123 members of Congress have signed on to a letter asking that Social Security field offices resume issuing copies of Social Security numbers (Numi-lites) and benefit verification statements. There's no mention in the letter of the services that these members of Congress are willing to see stopped so that Numi-lite and benefit verification statements can be resumed. It's a zero sum world when it comes to service at Social Security. The agency doesn't have enough operating funds to do everything it ought to do. Any service that's being dropped is being dropped to allow the continuation of other services deemed to be more vital. You can argue about the priorities but you can't argue that Social Security should cut no service.
Jun 23, 2014
Even The Wall Street Journal
Even the Wall Street Journal is talking about Social Security being short-handed!
Jun 22, 2014
The Perils Of The Disability Trust Fund
NBC has a story on the predicted exhaustion of Social Security's Disability Trust Fund and what may happen then. The author has tried to present all sides of the issue but misses one, the view that the Disability Trust Fund is doing better than predicted and will either require only a very small, very temporary rescue or no rescue at all.
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 20, 2014
Colvin Gets Nomination To Become Commissioner Of Social Security
Still Crazy After A Year; New Policy On Same Sex Marriages
The Justice Department has finally advised Social Security on how it must treat same sex marriages. It only took them a year after the Windsor decision! Social Security has been recognizing same sex marriages ever since Windsor as long as the parties to the marriage live in a state that recognizes same sex marriage but has been putting a hold on cases where the parties live in a state that doesn't recognize same sex marriages. The Justice Department has now told Social Security that it may recognize same sex marriages if a party to the marriage gets on benefits based upon that marriage while living in a state that recognizes same sex marriages but then moves to a state that doesn't recognize same sex marriages. As an example, let's say a same sex couple from my state, North Carolina, which doesn't recognize same sex marriages, travels to the District of Columbia where they can be legally married. The couple returns to North Carolina and eventually one of them applies for Social Security benefits based upon that marriage. Under this policy, they won't get the benefits. They would if they had stayed in the District. However, if they had lived in the District after the marriage and one of them had gotten benefits based upon the marriage and then they had moved to North Carolina, they could keep their benefits. This sounds crazy enough but it gets worse. What if they get married in the District but later separate, with one living in the District but the other in North Carolina and only become eligible for benefits after the move? Under this policy, the one who stays in the District is married and can get benefits based upon the marriage but the one who moves to North Carolina isn't married and can't get benefits based upon the marriage.
This is nuts. Either the Supreme Court must decide that people have a Constitutional right to marry a person of their same gender or Congress needs to pass a law requiring that Social Security accept same sex marriages nationally. What we've got now is unworkable.
Social Security Has A Massive Service Delivery Problem
From a report by the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Aging (footnotes omitted):
The impact of these service reductions [at Social Security] has been felt in field office waiting rooms and on the phone. In March 2013, SSA [Social Security Administration] estimated that in a single week nearly 12,000 visitors to field offices would have to wait over two hours to be served, a figure that had almost tripled in the previous four months. Between FY [Fiscal Year] 2010 and January of FY 2013, the average wait time for field office visitors without appointments increased by 40 percent. NCSSMA [National Council of Social Security Management Associations] reports that in FY 2013, the percentage of visitors who waited over three weeks for an appointment was over 43 percent, compared to only 10 percent a year earlier. According to NCSSMA, as of early 2014, the average wait time for visitors to SSA’s field offices was 31.5 minutes, an all - time high and 240 percent longer than it was three years ago.
From FY 2011 to FY 2013, the agent busy rate experienced by callers to SSA’s 800 - number increased from 3 percent to 12 percent, with SSA projecting that in FY 2014, 14 percent of callers would get a busy signal when they tried to call. In the beginning of FY 2014, 800-number callers who were able to get through were waiting an average of over 17 minutes – more than three times as long as the average waits of five minutes in FY 2012, according to NCSSMA ...
It Must Be Obama's Fault!
From Bloomberg:
The cost of long-term disability claims rose for at least a fifth straight year as expenses tied to the aging workforce drove payments higher for insurance companies. ...
“On average, older people have higher wages and it’s harder for them to get back to work,” [Council for Disability Awareness] CDA President Barry Lundquist said in a phone interview. “When you think about the baby boomers and how old they are now, they have a much higher chance of becoming disabled -- maybe a four or five times higher chance in a given year than someone that’s in their twenties or thirties.”Why would private insurance companies be unable to hold down their long term disability costs? I thought that was just a problem for the Social Security Administration. How do Republicans spin this as being Obama's fault?
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