Acting Commissioner's Broadcast E-Mail To Agency Employees

From: ^Commissioner Broadcast
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2013 12:20 PM
Subject: COMMISSIONER'S BROADCAST--09/30/13

 

 A Message To All SSA and DDS Employees

 

Subject:  Possible Shutdown - Update

 

With less than 24 hours remaining to avert a government shutdown, I join you in hoping that Congress will pass a resolution so we may continue delivering the full scope of our services to the American public.  While Congress does still have time to act, we must continue to take careful and prudent steps to prepare for a potential government shutdown, including informing the public about the specific services they can expect us to provide.

 

To provide you with up-to-date information, we established a special website for you at www.socialsecurity.gov/shutdown/employees.html.  This is an external site so you can easily access it from anywhere you have Internet access.  This website provides you with a toll-free telephone hotline (1-866-909-6876) that will relay critical information including when SSA employees should return to work.  While all of us will be paying close attention to the news media since they would most likely be the first to broadcast any general announcement advising Federal employees to return to work, SSA’s national hotline will be the only way to get updated information specific to our status.  Included on this special website are Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), a sample letter for creditors, as well as information about outside employment and unemployment compensation. 

 

To keep the public informed about our status, we continue to use our social media channels as well as post information on www.socialsecurity.gov, including updated FAQs. Today we launched a webpage at www.socialsecurity.gov/shutdown that clearly explains the effects of a shutdown.

 

Again, I thank you for your continued patience and the hard work you do every day for the American people, even as we prepare to dial down some of the services we provide.

 

Let us all hope that our required work to prepare for a Federal shutdown is unnecessary.

 

Carolyn W. Colvin

Acting Commissioner

Social Security Plan For Government Shutdown

     I'm bumping this one up. It was originally posted Friday afternoon.

     Social Security has posted its plan for dealing with a government shutdown. Overall, the agency will furlough 18,006 of its 62,343 employees, most of them employees of the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR), with many of the rest being in Budget, Finance and Management, General Counsel, Operations and System/Chief Information Officer. The letter states that "Our approach in ODAR could evolve over time depending on the length of the shutdown." Social Security plans to "encourage" the state disability determination services to continue operating but cannot direct this since the employees work for state government.

Disability Trust Fund Doing Better Than Forecast

     The Office of Chief Actuary has released data on Disability Trust Fund operations through August 2013. As of the end of August, the Disability Trust Fund had a balance of $103.6 billion. This is down by $19.1 billion since December 2012. For the first eight months of 2012, the Disability Trust Fund went down by a $18.5 billion.
     The report sounds bad but you have to contrast the actual results to the Chief Actuary's Intermediate projection, the one that everyone pays attention to, that the Disability Trust Fund would go down by $33.5 billion in 2013, up from $31.2 billion in 2012, a 7% increase.  The increase in the shortfall is only 3% so far this year compared to the same time period last year. The Disability Trust Fund is doing better than the Intermediate projection.

How Does The GOP Win If There's A Government Shutdown?

     David Frum's analysis of the Republican government shutdown dilemma seems about right to me. If you think the GOP is on the right track, can you explain why Frum is wrong? How can the Republicans win this one?

Spending We Could Do Without

     From a press release:

The U.S. Department of Education and the Social Security Administration today announced the award of $466,603 to four Minority-Serving Institutions to conduct research in the areas of retirement security, financial literacy, and financial decision-making within minority and low-income communities. ...

"Social Security recognizes the importance of retirement planning and is committed to researching ways to strengthen financial literacy across the country," said Carolyn W. Colvin, Acting Commissioner of Social Security. "Through these grants, we plan to improve our understanding of how to best educate individuals in minority and low-income communities and prepare them for a more secure financial future." ...

     It's not that I oppose retirement planning or financial literacy, it's just that I'm pretty sure this will do virtually nothing to promote either. People just aren't interested in these topics. They should be but they aren't.

Maybe They Didn't Have Any Other Income

     A recent study reveals four reasons why people start taking Social Security retirement benefits early, passing up the higher monthly benefits they could receive by waiting:

• Fear of loss. People who have a stronger aversion to financial loss also tended to say they would claim earlier.  To them, the researchers said, a delay in receiving their benefit checks “looks like a potential loss.”
• Life expectancy. It’s intuitive that an individual who doesn’t expect to live as long might want to start his benefits as soon as possible, and that’s what the analysis concluded.  The researchers found that 10 years added to one’s life expectancy will delay a Social Security filing by six months.
• Fairness.  The individuals surveyed were asked whether they agreed with several statements about Social Security, such as “I feel that I have earned these retirement benefits.”  The more strongly an individual agreed with such statements, the more likely they were to say they would file for their benefits early.
• Patience. This finding was self-explanatory: the more impatient an individual, the more likely he is to claim early.

Can't Trust Social Security's Website?

     Larry Kotlikoff, who appears on PBS's Newshour program, says that you can't trust the online advice you get from Social Security. Since the online advice he's referring to is nearly incomprehensible to the average person and what Kotlikoff thinks should be added to the online advice would make it even more incomprehensible, I don't know that this is going to matter much. What it does point out is that, contrary to what most people think, Social Security is complicated.

Budget Impasse Continues

     The Speaker of the House of Representatives says he doesn't expect a government shutdown next week but also says he will pursue a plan that would make a shutdown almost inevitable. At best, nothing will be settled until Monday. In the meantime, based upon past behavior, expect the Commissioner of Social Security to be sending out a broadcast e-mail to employees either today -- Thursday -- or Friday. 

     I hope that the vast majority of Social Security employees remain at work even if there's a shutdown, but, to be honest, a straightforward interpretation of the Anti-Deficiency Act would mean that almost all Social Security employees would be furloughed. I don't know that one should read anything into it, but the last time there was a serious shutdown threat, President Obama said that he wanted Social Security to continue processing claims. I haven't seen such a statement this time around.