CCD Opposes President's Gun Control Plan

     The Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD), the major umbrella organization of disability-related organizations in the United States, has released a letter it sent to Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to the President, after a meeting concerning the White House plan to have the Social Security Administration relay information about some individuals who have been appointed representative payees so that they might be prevented from buying guns. CCD opposes the plan because they believe that it would stigmatize those disabled by mental illness.

     I am aghast at the CCD position. Do they have any idea how difficult it is to be approved for Social Security disability benefits due to mental illness? Maybe they just accepted without question the talking points of the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA wants people to think that you get a representative payee if you're suffering from any mental illness. False. Only a small minority of those suffering from mental illness get a representative payee. The NRA wants you to think you get a representative payee if you're illiterate. False. No one at Social Security is going to even think about going to the trouble of appointing a representative payee merely because a person is illiterate. The NRA wants you to think that you get a representative payee if you're not good at math. False. It takes far more than that to get a representative payee. Those who are appointed representative payees are really, really sick people. I'd guess that most schizophrenics don't end up with a representative payee. People who end up with a representative payee are generally people who are very severely impaired by mental illness. We're talking about people who shouldn't be driving a car much less owning a firearm.

     I've got an idea, CCD. Why don't we abolish involuntary commitment? The existence of a process which can take away a person's liberty due to mental illness creates a much greater stigma than reducing access to guns. How about it, CCD? If you're not worried about paranoid schizophrenics buying guns, why should you worry about paranoid schizophrenics who threaten to kill themselves or others? Most of those who threaten to kill themselves or others won't do it. Why do we need to stigmatize them by locking them up?

What A Heartwarming Story

     At least two of Eric Conn's former clients committed suicide after being informed that their Social Security disability benefits were being cut off. Because of the suicides, Social Security agreed to keep benefits going for each individual involved until there was an Administrative Law Judge decision on their case. Even for those who committed suicide the process continued to determine whether benefits should have been cut off. Survivors can face huge overpayments if Social Security doesn't decide that benefits should have been continued. We now have word that the widow of one of those who committed suicide has received a favorable decision. Her husband's disability benefits shouldn't have been cut off. He shouldn't have been subjected to the threat of financial ruin.

Guarding The Northern Frontier

     If you are an Alaska resident and have the misfortune of becoming disabled, you'd better hope your Social Security disability claim is approved at the initial or reconsideration level, because if it's not, you probably won't be approved on appeal. Alaska has two Administrative Law Judges (ALJs), both of whom have extremely low allowance rates, around 20%. Their productivity is also low. As a result, backlogs are extremely high at the Alaska hearing office. It's so hard to win there that there are no Social Security attorneys left to represent claimants there. They could no longer make a living after these two ALJs came in. A local newspaper is reporting on the situation but don't expect anything to come of it. I have no doubt that there would be Congressional hearings if there was some other hearing office with only two ALJs who each approved 80% of the cases they heard but 20%? No problem.

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of the personnel who make initial and reconsideration determinations on Social Security disability claims,  has issued its Winter 2016 newsletter.

Their Only Real Interest Is Selling Insurance

     From Daniel Marans writing for the Huffington Post:

The largest seniors group in the country has launched a campaign to get presidential candidates to discuss their plans for Social Security -- only it won’t say which Social Security reforms it prefers, and progressive retirement policy leaders are none too happy about it.

 AARP, a nonprofit with 37 million members all over the age of 50, announced its “Take A Stand” initiative last November. The organization is asking presidential candidates to present their detailed plans for shoring up Social Security’s finances and ensuring that its benefits are adequate now and in the future. ...

The campaign includes a multi-million-dollar TV advertising blitz in early primary states. In one of the spots, a donkey and an elephant stand by as a phone with “Social Security” on the caller ID continues to ring.

“You can’t deal with something by ignoring it,” the narrator says. “But that’s how some candidates seem to be dealing with Social Security.” ...

[T]he campaign refrains from passing judgment on the merit of the candidates’ Social Security plans. As long as they propose ways to close the program’s long-term funding gap and maintain adequate benefits, AARP gives the candidates credit for “taking a stand.” ...

AARP’s neutrality about the substance of the candidates’ plans rankles progressive advocates, who have taken a strong stance against benefit cuts and believe that the country’s largest and most-recognized senior organization should as well. ...

