Social Security Gets A Good Report Card

     The Center for Plain Language has issued its 2014 report card and Social Security got an "A" for compliance with the Plain Language Act (yes, plain language is required by statute), an "A" for writing and a "B" for information design. Only the Department of Homeland Security and the Securities and Exchange Commission scored as high. No agency got an "A" for information design.
     Social Security isn't being shy about telling people that it thinks it's doing a good job. From the Baltimore Sun:

"Some organizations have a safety culture because it's very critical to their mission," said Steven Patrick, associate commissioner of the SSA's Office of Public Inquiries, a leader in the agency's effort to communicate clearly. "In many ways I think of plain language as critical to our mission." ...

Patrick said an eight-person team at Social Security screens a wide range of communications, including marketing materials, forms and even letters the agency sends to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Officials also use software to analyze writing samples for style and clarity.

     Now, if the agency could just rewrite the letter it's been sending to claimants after they request a hearing, the letter that unintentionally misleads many of them into believing that their hearing is coming up in 20 days. How many decades has that letter been in use?

A Small Item

     This is from the President's budget proposal for the next fiscal year:

The Budget will require OASDI [Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance] recipients seeking overpayment waivers to grant SSA [Social Security Administration] authority to certify financial information. This new authority would extend the current practice of requiring SSI [Supplemental Security Income] recipients to provide SSA authorization to access data from their financial institutions to determine their available resources. Currently, there is no verification of financial assets for overpayment waiver claims for OASDI

The Bottom Line

     I realize that I didn't give the bottom line on the President's budget proposal for the Social Security Administration for Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, which begins on October 1, 2015. The President proposes a 5% increase in the agency's operating budget from $12,173 million this year to $12,791 million next year.

What The Acting Commissioner Is Requesting

     The Commissioner of Social Security is required by statute to prepare a budget request for the agency and the White House cannot block its release -- not that there's usually that much difference between the Commissioner budget request and the President's. Here's a summary table from the Acting Commissioner budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2016, which begins on October 1, 2015.

A First Look At The President's Budget

From the President's Budget for FY 2016:

... Equalizing Social Security Benefits for Same-Sex Married Couples. The Budget proposes to amend the Social Security Act to ensure all lawfully married same-sex couples will be eli - gible to receive Social Security spousal benefits, regardless of where they live. Currently, if a legally married same-sex couple lives in a State that does not recognize the marriage, these Social Security benefits are unavailable under Federal law. This means that for a couple that marries in one State where same-sex marriage is recognized and then moves to another State where it is not, the protection that Social Security spousal ben - efits provides to families is unavailable. Under this proposal, such married couples would have access to these benefits. ...

To address reserve depletion of the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund, the Budget proposes to reallocate existing payroll tax collections between the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and DI trust funds while a longer-term solution to overall Social Security solvency is developed with the Congress. ...

The Budget also includes initiatives to help people with disabilities remain in the workforce. It builds on the bipartisan support for these ef forts in the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, by providing new authority and $400 million in new resources for the Social Security Administration (SSA), in partnership with other Federal agencies, to test innovative strategies to help people with disabilities remain in the workforce. The cost would be offset by a proposal to better coordinate DI and Federal retroactive dis - ability payments between SSA and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM.) Early-intervention measures, such as supportive employment services for individuals with mental impairments, targeted incentives for employers to help workers with disabilities remain on the job, and incentives and opportunities for States to better coordinate services, have the potential to achieve long-term gains in the employment and the quality of life of people with disabilities, and the proposed demonstrations will help build the evidence base for future program improvements.

To address increasing wait times for a disability appeal decision, the Budget proposes to increase the hiring of Administrative Law Judges (ALJ). SSA’s workloads continue to increase as the baby boom generation enters its most disability-prone years. The average wait time for a disability decision before an ALJ reached a record high of 18.5 months in August 2008. SSA was able to reduce the wait time down to a 10-year low of 12 months in 2011 and 2012, but due to funding constraints, the wait time has begun to grow again and is anticipated to rise above 16 months in 2015. Currently there are over one million people waiting for a disability appeals hearing decision from an ALJ. The Budget commits increased resources to hire more ALJs. But resources alone will not be enough. The process for hiring SSA ALJs has not operated efficiently as is needed to fill vacancies even when funding is available. Therefore, the Administration is creating a workgroup led by the Administrative Conference of the United States and OPM, along with SSA, DOJ, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to review the process of hiring ALJs and recommend ways to eliminate roadblocks, which may include proposing administrative reforms or legislative changes.

