"Concerned About The Public Perception"

     From CBS News:

People who owe old debts to the Social Security Administration are getting a reprieve this tax season: The federal government won't be seizing their tax refunds.Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn Colvin suspended a debt collection program last spring in which thousands of people had tax refunds seized to recoup overpayments that happened more than a decade ago. ...

Following a review, the agency said Monday it will continue suspending the program this tax season while officials explore possible changes.

"The commissioner is concerned about the public perception about the way we're running this program," said Pete Spencer, Social Security's deputy commissioner for budget, finance, quality and management. ...

Number Of People Drawing Social Security Disability Benefits Leveling Off

     As of November 2013 there were 8,941,660 people drawing Disability Insurance Benefits (DIB) under the Social Security Act. As of November 2014, the most recent month for which numbers are available, there were 8,956,269 people drawing DIB, an increase of 14,609 people or less than a fifth of one percent, from the year before. By contrast, the number of people drawing DIB went up by 136,307 or 2% between November 2012 and November 2013. In each of the last two months reported, the number of people drawing DIB has actually gone down.

     Social Security's Office of Chief Actuary had forecast that there would be 9,014,000 people drawing DIB by the end of 2014. Unless there was a huge jump in the number of DIB recipients last month, the forecast was off by a not insignificant number.

     We'll see how 2015 and 2016 go but it's entirely possible that the number of people drawing DIB will be going down as the debate rages in 2016 on what to do about the impending exhaustion of the Disability Trust Fund. Also, it's not clear just how impending that exhaustion date will be in 2016.

This Discussion Should Really Set The Stage For The Disability Trust Fund Debate

      From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Roswell [GA] Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Price intends to tackle big-ticket entitlement programs as the new chairman of the House Budget Committee — including Social Security.

In a speech at the Heritage Action for America “Conservative Policy Summit” on Monday, Price said he was excited to work with a GOP-led Senate to end the “muddled mess” of the last few years. ...

“So all the kinds of things you know about – whether it’s means testing, whether it’s increasing the age of eligibility. The kind of choices — whether it’s providing much greater choices for individuals to voluntarily select the kind of manner in which they believe they ought to be able to invest their working dollars as they go through their lifetime. All those things ought to be on the table and discussed.”

 Price consistently framed entitlement changes as Republican desires to “save, secure and strengthen” the programs, given their rising costs that are a big driver of future deficit projections. ...

He said Republicans should not fear the politics of such changes — pointing out that the Romney-Ryan ticket won seniors in 2012, despite Democrats’ “Mediscare” tactics around the Ryan proposal for a voucher-like premium support program for Medicare. ...

Senators Oppose Cuts In Disability Benefits

     This is the text of a letter sent by Senators Ron Wyden (Ore.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Vermont independent Bernie Sanders:

Dear Leader McConnell et al:

This week, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives took an unprecedented step toward cutting Social Security benefits for millions of Americans with disabilities, including veterans and children. As you consider what legislation Congress must pass this year, and how to maintain good governance of the United States Senate, we ask you not to pursue this highly partisan rule change.

We are deeply concerned that the rule change in the House will impact millions of Social Security beneficiaries. According to its actuaries, the Social Security Disability Trust Fund will be unable to pay full disability benefits starting as early as 2016, meaning that legislative action will be necessary to protect the benefits of nearly 11 million Americans. Instead of taking responsible action to address this issue, House Republicans acted according to their extreme ideology and put these benefits at risk by adopting a legislative rule change that creates a point of order against simple bipartisan technical corrections (called reallocations) to adjust the financing of the Social Security Disability Trust Fund.

This move is a particularly audacious in light of the fact that past reallocations have been commonplace and bipartisan. In fact, Congress has reallocated taxes between the Social Security retirement and disability trust funds 11 times before, in both directions, when it was needed to put either program on stronger footing.

The last reallocation occurred in 1994 and was passed without opposition by both the Senate and the House of Representatives. After that reallocation, it was projected that the Disability Trust Fund would be depleted in 2016 – so the need to adjust the trust fund’s financing is not a surprise or cause for alarm. There were no accusations of mismanagement then, or the 4 times it was used under President Reagan, because this country has traditionally managed Social Security as a whole. It is cynical to try and pit retirees and beneficiaries with disabilities against each other, as the House Republican rule change attempts to do.

