Playing Trump

     From Politico:

Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s budget director, walked into the Oval Office in early May on a longshot mission. The slash-government conservative wanted to persuade the president to break one of his most popular campaign promises.

During his populist run for the White House, Trump had vowed to leave Social Security and Medicare alone. But Trump had also vowed to rein in America’s national debt, which Mulvaney didn’t think was possible without reining in the two biggest chunks of the federal budget. So Mick the Knife brought a cut list to his meeting in the Oval. 

“Look, this is my idea on how to reform Social Security,” the former South Carolina congressman began.

“No!” the president replied. “I told people we wouldn’t do that. What’s next?”

“Well, here are some Medicare reforms,” Mulvaney said.

“No!” Trump repeated. “I’m not doing that.”

“OK, disability insurance.”

This was a clever twist. Mulvaney was talking about the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which, as its full name indicates, is part of Social Security. But Americans don’t tend to think of it as Social Security, and its 11 million beneficiaries are not the senior citizens who tend to support Trump.

“Tell me about that,” Trump replied.

“It’s welfare,” Mulvaney said.

“OK, we can fix welfare,” Trump declared.

Sure enough, the Trump budget plan that Mulvaney unveiled a few weeks later would cut about $70 billion in disability benefits over a decade, mostly through unspecified efforts to get recipients back to work. That may sound like welfare reform, but the program isn’t welfare for the poor; it’s insurance for workers who pay into Social Security through payroll taxes. The episode suggests Trump was either ignorant enough to get word-gamed into attacking a half-century-old guarantee for the disabled, or cynical enough to ditch his promise to protect spending when it didn’t benefit his base.

The story is also revealing about the source who told it on the record: Mulvaney himself, an ideological bomb-thrower from the congressional fringe who has become an influential player in the Trump administration. ...

SSA Press Release On Hurricane Harvey

     A press release from the Social Security Administration:

Many Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefit payments are scheduled for Friday, September 1. The following information covers the various delivery methods for these payments in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

Payments by Paper Check Delivered by the US Postal Service

Hurricane Harvey’s impact on the Gulf Coast resulted in the temporary suspension of mail delivery service, as well as the closure of some postal facilities in the Houston area. The U.S. Postal Service is providing additional information on how customers displaced by Hurricane Harvey can retrieve checks they receive via the mail.

Provided here about.usps.com/news/state-releases/tx/tx.htm is a list of Post Office locations, by ZIP Code, where checks will be made available for pick-up beginning Friday, September 1. People must have proper identification to receive their check.

Payments by Direct Deposit

Nearly all payments issued by direct deposit will arrive as scheduled. If a person’s payment is delayed, they should contact their financial institution. If the financial institution is not operating, please see the “emergency payment” information below.

Payments by Direct Express Debit Card (a Treasury Department program)

For recipients in the affected areas who receive their payment through a Direct Express card, fees will be waived, even if they have evacuated out of the area. Payments will be posted to Direct Express cards on September 1.

People may contact Direct Express at 1-888-741-1115.

Emergency Payment Locations

Social Security has established three emergency payment locations in Texas where Social Security and SSI beneficiaries may request an immediate payment in person if they cannot receive their regular payment. The locations and hours are:

Friday, September 1, and Saturday, September 2:

• Houston: NRG Center
  2 NRG Park, Houston, TX 77054
  From 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM


• Dallas: Kay Bailey Hutchison Dallas Convention Center
  650 S. Griffin Street, Dallas, TX 75202
  From 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM


• Austin: Tony Burger Center
  3200 Jones Rd Austin, TX 78745
  From 9:30 AM – 3:00 PM

For people who cannot receive their regularly scheduled Social Security payment as a result of Hurricane Harvey, in most cases they can go to any open Social Security office and request an immediate payment. A list of offices that are currently closed, as well as additional information for the public, is available at www.socialsecurity.gov/emergency.

To find the nearest open Social Security office outside of the affected areas, call 1-800-772-1213 (TTY 1-800-325-0778) or go to www.socialsecurity.gov/locator.

     To this point, Social Security's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) hasn't posted any information that I can find about the status of its hearing offices in the Houston area. Of course, I'm sure that all of the ODAR offices in the area are closed and that ODAR has a team working on the problem.

     Update: I've been told that Social Security is saying that only the Houston North hearing office is closed and that it will reopen next Tuesday. I'm having trouble believing this could be accurate. Even if all the hearing offices are "open" next week, they're certainly going to have only skeleton crews working and claimants will have enormous difficulty reaching the offices for hearings. If any Houston area claimant with a scheduled hearing is reading this blog, try to contact your attorney if you have one. They may have some information. If you're a claimant and your hearing hasn't been scheduled yet, relax. Give Social Security some time to sort things out.

Two Congressional Hearing

     The House Ways and Means Committee has scheduled two hearings for Wednesday, September 6. One definitely has to do with Social Security. The other may touch on Social Security. 

     First, at 10:00, the Social Security Subcommittee will hold a hearing on disability determination at Social Security. The announcement focuses on how long it takes for the agency to process cases. The Subcommittee wants to know what plan the agency has for doing something about the backlogs. That's rich since the overwhelming cause of the backlogs is inadequate administrative funding. That's controlled by Congress. Of lesser importance is the agency's reluctance to allow senior attorneys to approve some very strong disability claims after a request for hearing is filed. This reluctance also seems to be related to the atmosphere created by Republicans in Congress who seem to regard disability claims and claimants with suspicion if not hostility.