To continue to strengthen the integrity and accuracy of Social Security, the Budget proposes to establish a dependable source of mandatory funding in 2017 for Continuing Disability Reviews (CDRs) and Supplemental Security Income Redeterminations, which ensure that only those eligible for benefits continue to receive them. SSA estimates that each $1 spent on CDRs would save the Federal Government $9. This proposal, THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2016 43 together with discretionary funding proposed for 2016, could produce net savings of $32 billion over 10 years and reduce the current backlog of 906,000 overdue CDRs.

"Bipolar Is Like The Latest Fad"

    From Media Matters:

Fox News Radio host Tom Sullivan told a caller who said she suffered from bipolar disorder that her illness is "something made up by the mental health business" and just "the latest fad." When the caller told Sullivan that she "would not be alive today" if she hadn't received mental health treatment, Sullivan wondered if "maybe somebody's talked you into feeling and thinking this way." 

Sullivan, who is also a frequent Fox Business contributor and guest anchor, began his January 28 program by complaining that people with mental illness have figured how to "game the system" by receiving disability benefits. "They're mostly government employees and they know how to do it," he added. Sullivan also defended Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) controversial and false statement that "Over half the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts." ... 

"I've got to tell you, if you haven't been told, I will tell you. I think bipolar is like the latest fad. Everybody and their brother is getting diagnosed with bipolar. And last time I checked, we all have good days and we all have bad. And I don't consider that an illness. And I don't consider it a disability." 

He added that bipolar disorder is "something made up by the mental health business just to be able to give people prescriptions and keep them coming in, and keeping you -- paying them money." ... 

     We can hope that Mr. Sullivan isn't much of an opinion maker but there's no doubt that his views are already shared by many people. The problem I face on a regular basis is that his views are shared by many who are themselves suffering from serious mental illness. Even though their lives are severely disrupted by mental illness, they do not believe that they could be mentally ill because they don't believe that mental illness is real or because they believe that real mental illness could only be something vastly more severe than what they suffer. In the most extreme cases, individuals who are at a high suicide risk or who are actively hallucinating or delusional will consider it ridiculous when I and others attempt to persuade them to get under psychiatric care. For that matter, Mr. Sullivan sounds a little delusional himself.

I Wonder How Many People Show Up At Headquarters These Days WantingTo Meet With The Commissioner

     From Tom Margenau writing for the Arizona Daily Star:

Q: I’ve got a beef with Social Security. I barged into my local Social Security office, waited for a couple hours, and finally left. Then I tried calling their 800 number and after being on hold for a half hour, I just hung up. So I’ve decided to go right to the top. Can you please give me the address for the Social Security Administration headquarters and the name of their top person? I am going to pay him a visit. 

A.  ... The “top person,” or the commissioner of Social Security, is a “her” not a “him.” Her name is Carolyn Colvin. ... 

Anyway, if you insist on paying her a visit, the address is 6401 Security Boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21235. But I’ll let you in on two little secrets. First, you’ll have to get in line. And second, you won’t get anywhere near the commissioner’s office. 

I used to work at SSA’s headquarters at the very address I gave you. In fact, I worked directly for the then-commissioner of Social Security. (This was about 20 years ago.) As someone who had grown up within the agency, working in local Social Security field offices around the country before transferring to the head office, I was surprised to learn of the number of people who showed up at those Baltimore offices each day demanding to “see the big boss.” In fact, there were so many they had set up a procedure for handling them. Visitors were ushered into a nice looking office where they met with a representative of the commissioner. But the person they were actually talking to was just an agent from one of the local Baltimore area Social Security field offices. The visitor’s problem was usually taken care of, and he or she left satisfied that they had “gone to the top.” Of course, the problem would have been just as easily resolved had the person dealt with his or her local Social Security office.

National Support Center Coming Online

    From ZD Net:

The [new Social Security National Support Center] Tier 3 data center was completed outside of Baltimore, MD, in 2014 with the conversion to a virtual tape library the first step in the migration process, completed at the end of October. This was immediately followed by the installation of the complete networking and storage infrastructure, a process which is necessary to prep for the overall migration/consolidation projects in the foreseeable future, and which is scheduled to be complete by March 2015. Once this stage is completed the NSC will begin the process, scheduled to take 18 months, of migrating their Mainframe and Open Systems solutions and all of the existing production environments. ...

With the migration work scheduled to be completed in August 2016, it will be a while before the full advantage of the new facility can be realized.