A Manageable Problem

Alabama Sheriff Acquitted On Social Security Fraud Charge

     I had reported in August that Washington County, Alabama Sheriff Richard Stringer had pleaded not guilty to Social Security fraud. It was alleged that Stringer had conspired with others to get Social Security benefits for a friend.

     The case went to trial. Mr. Stringer was acquitted.

Democrats And Republicans Support Positions At Odds With Their Bases

     From Ronald Brownstein writing for the National Journal:

One reason a serious budget negotiation seems unlikely this fall is that any meaningful assault on the federal deficit would require each party to confront the contradictions between its fiscal agenda and its electoral coalition. ...

The GOP presidential nominee has carried most white seniors in four consecutive presidential elections, and by greater margins each time....

These older whites deeply resist any changes in Social Security and Medicare, which most consider insurance they have paid for, not a government benefit ...

But the demands from GOP leaders to squeeze middle-class entitlements such as Medicare in any budget deal still collide with the preferences of both older and blue-collar whites ...

Democrats face the opposite dilemma. For decades, they have watched expanding entitlements tilt federal spending toward the elderly. In 1960, children and seniors each consumed around one-fifth of federal domestic spending, the Urban Institute calculates. Today, children receive less than one-third as much as seniors, a trend reinforced by the sequester ...

Entering negotiations, many Democrats have made opposition to entitlement cuts a litmus test. But with the senior population projected to double through 2040, rejecting all entitlement reductions ensures both more pressure on discretionary investments like education that help young people and unsustainable tax burdens on future workers. That leaves Democrats confronting their own contradiction: They are now favoring programs that benefit predominantly white seniors who lopsidedly vote against them over policies that benefit the heavily diverse young people who strongly support them. Even a near-term trade of trimming entitlements to restore sequester-starved domestic investment could make sense for Democrats.

Quite A Comedown

     The House Ways and Means Committee has traditionally been of key importance to Social Security and to the nation. However, at the moment, according to Stacy Kaper at the National Journal, Ways and Means is barely functioning.

Charlie Binder Responds To Sixty Minutes

     Charlie Binder has posted something of a response to the Sixty Minutes piece on Social Security disability.

Getting A New Government Program Off The Ground Is Tough

     The start-up problems that the Health Care Exchanges are experiencing are not without precedent. As Arthur Delaney writing for the Huffington Report notes there were serious start-up problems with Social Security. Early on, a management expert told the nascent Social Security Board that it should notify Congress that it couldn't run the program! The management expert was told to get back to work. I think you can guess the rest of the story.

Big Return From Social Security

     From a study by Gary Koenig of the AARP Public Policy Institute and Al Myles of Mississippi State University:

Social Security’s economic impact starts when its recipients spend their benefits on goods and services.The businesses that receive these dollars use them to pay their owners and employees, purchase additional items to sell, and pay rent, taxes, and the other normal costs of doing business. Their suppliers in turn use the revenue they receive to pay their employees, suppliers, and so forth....

 Every dollar of Social Security benefits generates about $2 of economic output. ...

Social Security benefit payments in 2012 supported:

• About $1.4 trillion in economic output (goods and services)
• Just over 9.2 million jobs
• About $774 billion in value added (gross domestic product)
• More than $370 billion in salaries, wages, and other compensation
• Tax revenues for local, state, and federal governments exceeding $222 billion, including $78.9 billion in local and state taxes and $143.3 billion in federal taxes

OIG To Focus On Widespread Fraud Investigations; ALJ Lillios Detailed To Help

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

Our new pilot ... will focus on allegations involving third-party facilitators [of disability fraud], particularly those that may indicate widespread fraud schemes or conspiracies.  The pilot will focus on allegations involving:

• SSA senior executives, administrative law judges, administrative appeals judges, and other employees;
• attorneys and non-attorney claimant representatives; and
• medical evidence providers, consultative examiners, vocational and medical experts, and other disability contractors.

The Inspector General has asked SSA [Social Security Administration] Associate Chief Administrative Law Judge Paul Lillios to manage this new pilot program.  Judge Lillios has been detailed from SSA to the OIG as a Senior Advisor, reporting to our Assistant Inspector General for Investigations, Rich Rohde.