Senate Moving Forward With Appropriations Bill Covering Social Security

     From the summary of a bill pending before the Senate Appropriations Committee:

Social Security Administration (SSA): The bill includes nearly $12 billion, an increase of $534 million, for SSA’s administrative expenses. This includes a $441 million increase for program integrity activities and a $93 million increase in core administrative expenses for SSA to keep pace with an aging population and record-high workloads.

     This bill was marked up in Subcommittee yesterday. It will now go to the full committee.
     The House of Representatives has yet to produce a draft appropriations bill covering Social Security. However, the House's budget plan for the Labor-HHS appropriations, the one that covers Social Security, is 25.9% lower than the Senate Labor-HHS appropriation bill.
     The Senate bill would worsen service at Social Security. A 25.9% decrease in Social Security's operating budget would lead to unimaginable consequences.

Don't Count On The Disability Trust Fund Going Bust In 2016 -- Or Ever

     Since I noticed that payments from the Social Security Disability Trust Fund have reached near stasis, I've been wondering about that projection from Social Security's Chief Actuary that the Disability Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2016. If you look at that projection, one of the first things you notice is that there isn't just one prediction. There are three. The one commonly cited is the "intermediate" prediction that the Disability Trust Fund will run out of money in 2016. Another is the "high cost" or pessimistic prediction that the Disability Trust Fund will run out of money in 2015. Another is the "low cost" or optimistic prediction that the Disability Trust Fund will not run out of money. That's right. The optimistic projection is that even though the Disability Trust Fund is losing money now, that this situation will turn around before the Disability Trust Fund ever runs out of money.
     How do the three projections look given the actual results so far in 2013? Let's compare:
2013 Actual -- through May:
Income 2013: $48.1 billion, an increase of 4.7% over the equivalent time period last year
Outgo: $58.4 billion, an increase of 3.0% over the equivalent time period last year

Pessimistic Projection: 
Income total for 2013: $110.2 billion, an increase of 1.0% over 2012
Outgo total for 2013: $147.0 billion, an increase of 4.8% over 2012

Intermediate Projection: 
Income total for 2013:$111.4 billion, an increase of 2.1% over 2012
Outgo total for 2013: $144.8 billion, an increase of 3.2% over 2012

Optimistic Projection:
Income total for 2013: $112.5 billion, an increase of 3.1% over 2012
Outgo total for 2013: $142.8 billion, an increase of 1.8% over 2012

     Thus, the increase in income so far in 2013 is much greater than even the optimistic projection while the outgo is a little better than the intermediate projection, suggesting that the optimistic projection would probably be the closest of the three projections to what has happened so far in 2013. Even that may understate how good these numbers are. I was comparing the first five months of 2012 with the first five months of 2013 to get that 3.0% increase in actual benefit payments but if you look at the last nine months, there's actually been a 0.6% decrease in disability payments!
     There's another, simpler way of looking at this which confirms the trend line shown above. The pessimistic projection was that the Disability Trust Fund would go down by an average of $3.1 billion per month in 2013, the intermediate projection was $2.8 billion per month and the optimistic projection was $2.5 billion per month. So far in 2013, the Disability Trust Fund has gone down by an average of $2.3 billion per month, which is significantly better than even the most optimistic projection of the Chief Actuary.
     Of course, what happens over the course of five months won't necessarily tell us what will happen over the course of the next few years but unless you're expecting a new economic downturn or a big increase in disability claims, things are looking pretty good for the Disability Trust Fund at the moment. If you're a Republican don't get excited about the prospect of using the exhaustion of the Disability Trust Fund as a means of forcing major cuts in Social Security disability benefits. That may never happen. If it does happen, it probably won't happen until after the 2016 election and that's a long way off.

SAAs, ALJs And OTRs

     From a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):  

The SAA [Staff Attorney Adjudicator] Program [also known as Senior Attorney program] has contributed to both an increase in adjudicative capacity and improved average processing time. However, the number of SAA OTRs[On The Records] peaked in FY [Fiscal Year] 2010, and the decline continued through the first 5 months of FY 2013. Overall, SAA and ALJ [Administrative Law Judge] OTRs have been decreasing since FY 2008, consistent with ODAR management’s predictions. In addition, in an FY 2012 quality review, the Office of Quality Performance noticed a significant drop in its decisional agreement rate on SAA OTRs, though the Agency did not have sufficient data to determine whether the issue was specific to SAAs or more broadly related to OTRs. Finally, hearing office managers were interested in additional training and greater duties for their SAAs. Given the expected decline in SAA OTRs, which was the primary purpose of the SAA Program, SSA should decide before any future extension of the program, or expansion of the SAA corps, whether the program needs to be modified to address future hearing office workload needs. ...

