Isn't This Michael Astrue's Fault?

     From Fox News:

On paper, it sounded like a true government success story: The Social Security Administration in September opened a "state-of-the-art" data center in Maryland, housing wage and benefit information on almost every American, "on time and under budget." 

However, six years after Congress approved a half-billion dollars for the project -- the largest building project funded by the 2009 stimulus -- a whistleblower says the center was built on a lie. 

"We misled Congress," Michael Keegan, a former associate commissioner who worked on the project, told FoxNews.com. 

Officials originally claimed they needed the $500 million to replace their entire, 30-year-old National Computer Center located at agency headquarters in Woodlawn, Md. But Keegan says they overstated their case -- the agency has no plans to replace the center, and only moved a fraction of the NCC to the new site.  ...

Keegan maintains the agency didn't have to move anybody out of the NCC, and could have simply renovated the floor holding the old data center. 

"The data center occupies one half of one floor in a four-story building," he told FoxNews.com. "We didn't need to build [the new center] to begin with." ...

Acting Commissioner Carolyn Colvin said in a deposition she "did not" know of any plan to abandon the NCC or move all its workers to another site. Other officials echoed this statement. ...

Former SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue, who led the agency under President George W. Bush and for several years under President Obama, also said he's not sure why the building isn't being replaced entirely. 

Astrue said he made the original decision to replace the NCC, toward the end of the Bush administration. He said the building was "antiquated and fraying," and was worried a disruption in payments could send "the entire economy into recession." A backup SSA center in North Carolina, he said, was not enough. 

Astrue said his intention was to replace and phase out the NCC entirely, and disputed Keegan's claims that Congress was misled. He maintains the proposal was the "correct decision." 

But he said he was "surprised" to learn the NCC is still in operation. He doesn't know why. ...

When the Office of the Inspector General reviewed Keegan's complaints, it concluded the SSA "did not mislead" Congress to believe the NCC wouldn't be needed. At the same time, the OIG acknowledged SSA talked about "replacing" the center and "did not implicitly state" it would stay in use. (Further, while IG Patrick P. O'Carroll, Jr., oversaw the spending, he also was among those making the case for the project, telling Congress in 2009 the NCC was "rapidly approaching obsolescence.") 

Like the OIG, the Office of Special Counsel last year also said they could not determine whether agency leaders misled Congress. Keegan disputes these findings.

     So what did Carolyn Colvin do wrong? She didn't order employees to make an unnecessary move to an unnecessary new building which was built at the insistence of her predecessor. If there's fault here, it's on Michael Astrue who insisted on building this expensive new structure instead of using stimulus money to hire additional personnel to work down the agency's backlogs. Much fault should also be laid at the door of the many members of Congress who were active cheerleaders for building the new National Data Center. My recollection is that Republican members of Congress were the biggest supporters of the new building. They always prefer spending money on contractors to spending money on hiring needed personnel.

Representation Crisis In Kentucky

     If you thought all those former clients of Eric Conn whose Social Security disability benefits are being cut off can just go to Legal Aid for representation, think again. Legal Aid doesn't have anything like the resources. It might be interesting if hundreds of law students were turned loose on these cases.

At Least They Admit There's A Problem

     I just received this message from Social Security: "For 6/19/15, the Social Security Administration Electronic Records Express (ERE) Website is experiencing intermittent slowness and/or degraded service. Systems is working to resolve the issue. We will provide updates as available."

Shouldn't This Be Taught In School?

     From a press release:

 Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) today announced the results of a survey aimed to better understand how much Americans know about Social Security retirement benefits.  The results of the survey, which included a true/false quiz about Social Security facts, were concerning: only 28 percent of those surveyed received a passing grade when asked basic questions about Social Security retirement benefits. ...

To test your Social Security IQ, take the MassMutual quiz. ...

According to the research, Americans remain optimistic about the future of Social Security. More than three out of five surveyed (63 percent) believe Social Security will be available to them when they retire, with a quarter of those surveyed strongly holding that belief.  However, less than half (45 percent) think the program will have sufficient funding when they retire. This may be why only 39 percent expect to rely more on Social Security than their personal savings or income in retirement, with just 15 percent expecting to rely solely on Social Security.

ERE Seems To Be Working

     In fairness to Social Security, I should note that the agency's ERE system that allows attorneys representing Social Security claimants to electronically access their clients' files appears to have been working today. At least, I was able to use it and, unlike yesterday, I haven't been hearing complaints from others today about ERE.

What's The Alternative To Social Security?

     From Eduardo Porter's column in the New York Times:

... Consider the following calculation by James Poterba, a professor of economics at M.I.T.

If inflation-adjusted investment returns averaged 2 percent a year — not an unreasonable assumption given low interest rates and a stock market likely to deliver subpar returns over the next decade or so — a worker would have to save almost 15 percent of each paycheck for 40 years to get an annuity stream equal to half of final earnings at retirement, assuming a 2 percent risk-free rate of return. A late starter who saved for only 20 years would need to set aside a full third of earnings.

Matters would be easier if investments yielded 4 percent: With a 4 percent risk-free rate, affording an annuity equal to half the last paycheck upon retirement would require saving less than 10 percent for 40 years, or just over 25 percent for 20.

How does that compare with what workers actually save? From 1990 to 2010, the typical contribution to 401(k) accounts ranged from 4.7 to 5.2 percent of earnings. ...

ERE Almost Completely Non-Functional

     By this point, Social Security's Electronic Records Express (ERE) system which is supposed to allow attorneys to access their clients' Social Security records, is almost completely non-functional. This will cause hearings to be delayed. Attorneys will have to start mailing in copies of new medical records instead of uploading them. And, still, as best I can tell, there's nothing on any Social Security website acknowledging that there's a problem. If you e-mail them, you get a form reply back indicating that they're working on the problem but, so far, they keep acting like this is a minor matter. I would say this is the worst problem with ERE since its earliest days.

This Is How You Encourage Return To Work?

     Yesterday's hearing before the House Social Security Subcommittee featured testimony from David Weaver, Social Security's Associate Commissioner for the Office of Research, Demonstration, and Employment Support and from Daniel Bertoni of the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Here are a couple of charts from Weaver's testimony showing the complexity of Social Security's work incentives.

     Bertoni testified that GAO had "identified a number of situations where beneficiaries report work or earnings, but staff may not enter information into the system, which is inconsistent with federal internal control standards, or may not provide a receipt, as mandated by law." (footnotes omitted).

     By the way, the House Ways and Means Committee has redone its website recently. It's a real mess. It's hard to find anything on it. I think that Paul Ryan needs to show some leadership and get this fixed. It's a poor reflection on this venerable Committee.

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