Hiring Freeze Ends

     From the New York Times:

The Trump administration on Wednesday will lift the hiring freeze that it had imposed on the federal work force, even as it directs agencies to submit plans for personnel cuts and other restructuring moves to fit the budget blueprint released by President Trump last month. ...

The administration is now making clear that it is not giving a green light for agencies to start hiring; instead, the White House is seeking long-term plans from each agency to, in most cases, prepare for cuts. ...

OIG Report On DCPS

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has completed a "Congressional Response Report" on Progress in Developing the Disability Case Processing System as of March 2017. Here are some excerpts from the report (footnote omitted):

SSA partners with State disability determination services (DDS) to evaluate disability claims and make disability determinations. The DDSs use various customized systems to process disability cases.

DCPS is an SSA initiative to develop a common system for all DDSs that the Agency expects will simplify system support and maintenance, improve the speed and quality of the disability process, and reduce the overall growth rate of infrastructure costs.

SSA is using an Agile approach to developing DCPS. The Agency continually identifies functional requirements that are expressed as user stories. Each user story is assigned a level of effort, called a story point. Velocity refers to the number of story points completed during an iteration,or “sprint.” User stories that need to be addressed are considered the backlog. ...

In May 2016, SSA estimated the first release of DCPS would be available in December 2016 — at a cost of less than $38 million — and would support initial disability claims and reconsiderations. However, the Agency subsequently scaled down the functionality it would include in the first release....

At the time of our review, SSA was planning to deliver the functionality needed to process all initial disability claims and reconsiderations (as well as initial continuing disability reviews) by January 2018 at an estimated cumulative cost of $75 million. ...

SSA reported, that, as of March 14, 2017, it had completed 12,810 of the 22,082 total story points identified to-date (58 percent). ...

In August 2016, the vendor that supported the software used by 46 of the 52 DDSs announced plans to modernize its legacy systems over a 24-month period. Our December 2016 report stated that SSA should evaluate its plans to ensure it can demonstrate to Congress and the public that it has chosen the most cost-effective alternative to achieve its goals. At the time of this review, SSA was evaluating the cost and schedule of the internally developed DCPS compared to the vendor-developed alternative....

Hiltzik Doesn't Like The Idea Of Replacing FICA

     Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times doesn't think much of the idea being floated by the Trump Administration of replacing the FICA tax that funds Social Security with some other tax.  Hiltzik's rationale mostly comes down to the logic in this old quote from Franklin Roosevelt:

We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral and political right to collect their pensions. … With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.

A Good Response

     From the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

At a time of unprecedented inequality, the Washington Post is quick to seize on the country's real problems: a Social Security disability program that is too generous. ...

Just to get some orientation, the benefit that the Post considers to be too generous averages $1,170 a month. ...

The concern about the low employment rates (EPOP) in the United States is reasonable, but it bears no obvious relationship to the Social Security disability insurance program. The EPOP for prime age workers (ages 25-54) has fallen by almost four percentage points since 2000, with no increase in the generosity of the disability program. In fact, if we combine the number of workers receiving disability and workers compensation, there has been little change in the share of the working age population receiving benefits over this period.

In fact, the United States ranks near the bottom of OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a major international body] countries in the generosity of its benefits, yet it also ranks near the bottom in the employment rate for prime age workers. In its most recent data, the OECD put the EPOP for prime age workers in the United States at 78.2 percent. This compares 83.3 percent for the Netherlands, 84.2 percent for Germany, and 86.0 percent for Sweden, all countries that spend considerably more money on disability benefits than the United States. ...

Kenneth Nibali Passes

     Kenneth Nibali, formerly Associate Commissioner of the Office of Disability at Social Security, passed away on April 4. He was 69.

Living Large On Social Security Disability?

     The Detroit Free Press is running a piece on a woman disabled by multiple sclerosis struggling to find a place to live. Her Social Security disability benefits aren't enough to enable her to pay rent, leaving her and her 16 year old daughter homeless.

Hiring Freeze Starting To Cause Frostbite

      From The Week:

On Jan. 23, President Trump signed an executive order instituting a 90-day federal hiring freeze, as the first step in a "long-term plan" to cut the federal workforce. It's unclear how far along that plan is, but 79 days into his presidency, the effects of Trump's freeze are already being felt at government agencies like the Social Security Administration, the Veterans Affairs Department, and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday — and the public is starting to feel the reduced staffing levels, too. ...

At the Social Security Administration, an inability to replace the workforce after departures, combined with a rise in claims as baby boomers retire, has led to longer lines at offices and on the phone. "The agency is doing things they never did before, like sending people home without any service," Witold Skwierczynski, president of a union that represents 25,000 Social Security employees, tells The Wall Street Journal. "You can't just establish a hiring freeze and expect us to continue to do all our work." ...

Why So Brutal?

     A patient dying of cancer is told her Social Security disability claim has been approved but she's also told that she must wait six months before she'll be paid a monthly check. The patient thinks that's crazy. Why would the Social Security Administration behave in such a brutal way? Because they have to. It's the way the law is written. Anybody want to justify this as reasonable? Anybody want to make an argument about discouraging dependency? What about "ENTITLEMENTS ARE DRIVING US BANKRUPT?" I put that last one all in caps since that's usually the tone of anyone making the "argument" even though the same people always favor humongous increases in defense spending.
     And if you think that six month waiting period is terrible, what do you think of the two and a half year waiting period for Medicare?