72,100 Hours?

     From The Tennessean:

The Social Security Administration is best known for running the nation's largest retirement program. But it's also responsible for deciding whether millions of Americans qualify for disability benefits.

If you want to understand how those decisions are made, it's going to cost you: $2.3 million.

That was the administration's response to a USA TODAY NETWORK request for public information. Reporters are trying to scrutinize the performance of doctors hired in each state to review federal disability applications, including their workload and how fast they reviewed application files.

The agency's extraordinary price tag indicates that Social Security has no central database, but rather allows each state to manage doctors differently — a policy that, in at least one state, led to an unusually high denial rate and hefty doctor paychecks.  ...

In October, the USA TODAY NETWORK submitted a Freedom of Information Act request seeking doctor performance data for each state. 

The agency responded in April, indicating they would need 72,100 hours to get such information. That’s the equivalent of nearly 60 employees working full-time on the request for a full year – without taking vacation or holidays off. ...

Democratic Leaders Express Opposition To Disability Proposal

     From a press release issued yesterday:

Top Democrat Committee leaders in the House and Senate today called on the Social Security Administration (SSA) to withdraw a proposed rule, “Removing Inability to Communicate in English as an Education Category.” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-MA), House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman John B. Larson (D-CT), House Ways and Means Worker & Family Support Subcommittee Chairman Danny K. Davis (D-IL), Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Senate Finance Social Security Subcommittee Ranking Member Sherrod Brown (D-OH) sent the letter to Acting SSA Commissioner Nancy Berryhill.

“In [the proposed rule], SSA makes a harmful and unjustified attempt to deny Social Security and Supplemental Security Income disability benefits to older workers with long-term or fatal medical impairments who are severely limited in their functional capacity and who cannot communicate in English. We request that SSA withdraw this proposed rule,” the members wrote.

House Members Object To Anti-Union Actions

     From Government Executive:

A bipartisan group of more than 150 House lawmakers last week urged the Social Security Administration to rescind a number of “anti-labor” proposals from its contract negotiations with a federal employee union, citing their similarity to provisions of three controversial executive orders that a federal judge ruled unlawful last year.

In a May 1 letter to acting Social Security Commissioner Nancy Berryhill, 157 lawmakers, led by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said they were “dismayed” by the agency’s adherence to a number of collective bargaining proposals that have led to a “breakdown” in negotiations with the American Federation of Government Employees.

The lawmakers cited proposals to evict AFGE from its offices within Social Security Administration buildings, the confiscation of all computers and printers used by employees during representational work, and requiring union employees to request permission in advance to use official time. The lawmakers described these provisions as “extreme and similar in anti-union tone to certain provisions” of a series of workforce executive orders that were struck down last August by U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. The Trump administration has appealed that decision. ...

     I don't know what's going on behind the scenes but it bothers me that career employees are doing this. This may not be a good career move. I'm sure that AFGE is taking down names.

Some Worry About Making A Living; Others Worry About Bad Publicity

     From Law 360 (emphasis added):

... A U.S. Supreme Court ruling [in Culbertson v. Berryhill] earlier this year created a uniform method for allocating fees across judicial jurisdictions, ensuring attorneys will have access to higher fees regardless of where they practice. Practitioners are mixed on the impact of the ruling but hope it will attract more attorneys to the field of Social Security disability law so more people like Gammon can get help. 

They also hope it will secure them enough money to sustain their practices' financial health, which can be precarious due to the nature of accepting jobs without a guaranteed fee.

Gammon's attorney, Rick Culbertson of Orlando, Florida, is the one who brought the fee dispute to the Supreme Court , and he said that's what he hoped for.
"Those of us trying to make a living doing this, it'll make it more likely we'll be able to get by. We still won't get rich, but we'll be able to get by helping people who need us," he said. ...

"Lawyers who want to maximize their earning capacity don't do Social Security law. They would be crazy to do Social Security law," said Charles Martin of the Law Offices of Martin & Jones, an Atlanta disability attorney who has been practicing in the field for decades. ... 

"I'm worried it will be bad publicity for Social Security attorneys. It'll make it seem like [they] are greedy," said Barbara Silverstone, executive director of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants' Representatives. ...

 

Weak Funding For SSA Operations To Continue

     From a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities summary of the Labor-HHS appropriations bill, which includes Social Security, reported out of subcommittee in the House of Representatives:

Social Security Administration (SSA). The bill would raise SSA’s operating budget by about $300 million to $11.4 billion. This increase is welcome but would barely enable the agency to keep up with inflation and wouldn’t offset years of underfunding. SSA’s operating budget fell nearly 11 percent between 2010 and 2019, after adjusting for inflation, even as the number of beneficiaries grew by more than 16 percent. This disinvestment has forced the agency to close field offices, shorten office hours, and shrink its staff, undermining customer service as costs and workloads grow. Even with the proposed increase, funding would still be more than 10 percent below the 2010 level, adjusted for inflation.

     And this is the House version of this appropriations bill. The Senate bill is likely to be much worse.

Deputy Commissioner Nomination Moves Forward

     The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a hearing for May 9 on two nominations. One of the nominations is for David Fabian Black to become Deputy Commissioner of Social Security. Here's the biographical information given by the White House when Black's nomination was announced:

Mr. Black currently serves as the White House Senior Advisor at the Social Security Administration.  He served as SSA’s General Counsel from October 2007 until July 2015.  From 2004 through 2007, he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.  Mr. Black is a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve where he deployed to both Afghanistan and Iraq in support of the Global War on Terrorism and earned a Bronze Star Medal.   Mr. Black holds a J.D. from the University of Minnesota and a B.A. in political science, summa cum laude, from the University of North Dakota.

Good Luck With That Plan

     From an op ed in the Washington Examiner, a right wing newspaper:

... It's time for Washington to cut millennials a deal and give us a chance to get off the ship before it sinks, saving our wallets and the nation's ballooning deficit. Congress ought to pass a Social Security buyout to anyone who wants it.

The government has promised Social Security payments to Americans who have spent a lifetime paying into the system. Given the structure of the program, that requires taxes from Americans working today. A buyout that required Americans to pay double or triple the amount of Social Security taxes for a finite amount of time in exchange for being released from the program for the rest of their lives could circle the square. Current retirees would be funded by increased Social Security taxes on Americans taking the buyout, and millennials could be saved from a lifetime of paying into a broken system....

SSA Had No Time For This Reporter

     From a television station in Cleveland:

All day long, 5 On Your Side Investigators have been fighting for answers to your social Security questions all while visiting our nation’s capitol. Prior to coming to D.C., we tried to get an on-camera interview with the top people at SSA. We called. We emailed. They declined. So, we printed your concerns and took them straight to the SSA building in Baltimore. 

“I’m Jonathan Walsh from News 5 up in Cleveland. I’m here to interview somebody about the concerns our viewers have,” we told the security staff that stopped us at the front doors. We were trying to help the agency to understand the problems that are happening. SSA refused to send anyone down to talk to us. We were then kicked out. “We’re just trying to get answers for the folks who keep contacting us,” we told them, but it made no difference. ...

     But he did get an interview with Senator Sherrod Brown and Lisa Ekman, Director of Government Affairs at the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR).

     Yeah, I know the reporter sounds awfully self important but communicating with the public is part of the job description for Social Security management. If Senator Brown had time for the guy, why didn’t Social Security?