GAO Report Looms -- Actually, Now It's Here And It's Got Problems

     NBC is saying that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) will release a study on Sunday (GAO releasing a report on Sunday?) saying that $1.29 billion in Social Security disability benefits were paid to 36,000 people who had too much income from employment to qualify for benefits.

     To those who deal with Social Security disability every day there is nothing surprising about this. Some disability benefits recipients don't report that they have returned to work. Some people say they have reported their return to work but Social Security didn't do anything -- and this was a major problem until a few years ago and may, to some extent, remain a problem. What is supposed to happen is that Social Security uses reported earnings to catch these cases, stop payment of benefits and declare overpayments. The problem is that Social Security doesn't have enough manpower to deal with this on a timely basis. Thus, people who shouldn't be getting benefits remain in payment status for years. You want to deal with this problem, give Social Security more operating funds. With sequestration causing further cuts in Social Security's manpower, the problem just gets worse. It's simple. Those who cry the loudest about this sort of thing are the same people who are most responsible for Social Security's inability to deal with this sort of thing on a timely basis.
     Update: The report was actually released today. The report notes that:

During this review, SSA [Social Security Administration] officials told us that limited resources and competing workloads may have constrained the agency’s ability to act promptly when it received earnings alerts or self-reported earnings for beneficiaries from our nongeneralizable examples described above. We also reported in April 2013 that budget decisions and the way SSA prioritizes competing demands, such as processing initial claims, contribute to challenges SSA faces in maintaining the integrity of the disability program.

     Social Security also told GAO that it thought that GAO's method for computing the amount of overpayments was unreliable and could lead to "substantial overstatement.". As an example of the problems with GAO's method, GAO assumed that anyone who performed work during their waiting period would never be eligible for benefits. Social Security's response was that in many cases work during the waiting period was short lived and would lead, at most, to finding a later date for onset of disability which would mean, at most, a small overpayment. GAO's report suggests to me that GAO did not even understand the point that Social Security was making. I'm pretty sure that GAO has never heard of an Unsuccessful Work Attempt (UWA). Anyone involved to a significant extent with the Social Security disability programs will realize that if GAO believes that every UWA makes a person permanently ineligible for benefits, the GAO report has to be seriously misleading. GAO's mindset seems to have been "If you work after the date you say you become disabled, you can't be disabled. Period. End of discussion. For good reasons that I won't belabor here, that's not the law, nor should it be the law. Things are far more complicated that GAO seems to have undersood. The problem is that GAO's report makes for a nice headline. SSA's response doesn't.

Big Theft Of Social Security Checks

     Tampa police discovered about 175 stolen Social Security benefit checks, totaling $165,926, at the scene of an attempted murder. The attempted murder appears to have been drug related. Local police report that a total of about 300 checks had been stolen. How they were stolen, what the thief or thieves intended to do with the checks and what happened to the other 125 or so checks is unclear.
     It couldn't be easy to cash even one stolen Social Security check. Banks and check cashing services demand to see ID before handing over cash or even opening an account. I don't know how you would cash dozens of these checks without getting caught but the jails are full of people who tried to do really stupid things.

Astrue's Role In Fighting Obamacare -- Also, Astrue's Own Federal Records Got Hacked

     You may have vaguely noticed that one aspect of the all out press by Republicans to prevent the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, from coming into effect is to insist that the data infrastructure for the health care exchanges is inadequate to protect our privacy. Former Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue appears to have had a role in this fight -- a role that began while he was Social Security Commissioner. He testified yesterday before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies of the House Committee on Homeland Security. I don't mean to suggest that Astrue has been simply behaving in a partisan way. His concerns seem to be based upon genuine problems in the data infrastructure, problems that may or may not be adequately addressed by the implementing agencies. These appear to me to be no more than the routine, predictable problems inherent in implementing a major new federal program but Congressional Republicans seem intent on puffing this into something much more.

     Interestingly, in his written statement to the Subcommittee, Astrue says, with no further explanation, that he "suffered through OPM’s [Office of Personnel Management's] inept response when my federal financial records were breached two years ago."

Clay Shaw 1939-2013

     Clay Shaw, a former Chairman of the House Social Security Subcommittee, has passed away following a long battle with lung cancer.

A Sad Anniversary

     Today is the 12th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Soon after that sad day, Social Security put out a special issue of its staff magazine OASIS (OASI=Old Age and Survivors Insurance), now available online. It's all worth reading. Below is one page to give readers an idea (click on it to view full size) and note that the last story on the page continues on the next page not reproduced here:

When A Social Security Administrator Was A Candidate For President

"Two presidential possibilities arrive at Capital on same train. Washington, D.C., Dec. 8. Thomas E. Dewey, who recently announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination, and Paul V. McNutt, Social Security Administrator, both came to town tonight on the same train. Dewey came to attend tomorrow night's Gridiron dinner, and McNutt returned to resume his official duties"
Library of Congress caption for this photo

No One In Congress Championing Cuts To Social Security Disability

     From the Washington Free Beacon:

Though nearly 11 million Americans are collecting disability benefits from the Social Security Administration (SSA), and its trust fund is expected to be exhausted by 2016, there is little desire to reform the programs on Capitol Hill.

“I haven’t heard of any member on the Hill sort of championing disability insurance reform,” said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies for the Cato Institute, during a briefing Tuesday on the rising costs of Social Security disability, which will total over $200 billion this year.

“I agree with that statement,” said Jagadeesh Gokhale, a senior fellow at Cato. “I think the intensity of the discussion should be much greater, given how close the system’s trust fund is to expire.” ...

Getting members of Congress on board may be problematic

“Do you want to be the member that has the quote, unquote, ‘disabled’ activists outside of your office protesting?” [Tad] DeHaven said. “It’s like any other program, you’ve got to be willing to stick your neck out and you’ve got to be willing to find people to go along.”

“And having worked in the Senate, I don’t see it,” he said.

Early Days At Social Security

Punch card operators entering data from form SC-5 in 1937