More On Plan To Close Field Offices

     The Baltimore Sun is running an article on the plan, if it can be called that, to substitute online services for Social Security's field offices. If this happens, and I strongly doubt it will, it will destroy the Social Security Administration's ability to handle disability claims and Supplemental Security Income claims. This is being presented as if it were simply a labor-management issue, as if the only thing at stake was the jobs of union members. I'm not part of any union. I wish the field office employees well but that's not my concern here. My concern is service to the public. My strong opinion is that any attempt to implement this scheme will result in chaos.

Daugherty Faces Bar Disciplinary Charges

     Retired Administrative Law Judge David Daugherty faces disciplinary charges before the West Virginia Lawyer Disciplinary Board. It is alleged that he approved claims that didn't meet government guidelines, falsified time sheets and improperly assigned attorney Eric Conn's cases to himself. So far, despite considerable publicity given to the case, Daugherty has not been charged with any crime. 

     The ethics charge of falsifying time sheets strongly suggests the involvement of Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG). How would the West Virginia bar know about that otherwise? It also suggests to me that the evidence on the other charges may not be that strong. Why bring what sounds like a jaywalking charge if you've got the evidence to convict on a felony charge? The allegations against Daugherty and Conn are serious but OIG is acting like they're not sure they have the evidence to prove the allegations. Also, how is the West Virginia Lawyer Disciplinary Board supposed to decide that Daugherty approved claims that didn't meet government guidelines and how is that an ethics offense?

David B. Daugherty

NADE Obsessed With Fraud

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE) has released its Spring 2014 newsletter. NADE certainly seems taken with the Republican campaign to root out fraud in Social Security's disability programs. 

Fast Track For Non-English Speakers?

     Now the right is making the absurd claim that non-English speakers are "fast-tracked" on to Social Security disability benefits. Yes, there is a minor provision that recognizes the special employment difficulties that handicapped people have if they can't speak English but I've been representing Social Security disability claimants for almost 35 years and I've yet to see a claimant get benefits as a result of this provision.  

     What type of rule is the right proposing -- that impediments to work must be disregarded if they mostly affect people they don't like?

Disability Claim Filings Reduced But Backlogs Persist Because Of Decreased Staffing

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a report on the agency's initial disability claims backlog. In 2010 Social Security established a goal of getting the backlog down from about a million to 525,000. That goal hasn't been achieved. The report is too polite to give the main reason, the fact that the House of Representatives passed from Democratic to Republican control after the November 2010 election. This cut agency funding and eliminated most Congressional pressure to reduce the backlog. You can see below what has happened.

     Staffing had gone up significantly between 2008 and 2010. Social Security was poised to work down the backlog. They made a little progress on the backlog in 2011 and 2012 because staffing levels were still above the low level of the Bush Administration but by 2013 progress had pretty much ended as staffing levels decreased.

     One reason for slight optimism about backlog levels is that initial claims receipts reached their peak in 2011 and are now declining, as more and more of the baby boom generation reaches full retirement age. Yes, despite what you may have heard, fewer disability claims are being filed, not more.

Visions Of The Future: The Case Of The SST

     I recently posted an e-mail from the President of the union that represents most Social Security employees about the "plan" of a consulting firm envisioning a Social Security Administration without field offices by 2025. Reportedly, the company envisioned an environment in which most people never left their homes except to be entertained. 

     This vision of the future reminded me of the SST. You ask what is the SST? The Super Sonic Transport, of course. The Super Sonic Transport? That would be an airplane that can transport commercial passengers at supersonic speeds, of course. Remember the Concorde? It was an SST. The idea for the SST was that the globe is awfully big, so big that it takes a long time for a commercial aircraft to get from, let's say New York to Los Angeles, much less from New York to London. The time it takes to fly from New York to Tokyo is just ridiculous. It would be so much better if we had aircraft that could take passengers these long distances several times as fast. The vision of the SST emerged in the 1950s. A number of companies started to develop an SST but only one actually produced an SST for commercial use. That was a French-British consortium which produced the Concorde, which first took to the air for scheduled flights in 1976.

     Whatever happened to the Concorde? It turns out that there were a few problems. Planes flying at supersonic speeds create a very loud sonic boom. If you ever hear a sonic boom, you won't forget it. I have. I never heard the Concorde's sonic boom, just the sonic boom from U.S. fighter aircraft. It's literally loud enough to shatter windows. It turned out that no one wanted the Concorde flying over their house. They were banned from flying at supersonic speeds over land. There goes the New York-Los Angeles route and the New York-Tokyo route since so much of that is over land. It also turned out that the Concorde was very, very expensive to build and operate. Concorde fares were sky high, far higher than first class airfare on subsonic planes. The number of people who could afford such expensive airfare was extremely limited. The realization set in over time that there were no technological fixes for the Concorde's problems. The sonic boom can't be engineered away. The cost problem can't be engineered away.

     In the end only two Concorde planes were build. Two. They were gorgeous airplanes but only two were built. The two Concorde aircraft operated for some years but eventually one of them crashed and the other was retired.

     The SST was a wonderful vision. It's a shame that it didn't work but the reasons it wouldn't work were obvious from the beginning. People just ignored the problems because their belief in the vision was so strong.
     The problems with a vision of the Social Security Administration without field offices should be obvious to those who actually have ground level experience with Social Security. The agency doesn't just take retirement claims. It takes disability claims. It takes survivor claims. It takes Supplemental Security Income (SSI) claims. Even though most of the money paid out by Social Security goes to retirement benefits, most of the work its employees do is on disability, survivor and SSI claims. These claims are messy and complicated. There's no way to remove the messiness or complexity. It's an inherent part of these benefits. While more and more people are computer literate, many of the people that Social Security employees deal with will never be computer literate enough to deal with the Social Security Administration just over the internet. That's because their transactions with Social Security are complicated and many of these people suffer from cognitive problems or mental illness. These problems aren't going away any more than the Concorde's problems would go away.

A Bad Apple

     From WJLA:

A former specialist for the Social Security Administration pled guilty Tuesday to soliciting more than $50,000 in bribes from Social Security recipients in return for providing them with extra, unauthorized benefits.

Christopher Payton, 46, of Mount Rainier, Md., pled guilty in D.C. District Court Tuesday to one count of bribery. The plea agreement calls for him to pay $54,662 in restitution and an identical amount in a forfeiture money judgment.

According to a statement of offense, signed by the defendant and the government, Payton was a Social Insurance Specialist for the SSA's Anacostia Office in Southeast Washington. ...

Between January and May of 2013, Payton reportedly met with 13 people as part of his responsibilities at the agency. Upon meeting these individuals, Payton reportedly told them that if they gave him a tip, he would take care of them....

After the victims agreed Payton used his access to cause retroactive Supplemental Security Income benefits to go into the individuals' bank accounts....

The charge carries a statutory maximum of 15 years in prison and financial penalties. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Payton faces a likely range of 30 to 37 months in prison and a fine of up to $60,000.

Why Did Social Security Seize The Tax Refunds Of The Children Of People Who Had Been Overpaid Decades Earlier?

     I think that conflating overpayments with fraud had more than a little to do with this. Fraud usually creates an overpayment but most overpayments aren't the result of fraud.