challenges are better addressed sooner than later to ensure that it remains the rock-solid benefit for older Americans that it has been for past generations. The President in the State of the Union laid out his principles for Social Security reform which he believes should form the basis for bipartisan negotiations that could proceed in parallel to deficit negotiations:

• Strengthen retirement security for the low-income and vulnerable; maintain robust disability and survivors’ benefits.

• No privatization or weakening of the Social Security system; reform must strengthen Social Security and restore long-term solvency.

• No current beneficiary should see the basic benefit reduced; nor will we accept an approach that slashes benefits for future generations.

Lawsuit Alleges ALJ Bias In Queens, NY

From the New York Times:

The Queens office that hears appeals of Social Security disability cases is well known to lawyers, judges and many other New Yorkers as an inhospitable place to seek benefits. ...

Now, a class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn says that five of the eight Queens judges are not just difficult, but also biased against the applicants — many of whom are poor or immigrants — and have systematically denied benefits to the disabled by making legal and factual errors. ...

The five judges named in the suit are David Z. Nisnewitz, Michael D. Cofresi, Seymour Fier, Marilyn P. Hoppenfeld and Hazel C. Strauss. ...

The Times’s analysis found that the rejection rate for the entire Queens office, 50.9 percent, was the highest in New York State, and far higher than in other New York City boroughs; in the current fiscal year, Manhattan has an average denial rate of 37 percent, the Bronx 33 percent, and Brooklyn 14.5 percent.