Catch 22

     From First Coast News:

Tanner, 17, was born in Gainesville, Fla. and at one time had a valid Social Security card but lost it. Now, his mother, Wendy Andrews, is trying to get a replacement and discovered it is not as easy as it seems.

"Either you need a school ID which he doesn't have one because he is in private school, or a state ID or a passport," said Andrews,"but in order to get one of those, he needs to have a Social Security card." ... 

Andrews said a replacement card is now critical because of her child's education; he's on a scholarship. "He needs it for his scholarships" she said, "because he's on scholarship so he can attend a private school [because he's autistic]." 

Under Social Security guidelines, you can use a birth certificate to prove your child's age or citizenship but you cannot use it as proof of identity. ...

Andrews said there used to be a Social Security office in Putnam County but that's closed so she has been trying to resolve her problem by phone and that has only added to her frustration. 

 "I never thought it was going to be this hard to get a replacement card," she said," I could see if he had never had a card or he was an illegal alien. I don't understand why they can't just issue him a replacement."

The Role Of Overtime At Social Security

     Because of inadequate appropriations for its operations and huge uncertainty about how much money it would have to spend from year to year and even month to month, over the last decade Social Security came to rely more and more on employee overtime to get its work done. The overtime usually come in spurts once Social Security got an appropriation. Typically, work would slow to a crawl while Social Security was operating on a continuing funding resolution at the beginning on a fiscal year and would then surge once there was an appropriation. This happened because there was little overtime available during the continuing resolution but once it was over the agency would use overtime to try to catch up.

     I'm only seeing the narrow slice of the Social Security Administration that I'm dealing with but my theory is that things are different this year. Yes, I can certainly tell that some overtime was authorized after Social Security finally got its appropriation this year but it seems like far less than recent years. I know that Social Security is doing a good deal more hiring than in recent years. Has Acting Commissioner Colvin changed the priorities in this fiscal year -- less overtime, more hiring?

     I have mixed feelings about this change, if it has happened. In the long run, having more employees is definitely a good thing. It gives the agency a better ability to process its workload without the wild swings we've seen in recent years when the overtime spigot was turned on and off. On the other hand, as John Maynard Keynes said, "In the long run, we are all dead." Hiring more people helps but only well down the road. It takes many months to hire and train new employees. Once you finally put the new people to work, they make mistakes that more experienced employees have to sort out. In the short run, the backlogs seem to be growing, not shrinking as they usually do in the first two or three months after the agency gets its appropriation.

     What is the situation with the overtime-new employee balance at Social Security? What's the strategy? How consistent is it across the agency?

People Undervalue The Importance Of Social Security -- Until They Retire

EBRI Retirement Confidence Survey

Cuts In Customer Service And The Future Of Social Security

     Michael Hiltzik writing about the cuts in customer service at Social Security, "revealed" by Mark Miler at Reuters (actually, I've been talking about these cuts for many years but it's good to see others paying attention):

It's no secret that if you really want to destroy a business, just hack away at its customer service. (Sears has been testing this axiom with considerable vigor.) The principle also holds true for government programs, which is why you should be very suspicious about the relentless budget-cutting at the Social Security Administration. ...

As Nancy Altman, co-director of the advocacy group Strengthen Social Security, told Miller, this is part of "a raging fight by conservatives to get rid of the government's footprint wherever possible." And since Social Security has long been in their cross hairs, it's unsurprising that a meat cleaver has been taken to its administrative budget. The budget request has been pared down in 14 of the last 16 years, Miller found. ...

The more those services deteriorate, the less faith people have fundamentally in Social Security, which is the strongest, most successful public program Congress has ever enacted. So when the program's customer services are slashed, think about who's really being served by the void that remains.

     It may be time to start talking about the latest right wing gambit to hurt Social Security. It goes something like this: "We'll give your agency more money but on the condition that you only spend the money on an enormous effort to find the vast criminal conspiracies that we know must be cheating the government out of billions of dollars." Of course, there are no vast criminal conspiracies so all the Social Security Administration can do is to spend a lot of money chasing down small time crooks while service to the millions of honest Americans who rely on Social Security continues to go to hell. The right wing will trumpet the existence of small time crooks as proof that Social Security is inherently corrupt while heaping scorn on the Social Security Administration for not finding the vast criminal conspiracies that exist in the imaginations of the right. It catches some small time crooks who deserve to be caught but the end result damages Social Security.
     I've got no problem with stepped up efforts at detecting fraud at Social Security so long as the agency can give good service to the public. I've got a problem with simultaneously cutting service at Social Security while spending a lot of money chasing down a few crooks. That's nuts.

Orwell Or Zen?

     Increasing Social Security Benefits Would Wreck Retirement Security

A Sad Case

     Lawrence Schacht married Russell Frink Jr. as soon as the law allowed him to do so but five months later Frink died. The New York Times reports that even though Social Security recognizes the marriage, it won't allow Schacht to collect benefits on Frink's account because the marriage lasted less than nine months.

     I'm sad for Mr. Schacht but I don't know of an exception to the duration of marriage requirement that will cover his case.

The Battle Over Service

     From Reuters:

The loudest battles over Social Security are about potential benefit cuts like the recently vanquished "chained CPI" proposal. But another, less noticed fight has been going on for years. It's aimed at undermining Social Security through systematic budget cutting by Congress of the operating budget of the SSA, the agency charged with providing customer service to the public.

The SSA has received less than its budget request in 14 of the past 16 years. In fiscal 2012, for example, SSA operated with 88 percent of the amount requested ($11.4 billion).

"It's part of a raging fight by conservatives to get rid of the government's footprint wherever possible," says Nancy Altman, co-director of Strengthen Social Security, an advocacy group. ... 

The cutbacks have sparked a broad deterioration of services as demand rises with the aging of the population. ...

Budget cuts have forced sharp reductions in SSA staff and field service offices. Nationwide, staff is down to 62,000 from a peak of 70,000 in the 1990s. Since fiscal 2010, the agency has consolidated 92 field offices into 46 offices and has closed 521 contact stations (mobile floating service facilities that set up shop in other government offices).

Visitors to field offices waited more than 30 percent longer in fiscal 2013 than in 2012. Busy signals on the SSA's toll-free customer assistance line (800-772-1213) doubled in fiscal 2013 over the previous year. ...  

Altman argues that the SSA has an obligation to provide paper-based and one-on-one services to customers who want them.

"The Social Security population still has a significant percentage that likes to get paper checks, and to be able to go in and talk to someone. They're not that comfortable putting their financial information on Internet. Our view is that people are paying for these services and should be able to get them."

A Thought

     I'm sorry for my readers who work for the Federal government, at least today. It's a shame you guys can't have an office NCAA Tournament pool like your counterparts working in the private sector.
     On second thought, considering how my bracket is coming along, maybe I should envy you!