Thanks GOP

     The Senate Appropriations Committee has reported out the Labor-HHS Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year (FY) 2017, which begins on October 1, 2016. I don't have a link but my understanding is that Social Security's administrative funding in the bill is $12.464 billion.  This is up from $12.162 billion in FY 2016 but the entire amount of the modest increase would be appropriated only for program integrity. This means that the money that the agency gets to pay its employees, answer its telephones, keep its offices open, process people onto benefits, hold hearings, etc. has been frozen even though the cost of all of these has been increased by inflation. If this budget is enacted, every problem that the Social Security Administration has is going to get worse. It will be even harder to get through to the agency on the telephone. There will be ever longer lines outside Social Security field offices. It will take even longer to get a hearing. 

     I don't know what it's going to take before the public starts raising holy hell. I'm sure that when that does finally happens, Republicans will blame the Social Security bureaucracy which, in a sense, will be deserved since the agency's leaders have been so timid about blaming their service delivery problems on the Republican led Congress.

Doing Less With Less -- Part One

The Hell Of Applying For Government Benefits

     The Atlantic has a piece written by Laura Kwerel on The Hell of Applying for Government Benefits. Here's an excerpt:

It’s 11:30 a.m., and after three hours of waiting, I have finally gotten to the front of the line at the Social Security Administration on M Street in Washington, D.C. I have come to see if they received a fax—the agency rarely uses email to communicate with the public.

The harried worker in front of me click-click-clicks something into her computer terminal, then looks up at me disapprovingly. “You have an appointment,” she says. Um ... what? This was the first I had heard of an appointment. After weeks of calling their 800 number without success, I decided to just show up in person. “It’s at 3 o’clock,” she went on. “Didn’t you receive the notice?”

I would later find out that their office had indeed sent me a letter, but because a “2” was incorrectly entered as a “4,” it had gone to the wrong address. The fact that I appeared on the day of my “appointment” was a fluke. And they had not received the fax.

Employment Rate Of Older Americans Soars

You Don't Get What You Don't Pay For

     Joe Davidson writes for the Washington Post on the serious service delivery problems that the Social Security Administration has and on the cause of these problems -- grossly inadequate administrative appropriations.

NPRM On Excluded Medical Evidence

     From a Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) that Social Security had published in the Federal Register today (footnotes omitted):

In accordance with section 812 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (BBA section 812), we propose to revise our rules to explain how we would address evidence furnished by medical sources that meet one of BBA section 812’s exclusionary categories (statutorily excluded medical sources). Under this proposed rule, we would not consider evidence furnished by a statutorily excluded medical source unless we find good cause to do so. We propose several circumstances in which we would find good cause, and we also propose to require statutorily excluded medical sources to notify us of their excluded status when they furnish evidence to us. ...

Specifically, we may not consider evidence from the following medical sources:

• A medical source convicted of a felony under sections 208 or 1632 of the Act,

• a medical source excluded from participating in any Federal health care program under section 1128 of the Act, or

• a medical source imposed with a civil monetary penalty (CMP).

Shots Fired Outside Social Security Office

     From the Sun Herald of Gulfport, MS:

Moss Point Police Chief Art McClung said shots were fired Wednesday in the parking lot of the U.S. Social Security Administration office at 6000 Mississippi 63.

McClung said a man was conducting business in the office when he became angered and left the building, saying something to the security guard as he exited the building.

“He went outside and went to his car and got a gun and discharged it three or four times in the air and then got in his vehicle and left,” McClung said. “The shots were fired into the air and no one was injured, nor was any property destroyed.”

McClung said police have a good idea who fired the shots and are pursuing him.

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/news/local/crime/article82508227.html#storylink=cpy

Blahous And Reischauer Nominations Barely Clear Finance Committee

     The re-nominations of Charles Blahous and Robert Reischauer to Social Security's Board of Trustees were narrowly reported out of the Senate Finance Committee yesterday by a vote of 14-12 for each. 

     Blahous's nomination has been criticized because he has been a consistent advocate for Social Security "reform" that would cut benefits. I think it would be fair to say that he is philosophically opposed to the concept of social insurance and wishes to undermine it in any way possible. Reischauer has been opposed to the sorts of cuts that Blahous advocates but he hasn't been an advocate for increasing Social Security benefits.

     In any case, Social Security's Board of Trustees has no power. The Trustees have no role other than to sign off on a yearly report that is really the product of Social Security's actuaries. It's little more than a ceremonial position.