Disability Trust Fund Looking Better

     From the written testimony of Stephen Goss, Social Security's Chief Actuary, to the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday:

At the time of enactment [this year of changes designed to shore up the Disability Trust Fund], we estimated that the date of trust fund reserve depletion for DI [Disability Insurance] would be extended 6 years, from 2016 to 2022. In the 2016 Trustees Report, we now project that DI reserves will not deplete until 2023, largely due to the lower than expected recent level of benefit expenditures. Applications for disability benefits have been declining since 2010, and have continued to be below our prior projections.

     In fact, if you look at the full Trustees report, you'll find that there are three projections for each trust fund, the Low-Cost, Intermediate and High-Cost projections. The projection of a 2023 exhaustion date is the Intermediate projection. The High-Cost projection has an exhaustion date of 2020 and the Low-Cost projected exhaustion date is never.

Trust Fund Balance Increases By $23 Billion: GOP Will Claim Sky Is Falling

     The Social Security Trustees Report has been released. Here's a summary from a Social Security press release:

• The asset reserves of the combined OASDI [Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance] Trust Funds increased by $23 billion in 2015 to a total of $2.81 trillion.
• The combined trust fund reserves are still growing and will continue to do so through 2019. Beginning in 2020, the total cost of the program is projected to exceed income.
• The year when the combined trust fund reserves are projected to become depleted, if Congress does not act before then, is 2034 – the same as projected last year. At that time, there will be sufficient income coming in to pay 79 percent of scheduled benefits.

Another Sign That The American Right Has Lost Its Mind

     The Wall Street Journal seems disappointed that Donald Trump doesn't share their zeal for "Social Security reform." Of course, "Social Security reform" to them is code for cutting Social Security. It's hard to believe that any sophisticated person would think that any major party Presidential candidate would campaign on cutting Social Security. This is a sign of just how far the American right has departed from political sanity.

Many Comments On Gun Control Proposal

     There are 3,774 comments already on Social Security's Notice of Proposed Rule-Making that would require that the Social Security Administration refer individuals with a history of serious mental illness to a database used to prevent certain people from buying firearms. Comments will be allowed until July 5.

About Time For Democrats To Start Acting Like Democrats

     Robert Pear at the New York Times reports on how the President and Hillary Clinton came to endorse increasing Social Security benefits. Give Bernie Sanders a lot of credit.

Trustees Report Finally Coming On Wednesday

     The 2016 Social Security Trustees report is scheduled for release on Wednesday, June 22. The House Social Security Subcommittee will hold a hearing that day.

Doing Less With Less -- Part Three

Planning To Rewrite Everything

     From FCW Magazine:

"We have a full-blown plan to basically re-write everything," Social Security Administration CIO Rob Klopp told FCW on June 14.

If the proposed $3.1 billion federal IT modernization fund becomes a system-shocking reality, Klopp said he plans to be among the first requesting a cut.

"We have very detailed plans, we know how we’re going to ask for the money," he said. ...

Klopp pointed to the Disability Case Processing System as a reference point. In 2014, SSA killed and restarted the DCPS project after sinking $300 million and six years into it. The new DCPS push has cost less than $40 million, Klopp told FCW, and should be rolling out this December, thanks to an agile development approach. ...

     OK, a successful rollout of DCPS will impress a lot of people. Automating the windfall offset will impress even more. I think that should be your next goal after DCPS. Of course, how many people are confident that DCPS is going to work?
     I have no idea how likely that $3.1 billion federal IT modernization fund is or what share of it that Social Security might get.