     At 2:00 the Human Resources Subcommittee will hold a hearing on Missing from the Labor Force: Examining Declining Employment among Working-Age Men. I haven't been able to find a full announcement on this hearing. In the past, Republicans have favored the argument that the declining employment to people going on Social Security disability benefits. However, recent research makes that argument look very weak.

Acting Commissioner's Broadcast E-Mail

From: ^Commissioner Broadcast
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 3:40 PM
Subject: Hurricane Harvey Update

A Message to All SSA and DDS Employees

Subject: Hurricane Harvey Update

Most of you know that the Dallas region is still dealing with the effects of Hurricane Harvey.   Harvey is now affecting both Texas and Louisiana.

Forecasters expect strong winds, heavy rain, flooding, and power outages to continue in both states.

Again, all of our SSA and DDS employees are safe and accounted for.  Offices in the Houston area will remain closed this week.  We are assessing damages to some of our local offices.

I’ve heard your concerns for all those impacted by this natural disaster, and especially for our claimants who are in harm’s way.  I offer the following information:

• How you can help—we are awaiting word from the Office of Personnel Management about a special solicitation for Hurricane Harvey relief.  We will provide that information as soon as we have it.
• September 1 payments—we are working closely with the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Department of Treasury, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ensure scheduled payments arrive on time.  We will provide additional information regarding emergency payments soon.

Please keep your colleagues and their families who are struggling in your thoughts and prayers.

Nancy A. Berryhill

Acting Commissioner

Exits From The Social Security Disability Rolls

     Lakshmi K. Raut has written a research piece for the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication, on exits from the disability rolls. Judge for yourself but I don't see any policy implications. Here are a few charts from the study (the conversion he's talking about here is conversion to retirement benefits at full retirement age):

Cumulative probability of DI program exit, by reason and duration on the rolls

Cumulative probability of DI program exit because of recovery or death over the first 9 years on the rolls, by age at entitlement

Cumulative probability of DI program exit because of recovery or death over the first 9 years on the rolls, by selected disability type and age at entitlement

Oops!

     Based on an Emergency Message that the Social Security Administration has sent out to its staff, it looks as if between September 2016 and March 2017 the agency failed to notify some or all beneficiaries in the following situations: 

• Beneficiary is no longer disabled (cessation).
• Beneficiary is no longer entitled to disability benefits or payments on the current application (adverse reopening).
• Beneficiary received erroneous payments after a decision of denial (overpayment).  
• Social Security changes the onset date to a later date. 
• Social Security changes the cessation date to an earlier date.

     Failure to send notice means that the beneficiaries had no idea why their benefits had stopped or that they could appeal.

     The Emergency Message tells Social Security staff that  "If the beneficiary alleges he or she did not receive a notice during the relevant period, technicians should take the allegations seriously, carefully review the case and provide due process as required by existing regulations and agency policy."

     The Emergency Message says nothing about the agency sending belated notices to the beneficiaries affected. Maybe, they're going to send out the notices. They certainly should.

     By the way, I saw instances of this happening. I thought it was isolated errors rather than a systems problems. I expect that many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of claimants were affected.

Another In The Washington Post Series

     There's another in the series of Washington Post articles about Social Security disability. It repeats many of the same themes we've come to expect from the Post:

• Disability recipients can go back to work if they really want to -- but they mostly don't want to because they don't want to lose their disability benefits.
• There's a lot of disability in rural areas because there aren't many jobs in rural areas, meaning that disability benefits are little more than disguised unemployment benefits.
• Disability is mostly due to things like mental illness which people can overcome if they really want.
• Drugs and alcohol are a major factor in disability.

     The article is misleading. It presents mental illness as if it were no more than feeling a bit anxious, depressed and discouraged. Who among us doesn't feel that way sometimes? I know nothing about this woman's case but I know you don't get on Social Security disability due to the sort of mild psychiatric symptoms discussed in this article.

     I also know that in any case, mental illness is but a fraction of the disability picture. If you wanted a more typical disability recipient, you'd have an older man or woman with physical health problems that will only get worse with time but a case like that wouldn't display what the Post wants to display.

     The unstated message of this series is that Social Security ought to approve fewer people for Social Security disability and should be required to take a more coercive approach to getting disability recipients back to work. I don't think that's justified. It's already incredibly difficult to get on Social Security disability benefits. No further effort to get people back to work will be effective because the vast majority of disability recipients are far too sick to work and don't get any better over time.

Change In Policy On Voluntary Remands After Allowance Of Subsequent Claim

    From Transmittal I-1-90 explaining a change to HALLEX §I-1-10:

... [E]xcept in unusual circumstances, the AC [Appeals Council] will not stipulate to affirm a subsequent allowance when considering whether to voluntarily remand a pending court case in a prior claim because such a stipulation would limit the AC's ability to correct other possible issues in the subsequent claim(s), such as unreported earnings. ...

     I'm not going to bother trying to explain this. If you do much federal court work on Social Security appeals, you understand its significance. If you don't, you probably don't care.
     I will say that if the agency wanted to do so it would be easy to draft a stipulation to affirm a subsequent allowance while leaving open a narrow window for unexpected issues such as unreported earnings. I don't think the agency would have trouble getting plaintiff's attorneys to agree to properly drafted language. I think this is more likely a reflection of increased contentiousness at Social Security. It will result in the agency having to defend weaker decisions in federal court. I don't think that's a good idea for Social Security.