A Different Route That Doesn't Involve Social Security?

     In early January the President announced that the Social Security Administration would begin a rulemaking process to allow the agency to notify, in some cases, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System about the appointment of a representative payee for a Social Security recipient. The idea is that if a person is mentally incompetent to handle money, he or she is probably not competent to buy a firearm. The first step in the rulemaking process is for an agency to send a draft proposal to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for approval. It was already almost too late for Social Security to finish action on a rulemaking on this subject when the President made the announcement but Social Security still hasn't sent over a proposal to OMB. If they were going to do this while Obama was still President they should be rushing but they're not. I've been wondering what's going on. Then, I see a link to this article in Modern Healthcare, of all places:

Senators on Wednesday expressed strong bipartisan support for bills that would improve the interactions of the mentally ill and the police, but clashed on how to pay for the reform and how it might affect gun ownership. ... 

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) last summer introduced a bill that encourages states to share more mental health records for use in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.  

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he thinks Cornyn's bill, which is approved by the National Rifle Association, would make it easier, not harder, for people with severe mental illness to acquire firearms.  

“I'd like to make clear while there's broad bipartisan consensus for provisions that include how we treat mental illness, that consensus does not exist for provisions that make it easier for mentally ill individuals to get guns,” Schumer said.

Cornyn vehemently denied that. He has said his bill improves the background check system without expanding it. ... 

The mental health reform bills discussed during Wednesday's hearing aren't the only ones on the table. A bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), which does not include language on guns, is expected to move through the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee soon. ... 

Cornyn has said he has talked with HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) about eventually combining the bills. But Democrats have pushed back on that suggestion, because of the provisions on gun control.

     I'm suspecting that the White House is holding off on a Social Security rulemaking in hopes that there is some legislative action on this issue.
     Honestly, does anyone, including the NRA, want to demand access to firearms for paranoid schizophrenics who have had repeated involuntary commitments because they have become a danger to themselves or others? I hope that even the NRA can't be that crazy. Ted Nugent, yes, but the entire organization?

Keeping Secrets

     Those of us on the outside learned recently about Social Security's secret repository of precedents used in deciding some cases. We only learned about this because it came up in the context of the agency's arcane policies on pooled trusts. I'm hearing that this repository covers more than pooled trusts. How much more I don't know, since Social Security employees aren't supposed to be telling anyone but I hear that the agency put out some instructions on the handling of the cases of the former clients of Eric Conn using this secret repository and that the agency made sure than at least some Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) were made aware of these instructions. I'm also hearing that the agency's Office of General Counsel was giving ALJs some suggestions on how to deal with objections that attorneys were filing in those cases -- specific language to use in decisions. I don't know how these recommendations were conveyed to the ALJs. This sounds a lot like ex parte contacts to me.

Ironic, Isn't It?

     Social Security recently let slip the fact that they have a secret repository of precedents they use in deciding cases. Now, this comes out:

From: ^Internal Communications
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2016 1:01 PM
Subject: Help US Build SSA's Next Open Government Plan!
Importance: High

A Message To All SSA and DDS Employees

Subject: Help US Build SSA's Next Open Government Plan!

Since President Obama issued his Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government on his first day in office in 2009, Social Security has been steadfastly committed to ensuring that the work we do on behalf of the public is done openly and transparently. 

To achieve the goal of making our agency more open, we have published Open Government Plans every two years since 2010. We published our most recent Open Government Plan in June 2014. These plans lay out our strategies and commitments towards breaking down the barriers between our agency and the people we serve. To enrich and inform the actions of these past plans, we actively engaged employees, as well as stakeholders in the public and private sectors about their ideas and suggestions for strengthening our Open Government efforts. These engagements have been critical in creating our past plans, and will be even more critical as we craft the next one.

This June, SSA will be publishing our fourth Open Government Plan, and we encourage you to share your ideas on how we can improve our transparency, participation, and collaboration through our Open Government Plan 4.0 Feedback Process. Once there, you can review our last Open Government Plan and participate in the conversation.

Your input will be vital as we prepare this updated plan. By advancing efforts to operate more transparently, encourage internal and external collaboration, and engage the public in the work we do, we are will advance our mission of delivering Social Security services that meet the changing needs of the public.

Ruby Burrell

Chief Strategic Officer

Performance Improvement Officer