RCALJ Oliver Garmon In The News Again

     An Atlanta television station is running a piece on employment discrimination at Social Security, featuring Regional Chief Administrative Law Judge Oliver Garmon.

Social Security News Remains Slow Just Before The Election So Here's Another Picture

From an exhibition of art deco cars at the NC Museum of Art

Mass Killing By Social Security

     From The News Advance of Lynchburg, VA (emphasis added):

The Luedkes — husband George and wife Ann — had just returned from vacation in late August when they learned the unthinkable.

Ann Luedke was dead, and had been for 12 years, according to the Social Security Administration. Within days, tens of thousands of dollars would be withdrawn from their joint bank accounts by the U.S. Treasury Department — repayment, the federal government reasoned, for Social Security benefits paid to Ann for the three years in which she had been drawing benefits.

“I don’t remember dying,” Ann said, laughing. “I would have noticed.” ...

On Sept. 6, Ann visited the local Social Security Administration office on Timberlake Road and met with an employee who found that Ann was declared deceased. Ann recalled that her record was partially corrected.

The next day, George and Ann visited the local office together. Later the same day, Ann received a voicemail by an employee in the local office informing her that she was among several thousand people affected by a system input error and the Social Security Administration was working on the problem. ...

[Social Security spokesman Daniel O'Connor] said he could not comment on the Luedke case specifically, citing privacy laws.

When speaking of the assertion that several thousand people were erroneously declared deceased, O’Connor referenced an audit conducted by the Office of the Inspector General in 2015 that raised concerns about the accuracy of death records collected by the Social Security Administration.

 The Social Security Administration reached out to five states — including Virginia — to conduct a pilot by which the agency sought to obtain “historical death data” to “further explore filling potential gaps in our records,” O’Connor said. In August 2016, the Social Security Administration posted approximately 40,000 death records from Virginia and two other states in the pilot. While around half of those records reflected true deaths that matched records of the Social Security Administration, it was discovered that some of the remaining 19,000 matches were in error, O’Connor said. ...

     Are you kidding me? Why has there been no public announcement on this? Why no Emergency Message? Did Social Security think no one would notice? Having one's name wrongly added to the Death Master File causes massive problems.

Since We're So Close To An Election There's No Social Security News So Here's An Interesting Picture

From an exhibition at the NC Museum of Art

Clinton Plan Popular

     From Public Policy Polling:

Do you support or oppose increasing – not

cutting – Social Security benefits by asking

millionaires and billionaires to pay more into

the system?

72%

Support increasing – not cutting - Social

Security benefits by asking millionaires and

billionaires to pay more into the system

16%

Oppose increasing – not cutting - Social

Security benefits by asking millionaires and

billionaires to pay more into the system

12% 

     Even 51% of Republicans support increasing Social Security benefits while asking the wealthy to pay more.

All The COLA Adjustments

     Some excerpts from Social Security's notice of cost of living and other adjustments for 2017, which will appear in the Federal Register tomorrow:

• The maximum Federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) monthly benefit amounts for 2017 under title XVI o f the Act will be $735 for an eligible individual, $1,103 for an eligible individual with an eligible spouse, and $368 for an essential person;
• The dollar fee limit for services performed as a representative payee remains at $41 per month ($78 per month in the case of a beneficiary who is disabled and has an alcoholism or drug addiction condition that leaves him or her incapable of managing benefits) in 2017;
• The dollar limit on the administrative-cost fee assessment charged to an appointed representative such as an attorney, agent, or other person who represents claimants remains at $91 beginning in December 2016;
• The Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) contribution and benefit base will be $127,200 for remuneration paid in 2017 and self-employment income earned in taxable years beginning in 2017;
• The monthly exempt amounts under the OASDI retirement earnings test for taxable years ending in calendar year 2017 will be $1,410 for beneficiaries who will attain their Normal Retirement Age (NRA) ... after 2017 and $3,740 for those who attain NRA in 2017;
• The taxable earnings a person must have to be credited with a quarter of coverage in 2017 will be $1,300;
• The monthly amount deemed to constitute substantial gainful activity (SGA) for statutorily blind persons in 2017 will be $1,950. The corresponding amount for non-blind disabled persons will be $1,170;
• The earnings threshold establishing a month as a part of a trial work period will be $840 for 2017;
• The cost-of-living increase is 0.3 percent for benefits under titles II and XVI of the Act. Under title II, OASDI benefits will increase by 0.3 percent for individuals eligible for December 2016 benefits, payable in January 2017.

SSA Employee Indicted

     From a press release:

U.S. Attorney Kenneth A. Polite announced that MICHAELLE MARTINEZ, age 38, of Marrero, was indicted today for Theft of Government Funds.

According to the Superseding Indictment, MARTINEZ identified beneficiaries who were entitled to receive retroactive or back payments from the Social Security Administration (“SSA”).  MARTINEZ would change the recipient’s deposit information and would divert the SSA money bank accounts controlled by the defendant.  MARTINEZ then changed the deposit information back before the beneficiaries would notice a problem. ...

If convicted, MARTINEZ faces a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment, followed by up to three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.

One More Extension For DEA

     From today's Federal Register:

We are extending, until December 28, 2018, the expiration date of our disability examiner authority (DEA) rule, which authorizes State agency disability examiners to make fully favorable determinations without the approval of a State agency medical or psychological consultant in claims that we consider under our quick disability determination (QDD) and compassionate allowance (CAL) processes. This is our last extension of this rule because we will phase out the use of DEA during the extension period under section 832 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (BBA). This extension provides us the time necessary to take all of the administrative actions we need to take in order to reinstate uniform use of medical and psychological consultants.