New Ruling Will Prohibit New Claim While Appeal Is Pending

From Social Security Ruling 11-1p which will be published in the Federal Register tomorrow:

Under the new procedures we are adopting in this Ruling, generally you will no longer be allowed to have two claims for the same type of benefits pending at the same time. If you want to file a new disability claim under the same title and of the same type as a disability claim pending at any level of administrative review, you will have to choose between pursuing your administrative review rights on the pending disability claim or declining to pursue further administrative review and filing a new application.

On an initial cursory look at this Ruling, I do not see any statement concerning cases where a new claim and an appeal are already pending. I do not understand how Social Security could issue this ruling without stating what it intends to happen on cases already pending.

Update: The reason I did not see any statement concerning cases where a new claim and an appeal are already pending is because the Ruling does not address this situation. In important respects, this Ruling appears to have been drafted hastily with no consideration of history.

Roundup Of Debt Ceiling News

Today's roundup of news concerning the debt ceiling that threatens Social Security checks -- and the U.S. economy:

• The New York Times reports that the Treasury can probably continue to pay its bills for several days after August 2, probably until August 10. Great news. We can keep this crisis going another week!
• Republicans in the House of Representatives are in the sort of disarray normally seen among Democrats. The debt ceiling bill proposed by the Speaker of the House turned out not to save as much money as he had said so it is being revised. More important, the chances of passage of that bill in the House, even after revision, are looking worse and worse as the debt ceiling crisis reveals fault lines within the Republican party. Floor action on the bill has been delayed. If the House cannot pass the Boehner bill, Republican bargaining power decreases and the chances of default increase.
• To rally their troops in the House, Republicans played a video clip from the movie The Town. In the clip Ben Affleck says "I need your help. I can't tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later. And we're going to hurt some people." He and another character then put on hockey masks, bludgeon two men with sticks and shoot a man in the leg.
• The Dow went down by 91 points yesterday.

There's Your Problem

From a 60 Minutes interview of John Boehner, shortly before he became Speaker of the House of Representatives:

J. BOEHNER: We have to govern. That's what we were elected to do.

STAHL: But governing means a -- compromising.

J. BOEHNER: It means working together. It means find...

STAHL: It also means compromising.

J. BOEHNER: It means finding common ground.

STAHL: OK, is that compromising?

J. BOEHNER: I made clear I am not going to compromise on -- on my principles, nor am I going to compromise...

STAHL: What are you saying?

J. BOEHNER: ... the will of the American people.

STAHL: And you're saying I want common ground, but I'm not going to compromise. I don't understand that. I really don't.

J. BOEHNER: When you say the -- when you say the word "compromise"...

STAHL: Yeah?

J. BOEHNER: ... a lot of Americans look up and go, "Uh-oh, they're going to sell me out." And so finding common ground I think makes more sense.

Roundup Of Debt Ceiling News

 Here's what's going on this morning:

• The President, as you know, spoke to the nation last night warning of the consequences of failing to raise the debt ceiling and calling for compromise. Congressional websites crashed after the President asked the public to contact their members of Congress. They are still crashing this morning. I cannot access House Committee websites. 
• The Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives spoke to the nation. He did not speak of compromise. He called upon the Congress and the President to accept a Republican plan to raise the debt ceiling.
• Robert Greenstein of the Center of Budget  and Policy Priorities believes that the Republican plan would require deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare for current retirees in the near future.
• Negotiations are still going on behind the scenes in Congress. 
• The Washington Post has an article that says that higher than expected tax receipts may extend the date that the government runs out of money to pay its bills by up to a week. The Treasury has not yet sent out a press release in response.
• The Dow was down by 88 points yesterday and has opened modestly lower this morning.
• Some analysts regard a downgrade of U.S. debt issues to be inevitable.

More Funding For Social Security Coming Out Of Debt Ceiling Hike?

Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, has unveiled a plan to break the deadlock over the debt ceiling. Republicans in the House of Representatives are working on their own plan. The most likely scenario is that whatever the House does, that Reid's plan will pass the Senate late this week and then go to the House of Representatives, which will either pass it or reject it. If the House rejects it, the debt ceiling probably will not be hiked in time to allow Social Security checks to go out on August 3 and all hell will break loose. Even if the House Republican plan passes in the House, which is uncertain since there probably will be no Democratic votes for it and several dozen Republicans have vowed to vote against any debt ceiling hike, it is unlikely that there would even be time for the Senate to act on the House bill even if it wanted to if even one Senator decided to filibuster. There would probably be a lot more than one who would filibuster the House plan and some of them might be Republicans.

The summary of the Reid plan does contain this language which could actually result in a higher administrative budget for Social Security: "$40 billion in Program Integrity Savings. The proposal saves $40 billion by reducing fraud and abuse in mandatory programs. This includes: Continuing Disability Reviews and SSI redeterminations ..."

50/50 Chance That Debt Ceiling Goes Down To The Wire

 From ABC News:

A senior White House official says that there's a 50/50 chance that the current deficit reduction mess will not be resolved by this time next week, the day before the federal government may officially run out of money to pay all its bills.

"We may be here as we tick down to midnight," the official said. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has said August 2 the federal government runs out of funds, with incoming revenues far less than outgoing bills.

Appropriations Markup Delayed

The House Appropriations subcommittee markup of the appropriations bill that would include Social Security's administrative budget had been scheduled for Tuesday, July 26 but it has been postponed. No new date has been announced.

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