An earnest debate on how to improve the solvency of the Social Security Trust Funds is needed, and we look forward to working together to find bipartisan solutions. However, House Republicans have eliminated a common sense action to ensure that Americans with disabilities who receive Social Security benefits are held harmless as Congress debates that issue.

Holding hostage the Social Security benefits of any American, particularly those of the 9 million Americans with disabilities who are at risk in the coming years, is an untenable proposition. It only increases the chances of yet another unnecessary manufactured crisis, akin to shutting down the government or threatening the full faith and credit of the United States. We ask that you speak out and forcibly reject the House Republican rule in order to take this reckless concept off the table and ensure Americans with disabilities that they can count on their government to act responsibly.

Can The President Be Trusted On Social Security?

     From Dylan Scott writing at TPM:

When House Republicans signaled last week that they would provoke a fight over Social Security in the next two years, progressive stalwarts like Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren decried the action, with Brown alleging the GOP wanted to "set the stage to cut benefits for seniors and disabled Americans.”\

But notably silent on the Republican stance, which prevents what has been a routine transfer of revenue between the retirement and disability funds, upping the chances of a crisis for the latter in late 2016, was the Democratic official who might actually be at the table if conservatives succeed in forcing negotiations in the next Congress: President Barack Obama.

TPM asked multiple times last week for the White House's position on the House action, but never received a formal response, a stark contrast to the loud public pronouncements of Brown, Warren, and others. It also invokes the uneasy relationship between the White House and Social Security advocates, who were dismayed by Obama's willingness to accept cuts to the program during the 2011 grand bargain talks with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

"Advocates do not trust the president on Social Security," Monique Morrissey, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told TPM last week. "If he blinks and they message this right, it could be something."

Nancy Altman, co-director of Social Security Works, told TPM that while the Obama administration "hasn't been great on this issue," she sees encouraging signs in Obama's recent appetite for confrontation on issues like immigration.

"Our hope is that he'll be that way on Social Security, too," she said. "But if you look at past history, you can't be confident that that's what will happen."

ALJ Daugherty Agreed To Voluntary Disbarment

     I missed this earlier. Back in May 2014, retired Administrative Law Judge David Daugherty agreed to voluntary disbarment. It had been alleged that Daugherty approved claims that didn't meet government guidelines, falsified time sheets and improperly assigned attorney Eric Conn's cases to himself. 

     So far, as best I can tell, despite considerable publicity given to the case, neither Daugherty nor Conn has been charged with any crime. While the Kentucky Bar Association was looking at the allegations against Conn in 2013, I cannot find any indication that they ever took action against him.

Driving While Blind

     ABC ran a report Friday night on a man drawing Social Security disability benefits on account of blindness who was working without telling the agency and also driving. Maybe this is how Republicans plan to stigmatize Social Security disability recipients -- hidden videos of isolated individuals committing fraud. Sounds weak to me but maybe it will work. There are plenty of videos of people robbing convenience stores but we aren't planning to close them.

     By the way, I've had a couple of clients over the years who were unquestionably blind as that term is defined in the Social Security Act but who drove occasionally. They weren't defrauding Social Security but they were endangering everyone on the roads. Blindness as defined in the Social Security Act isn't the same as complete loss of vision. 20/200, the most important component of the definition of blindness in the Social Security Act, means things that are 20 feet away are seen about as well as a normally sighted person sees them at 200 feet but people with 20/200 vision still have some vision. I told the blind clients to stop driving, by the way.

Is This The Plan?

     Mark Miller at Reuters writes that "House leaders appear to be maneuvering to push through an SSDI [Social Security Disability Insurance] fix during the lame duck session following the 2016 elections."

     If this is the plan, it's not much of a plan. The timing of the exhaustion of the Disability Trust Fund probably won't come right in the December 2016/January 2017 time period.  Even if it does, Social Security disability would become a red hot issue for the 2016 election. Do Republicans really want that?