Many To Leave Social Security Because Of Change Of Administration?

    There are reports on the ALJ Discussion Forum that Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn Colvin told agency employees in an in-house television broadcast that she and many other unnamed officials will be leaving their jobs at Social Security at the time of the inauguration. There is nothing surprising about Colvin leaving. That was widely expected.  However, it is surprising that many others would choose to leave Social Security because of the change of administration. That is not at all what has happened in the past.

    The same source contains a report that agency employees have been told to expect that appropriations problems will slow down the hiring of Administrative Law Judges. The slowdown in hiring is inevitable given the appropriations problem. Backlogs are going to grow rapidly over the next four or five months, at least. No one knows what to expect beyond that.

Getting A Little Feisty

     From the testimony of  Robert Klopp, Deputy Commissioner of Systems and Chief Information Officer, Social Security Administration yesterday to the Subcommittee on Information Technology, House Committee on Oversight and Information Technology:

... In our last hearing, some Members voiced concerns about a lack of leadership on cybersecurity at the agency. I appreciate this concern, but I also think we need to be careful about assuming that any security weakness is the result of bad management. If the fact that there are vulnerabilities in our IT infrastructure reflects a lack of leadership, then I accept the responsibility for the lack of leadership. If the criteria is that, if DHS [Department of Homeland Security] finds anything wrong, this reflects a lack of leadership, then I accept the responsibility. But this also means that every agency that has a vulnerability, exploited or not, has a leadership issue - and that means every agency, not just SSA. ...

The SSA can shift funding from our IT budget for cyber, but soaking up any savings by spending it on cyber does not fund continuous improvement. It does not fund IT modernization. The idea that the SSA, or any agency, can do more in cyber while simultaneously rebuilding our IT infrastructure is no less a fantasy than the idea that the country can modernize any other infrastucture - our roads, our dams, our electric grid, our military - without an investment.

My testimony includes a request to modernize IT and to fund improvements in cyber defenses. Wishing for better IT from cost cutting will not help. Wishing for cost-cuts with no investment will not help. Passing legislation without providing funding is not enough. ...

Social Security's Workload Won't Level Off For A Long Time

From SSA OIG

Hearing Backlog Continues To Climb

From SSA OIG

I Don't Know

     People keep asking me what's going to happen at Social Security with Donald Trump as President. For the most part, I don't know. I'm pretty sure that the people on Trump's Social Security transition team have little idea. It would be too early in any transition and there are ample signs that this will be a more disorganized transition than usual.Much may depend upon Trump's pick for Social Security Commissioner but that may not come for six months or more and it may not matter that much anyway. In most administrations, the Social Security Commissioner seems mostly to be told to not make waves.

     The one thing that people worry about the most -- that Trump would try to privatize Social Security -- is out of the question. He's signaled that he opposes that. Few Congressional Republicans would have the heart for such a fight. Even Donald Trump can recognize that this is a fight he would lose badly. I wish he would try but he won't.

     While there are many, many frightening things that could happen at Social Security in a year or two or four, the only immediate threat is to the agency's operating budget. We're on a continuing resolution now which runs out in December, if I remember correctly. I expect that will get rolled over until the Spring. Over the past six years the House GOP has been demanding greater and greater cuts for all agencies, including Social Security, and damn the consequences. However, it's been noticeable in the past that the Congressional GOP has always seemed far more interested in budget austerity when there was a Democratic President than when there was a Republican President, not that Social Security fared well under President George W. Bush. We are at the point that the news media can already report on horrendous backlogs at Social Security, if they choose to. Do Republicans want to risk bad media coverage on this? Do they even recognize or care about that risk when they've just been able to elect a President who's been accused of, among other things, sexually abusing more than a dozen women?

Transition Team For Social Security?

     I'm not familiar with theintercept.com but they're reporting that Mike Korbey, former senior advisor to the principal deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration in George W. Bush’s administration; former Reagan Social Security Commissioner Dorcas Hardy; former Social Security Inspector General Patrick O’Carroll; and former Social Security General Counsel David Black have been appointed to Trump's transition team for the Social Security Administration. Korbey and Hardy have a history of supporting privatization of Social Security, although I strongly doubt that any such plan will be forthcoming in a Trump administration. I can say that O'Carroll was no fan of Social Security disability claimants when he was at Social Security. I'm not familiar with Black.

My Theory

     For at least the last four years attorneys who represent Social Security disability claimants have been asking each other why there has been little news media coverage of the human costs of the unprecedented backlogs of Social Security disability claims and the general harshness in adjudicating these claims. Large numbers of people are dying while waiting for action on their claims. Many disability claims are wrongly denied, particularly claims based upon mental illness. After all, smaller backlogs and less harsh policies had received extensive media coverage in years past. Why not now?

     My theory on why there has been so little coverage is that the think tanks and advocacy groups based in D.C. who ought to be initiating the media coverage were instead squelching it because they were afraid that a Democratic president would be blamed even though the fault, at least for the backlogs, clearly lies with the Republicans in Congress who have failed to give the Social Security Administration an adequate appropriation.

     If my theory is correct, expect lots of media attention next year to the backlogs. We could have used the attention to these problems over the last four years.