The SAA Program has contributed to hearing office productivity and timeliness since its introduction in FY 2008, though SAA OTR decisions peaked in FY 2010. SAA OTR decisions decreased by 31 percent in FY 2012 and continued dropping through the first 5 months of FY 2013. OTR decisions as a percent of total dispositions, whether decided by SAAs or ALJs, also decreased over the same 5-year period, from about 17 percent in FY 2008 to about 10 percent in FY 2012. An OQP [Office of Quality Performance] quality review of FY 2012 SAA OTR decisions found a significant decrease in the decisional agreement rate from prior years. However, the Agency has not conducted similar quality reviews focused on ALJ OTR decisions, so we could not determine whether the quality issues related to SAAs specifically or OTRs in general. ...

     Social Security has employed non-ALJ attorneys for decades. They have assisted ALJs, mostly by writing decisions for them. One of their other duties has been to look for cases in which it would be appropriate to do an OTR. OTRs help get favorable decisions out more quickly to the most severely disabled people. The non-ALJ attorney would advise an ALJ that a particular case was appropriate for an OTR and, usually, but not always, the ALJ would agree and the favorable decision would be issued with the ALJ's signature. Social Security decided it would be best to eliminate the middleman -- the ALJ -- and let the attorneys, referred to as Senior Attorneys or SAAs issue the OTRs on their own authority, thereby saving the time that the ALJs had spent reviewing cases identified for possible OTR.  ALJs as a group have always objected to SAAs issuing decisions in their own right. Whatever anyone thinks of the SAA program, there's no doubt that the SAA program helped work down the terrible hearing backlogs. Those backlogs are less terrible now but we're certainly not at backlog levels that anyone should be comfortable with.
     Why did SAA decisions decrease after 2010? The 2010 election results are the obvious underlying reason but exactly why the change occurred may be a more difficult question. Was it a desire to somehow placate the new Republican majority in the House by approving fewer claims? Was it that then-Commissioner Astrue only used SAA because of pressure from the prior Democratic majority in the House and felt free to wind down the SAA program after Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives? Was it because reduced staffing forced the attorneys to stick to writing decisions for cases ALJs had heard instead of reviewing cases as SAAs? Was it simply because the backlog had come down enough that then-Commissioner Astrue thought that the SAA expedient could be phased out?
     I have no idea why OQP found a decrease in decisional agreement. Since there is no gold standard against which to measure SAA or ALJ decisions, I regard any report that OQP produces on decisional quality to be worthless. In any case, I'm confident in saying that there was no real change in SAA decisions. The change was at OQP.
     The most interesting question to me is why ALJ OTRs decreased. I can't explain it but I've certainly seen greatly increased ALJ reluctance to issue OTRs in the last three years or so. It's not unusual for me to have a hearing where the ALJ, in effect, tells me before the hearing begins that he or she has already decided to approve the claim. The ALJ wants to make sure I know so I get the hearing over quickly. This seems to be an effort to disguise an OTR. What's the point of this? Are ALJs afraid that if they do too many OTRs that something will happen to them? If so, who or what put this fear in them? What's the threat? To me, this just seems pointless. Some cases are appropriate for OTR, regardless of who the decision maker is. Who wants to slow down the process of approving people who obviously deserve to be approved?

What A Deal!

     From the National Journal (emphasis added):

With an anxious eye toward the coming debt-ceiling negotiations, House Republicans are drafting what members call a “menu” of mandatory spending cuts to offer the White House in exchange for raising the country’s borrowing limit.

This menu is more a matrix of politically fraught options for the Obama administration to consider: Go small on cuts and get a short extension of the debt ceiling. Go big – by agreeing to privatize Social Security, for example – and get a deal that will raise the ceiling for the rest of Obama’s term.

     For a more modest medium range extension of the budget ceiling, all Obama would have to agree to is ending Medicaid.

Up And Down With The Roller Coaster

      Social Security has issued updated numbers on payments of fees to attorneys and some others for representing Social Security claimants. These fees are withheld and paid by Social Security but come out of the back benefits of the claimants involved. The attorneys and others who have their fees withheld pay a user fee for this privilege. Since these fees are usually paid at the same time that the claimant is paid, these numbers show how quickly or slowly Social Security is able to get claimants paid after a favorable determination on their claims.

Month/Year	Volume	Amount
Jan-13	32,663	$96,690,734.65
Feb-13	35,508	$102,242,540.93
Mar-13	45,189	$130,690,281.94
Apr-13	33,178	$92,566,832.32
May-13	42,841	$122,781,135.03
June-13	33,954	$97,627,420.68

SSA Not Yet Implementing DOMA Decision

     Social Security has issued new instructions on dealing with same sex marriage cases. Social Security's Administrative Law Judges are now instructed to cancel any scheduled hearing dealing with this issue and to not make a decision in any case that has already been heard. I don't know how many of these cases there may be but I'd bet the vast majority of them are couples who still live in the state in which they were married. I know there are issues with cases where the parties to the marriage have moved to a state that refuses to recognize same sex marriage but there is no issue when the parties live in the state where they were married. How long should it take to write instructions for these cases?

Fair And Balanced

     From Media Matters:

Not Buying It

     Jay Barnes isn't buying the claims that Social Security is pressuring its Administrative Law Judges to approve disability claims.