Labor Contract Negotiations At An Impasse

     Social Security management has been in a protracted negotiation with the labor union that represents most of its employees, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), over a new contract. The AFGE website reports that the union has requested the intervention of the Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP), which is a fairly obscure federal agency. The FSIP has directed the parties to engage in intense negotiations with the help of a mediator. 

     I am not optimistic about a resolution of the matter this year. AFGE has made many bitter complaints about Commissioner Astrue. This may not be resolved until there is a new Commissioner.

Office Closure In Pittsburgh

One of Pittsburgh's Social Security field offices is closing.

Your Moment Of Zen

The Rest Doesn't Matter; Just Cut People Off Benefits

     The House Social Security Subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for January 24 on minimizing "improper payments and protect taxpayers’ dollars from waste, fraud, and abuse." I think one can read this hearing as an effort to make sure that Social Security's top priority in spending its limited operating funds is cutting people off disability benefits.Maintaining routine operations appears to be of limited interest to committee Republicans.

     I don't want to imply that continuing disability reviews or fraud investigations are unimportant. They are important. The problem at the moment is that Social Security is fighting just to keep its doors open. 

      It sometimes seems to me as if the Republicans on this Subcommittee are intent on confirming my worst suspicions about them.

Final Rules On Medicare Prescription Drug Subsidy

     Social Security has adopted final rules on eligibility for the Medicare prescription drug subsidy. These are the same as the interim final rules already in place.

The Leninist Strategy For Social Security Hasn't Work

     Every scheme has to start somewhere. Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times points out that the right wing scheme to guarantee Social Security benefits to those who are already retired or who are about to retire while cutting or eliminating benefits for those who are further away from retirement started in 1983. Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis wrote Achieving a Leninist Strategy for the Cato Institute's Journal recommending this tack. Why is this a Leninist strategy? Because Lenin "recognized that fundamental change is contingent both upon a movement's ability to create a focused political coalition and upon its success in isolating and weakening its opponents." I am not sure that the scheme to gradually kill Social Security is what Lenin was talking about. A more accurate title for that 1983 article would have been "Achieving a Divide and Conquer Strategy" but that isn't nearly as catchy a title.

     The prediction in that Cato article that Social Security would eventually collapse under its own weight has proven no truer than Marx's predictions about capitalism. The "Lenisist" strategy for hastening Social Security's demise advocated almost three decades ago in the Cato piece has been far less successful than the strategies that Lenin developed. Maybe it's time for the right to give up on this one. As Dean Baker writes in Huffington Post, time is not on the side of those who want to phase out Social Security.

What Factors Predispose To Disability?

From Science Daily(emphasis added):

Factors other than genetics and childhood environment affect the risk of going on medical leave or disability pension, reports a study in the January Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

Led by Åsa Samuelsson, MSc, of Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, the researchers used a database including nearly 53,000 Swedish twins born between 1952 and 1958. Twin studies provide uniquely valuable information on the familial factors -- genetics and early life experiences -- affecting health and illness.

At follow-up from 1992 to 2007, the average percentage of participants on disability pension was 10.7 percent per year. Not surprisingly, the strongest risk factor for disability was age: risk was nine times higher for older versus younger workers. Disability pension rates were about five times higher for less-educated workers and two times higher for those who were unmarried.

Marital status was a stronger risk factor in men than women. Risk was also somewhat higher for people living in rural or semi-rural areas.

All of these factors remained significant after adjusting for familial factors. This indicates that disability risk is related to "factors not shared by family members, such as experience or choices in adulthood," the researchers write.

Earnings Statements Still Not Available Online

From Oregon Live:

Those Social Security statements you once got each year in the mail? They were supposed to be available online by now. They aren't, and it's not clear when they'll be there or whether they'll be mailed instead, as promise.

The Social Security Administration continues to work to get annual statements online, a spokesman said, but has no plans to resume mailing them. .

But the statements still aren't available on ssa.gov. The agency also has no plans to mail them because its budget is in even worse shape than in April, agency spokesman Mike Webb said.

Webb said concerns about security have delayed posting the statements online. But he had no firm timetable for their appearance.

"I do know the current goal is to have some form of an online statement available in the near future," Webb said Thursday. "The issue is always security. We're probably not going to post something just to see what happens."