Cage Match Looming In Lucia?

     The National Law Review reports on what it calls a "cage match" possibly looming before the Supreme Court in the Lucia case on the constitutionality of Administrative Law Judges.

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of the personnel who make disability determinations at the initial and reconsideration levels for Social Security, has posted its Spring 2018 newsletter.

I'm Not Buying It

     Workers comp insurers are trying to dispute the widely held belief that they've been increasingly successful in shifting the costs of workplace injuries on to Social Security and Medicare. I'm not buying it. It's obvious at ground level that they're able to settle cases for vastly less than the true costs of lost wages and future medical care.

Milwaukee Fighting Back

     The controversy over the closing of a Social Security field office in Milwaukee isn't going away.

Why Does Social Security Need To Capture Biometric Data?

     From a contracting notice recently posted by the Social Security Administration:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is seeking a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) eyetracker software tool that will allow SSA to measure and collect users' eye position and eye movements to expand on the dynamic of our usability and user testing studies. The eye tracking system will increase our capability to capture biometric data that we are currently lacking and allow us to incorporate the biometric layer into our results analysis. In addition to the usability testing, eye tracking system can also be used in market research.

     I'm not the only one who finds this kind of creepy.

Probably Wasting Their Time

     The Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee as well as the Chairmen of that Committee's Social Security and Human Resources Subcommittees have written President Trump to urge that he nominate a new Social Security Commissioner.

     I think it will be difficult to find anyone other than a career employee willing to be nominated now. The term of office ends in mid-January 2019. By the time anyone could be confirmed, their term would almost be at an end. Confirmation to a new term thereafter might be difficult, especially if Democrats gain control of the Senate. That's unlikely but not out of the question.

     There's also the problem that Social Security is wildly unpopular with prominent Republicans. It may be difficult to find someone interested in the job who wouldn't be insistent on attacking the benefits programs he or she is supposed to be administering. However, almost no Senate Republicans would want such an unpopular crusade.

     Finally, there's the general problem that few people want to work in Donald Trump's Administration. It's an incoherent mess very possibly based upon near traitorous conduct, not to mention that Trump treats people dreadfully.

     I'd suggest a recess appointment of a caretaker Commissioner. That can be done quickly without confirmation. It's good until the beginning of the next Congress. Of course, doing that would require that Trump have some interest in governing instead of just dispatching absurd tweets in response to Fox and Friends.

Brutal Backlog

     From the Washington Post:

Robert Steers of Southington, Conn., was an Army captain who served in Afghanistan. He also served his country looking for contraband with the Transportation Security Administration.

Now, he’d like to get decent service from the Social Security Administration.
But, as many Americans know, this can be an exasperating experience, filled with endless waits and growing frustration. ...

Steers applied in April 2012 and was denied. To appeal, he requested a hearing with an administrative law judge (ALJ) in May 2013. It took almost two years to be denied again in March 2015. After appealing to federal court, his case was sent back to the administrative law judge in December 2016.

It is now April 2018 — six years after his initial application — and Steers is still waiting to find out if he’ll get the insurance. ...

“I think SSA does not have the staff it needs,” said Iván A. Ramos, Steers’s lawyer in Hartford, Conn. “When you call a hearing office, nobody answers the phone, and when you go to the office you just stand in front of an empty window until someone finally shows up to help you. Many of my clients have trouble paying for food and shelter while they wait for their disability claims to be processed. Seeing what many of my clients and their families have to go through, just to get a hearing, has become the hardest part of my job.” ...

Staffing and service issues have plagued Social Security for years, and President Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal 2019 would make things worse. The disability hearing process can be particularly vexing because there are too few administrative law judges, who hear appeals, and they have too few support staff members. ...

And You're Calling Her Confused?

From The Daily Telegraph of Temple, TX:

Dear Annie: I came to the United States back in the late 1980s. My husband at the time suddenly abandoned me and my two children. We entered a legal separation agreement in 1990 and eventually divorced in the early 2000s. ...

The reason I am writing this letter is because my ex-husband has been collecting Social Security from the United States under my name for the past year. I understand that this is legal to do. However, my ex-husband does not live in the United States and he’s using a false address of residence. He has only come to the United States in the past two years to file for Social Security, update his driver’s license and renew his passport. ...

My goal is to make this matter known. I am not looking for him to repay me any child support. My question, though, is how can we give someone Social Security without looking more in depth to his background? How is he proving that he’s a resident of the United States, for example? If someone is collecting Social Security through an ex-spouse, then why aren’t we checking to see if they paid all their child support? He’s currently lying to the federal office and benefiting on my behalf. ...

Dear Used and Confused: You can report Social Security fraud through the Social Security Administration website (https://www.ssa.gov/) or by calling the SSA at 1-800-269-0271. It sounds as though your husband has disqualified himself from receiving benefits in many ways. Also note that anyone who owes $2,500 or more in child support is not eligible to receive a U.S. passport. Talk to a lawyer about procuring the back pay of child support as well as preventing your husband from fraudulently claiming your SS benefits.

     It's certainly appropriate to report Social Security fraud but there are a few problems with this answer. First, it's not fraud to receive U.S. Social Security benefits while living in another country. In fact, there's about half a million people living outside U.S. borders who receive U.S. Social Security benefits and, no, you don't have to be a U.S. citizen to do so. Second, the writer should have told this woman that child support can be withheld from Social Security benefits. Third, the ex-husband getting benefits on the account doesn't reduce the benefits going to this woman. Whatever he gets is on top of what she gets, not subtracted from it. If she's smart, she can use him getting benefits on her account to collect the child support she's owed but not unless she gets better advice than this.