Big Class Action Settlement For SSA Employees With Disabilities

     From a press release:

Nearly a decade after Ronald Jantz, a deaf employee of the Social Security Administration, filed a class action claim against his employer alleging discrimination in promotions of employees with disabilities, the parties today jointly announce that the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has preliminarily approved a class-wide settlement designed to make sweeping improvements to policies and processes impacting the careers of employees with disabilities at the Social Security Administration. The Social Security Administration, with approximately 60,000 current employees, is one of the largest federal employers of employees with disabilities. The class action settlement will also provide monetary relief to employees with "targeted disabilities." Targeted disabilities are a subset of disabilities that the EEOC, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis, and include deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism. With no finding of wrongdoing or discrimination, the parties set aside their differences and devoted their energy to creating a dynamic package of relief and enhancements for past and current SSA employees. 

Specifically, the Settlement Agreement includes a package of extensive programmatic changes that are designed to retain and support employees with disabilities and to broadly enhance the opportunities for career success and advancement of such employees. These programmatic changes include major revisions to SSA's reasonable accommodation processes, technology processes, training content, and provision of assistive supports for Agency employees with disabilities. The reasonable accommodation changes, in particular, will create a new centralized office where a multidisciplinary team of specialists will promptly and expertly handle requests that do not lend themselves to ready approval by a first-line manager 

In addition to the sweeping package of programmatic changes, the Settlement Agreement also establishes a separate fund of $9.98 million for the payment of claims to eligible class members, as well as Class Counsel's legal fees and expenses, and payments to Mr. Jantz and the other class agents, as well as administrative costs.

What Will The Election Results Mean For Social Security?

     My track record on predictions isn't good but I'll go ahead anyway knowing that my readers can respond with their own predictions.

     First, nothing will happen to Social Security's retirement and survivor benefits. Nothing can possibly touch them either now or in the future.

     Second, Carolyn Colvin won't be confirmed as Commissioner. Senate Democrats will try to confirm judges mostly in the lame duck session. There's no urgency to the Colvin nomination for Democrats since she remains on as Acting Commissioner until a new Commissioner is confirmed.

     Third, Republicans will hold more hearings trying to expose waste, fraud and abuse in Social Security's disability programs. I don't think they're going to find much to expose. There are many claims and many claimants so there's always something but I don't think there's anything major out there. House Republicans have been imploring Social Security's Inspector General for the last four years to please, please find something juicy. You can make your own judgment but I don't think what has been found amounts to much and I doubt there's much more to find. The low hanging fruit has already been plucked.

     Fourth, House Republicans will try to draft some legislation to deal with the possible exhaustion of the Disability Trust Fund but I don't think their heart will be in it. Cutting Social Security isn't popular, even when you're talking about disability benefits. They also have a technical problem. Republicans with real knowledge and experience with Social Security benefits are almost nonexistent. My guess is that if they can possibly delay this to 2017, they will and I think they can delay it so that the next Congress will have to deal with it. Nevertheless, pressure will remain on the Social Security Administration to do something to "save" the Disability Trust Fund so I expect some harsh regulatory proposals to try to propitiate the Republicans. That's pointless since Congressional Republicans don't want to be propitiated but the agency never learns.

     Fifth, I have no idea what sort of operating budget the agency will get. Probably, it won't be significantly higher any time soon but I'm not sure it will be cut. I don't think the GOP wants the blame for poor service at Social Security. My impression is that Congressional Republicans would like to hold hearings about poor service at Social Security, much like the hearings on service at the Department of Veterans Affairs, but again they have concern that the blame will be placed on them. The hearings on service at VA have resulted in a sharply higher operating budget for VA. I doubt that result is in the picture for Social Security. 

Disability Discharges Of Federal Student Loan Debt Made Less Difficult

     Federal student loans may be collected out of Social Security benefits. However, federal student loan debtors can qualify for a "total and permanent disability" discharge of their debts. An increasing number of Social Security disability recipients have student loan debts collected out of their benefits. A new Department of Education website now includes information on how to get a "total and permanent disability" discharge of federal student loan debt and there's an online application. Until recently, the Department of Education didn't even have a paper form specifically for applications for "total and permanent disability" discharge!

     I still say that the Department of Education and the Social Security Administration should do a data match and the Department of Education should summarily discharge student loan debts for Social Security disability recipients whom Social Security puts in the category "Medical Improvement Not Expected" which the Department of Education accepts as being "total and permanent disability." When this can be done automatically, why put everyone, including the agency, through the trouble of an application process?

Americans Favor Many Options For Increasing Social Security Benefits

     From a survey conducted by Greenwald and Associates for the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) in June 2014:

Triple Dippers?

     Apparently at the request of Republican Senator Tom Coburn, the Government Accountability Office has done a study of the concurrent receipt of Social Security disability benefits, Veterans benefits and military retirement. Here is an excerpt:

Out of the 1.9 million DOD [Department of Defense] nondisability and disability retirees, we identified 59,251 individuals who received concurrent payments in fiscal year 2013 from DOD retirement, VA disability compensation, and SSDI.  The payments totaled over $3.5 billion.  From our population of individuals receiving concurrent payments, we also selected a random sample of seven individuals to provide illustrative examples.  These seven examples individually received from $19,210 to $152,719 in concurrent benefits.

It's An Old Story But Worth Repeating

Not A Good Idea

     From WKMG:

Someone got into the Halloween spirit at work, but it's not a co-worker's treat. An employee at the Social Security Administration office in Lake Mary said she's offended by decorations that transformed a cubicle into a fake Ebola hospital ward.

Happy Halloween