OHO Backlogs Continue To Dwindle

     Below is Social Security's Caseload Analysis Report for its hearing function as of the end of calendar year 2019. It was obtained from Social Security by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in its newsletter, which is not available online to non-members. Click on the image to view full size.

What I'm Learning About That New 1696 -- And It's Confusing

     The form SSA-1696 is the form that those of us who represent claimants before the agency must get our clients to sign so that the agency accepts that we have the right to represent them. It's a very basic form for us. Social Security has a new version of the form but there's some serious weirdness about accessing it. Try the link that Social Security has given. If you click on that link with your desktop you get the old version of the form (unless they've already corrected the problem). Click on that link with your cell phone and you get the new version of the form. Can anyone explain that to me? I'm sure that's not what Social Security intended.

     I've used my cell phone to download a copy of the new form and I've uploaded it to a service so you can use this link to download the new form regardless of what computer you're using.

     The new form asks for the attorney or representative's ID, which is different than our Social Security Number. I don't remember ever being supplied with this ID but others tell me that they do remember receiving it. In any case, it's not been something we've used. Apparently, the ID can be found by entering ERE, the online system we use to look at the files Social Security keeps on our clients, but this is confusing. We have one "User ID" we use to sign into ERE but as best I can tell that's not the one Social Security wants. There's a second ID that can be found beside the user's name AFTER entering ERE. At least that ID has the right number of places to fit on the new 1696.

     If Social Security hasn't provided attorneys with a good link to the form or any explanation of how we're supposed to use it, I'm concerned they haven't provided their staff with any explanation either. I'm not going to start using this form until I have confidence that Social Security's staff knows what to do once they receive it.

No Help In Presiden't Budget

     The President's budget for Fiscal Year 2021, which begins on October 1, 2020,  would increase Social Security's funding from $13.30 billion in the current fiscal year to $13.71 billion in fiscal year 2021, an increase which may not be enough to even cover inflation. It's certainly not enough to improve service. It assumes that Social Security's workyears (including Disability Determination Services employees) will decline slightly from 76,142 to 75,725.
     Appropriations must be approved by Congress. The President's budget can be, at most, persuasive to some Republicans in Congress but few if any Democrats care what the President wants. The actual appropriations must be ironed out between the House and Senate and what the President wants doesn't matter that much. For that matter, this budget is far more the wish list of Mick Mulvaney, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, than of President Trump.

Policy Proposals From President's Budget

     From the portions of  the President's proposed budget concerning Social Security:

• ... Reduce improper payments caused by barriers for beneficiaries to report income and assets. The Budget proposes to reduce improper payments in disability programs by targeting administrative resources to the development of a uniform system of reporting in mySocialSecurity. This is in addition to instituting a holistic view that provides all beneficiaries’ data, including income and assets, in one electronic location, while simultaneously developing a network of automated processes across other IT platforms for work-related benefit payment adjustments, work continuing disability reviews, redeterminations, and payments to Ticket to Work providers. In addition, future related legislative changes to address the root causes of these improper payments could include requiring suspension of benefits when beneficiaries neglect to report wages and resources, and instituting mandatory training for beneficiaries on reporting requirements prior to receipt of their first benefit checks. These administrative actions would result in $11 billion in outlay savings over 10 years. ... 

• Increase the overpayment collection threshold for OASDI. The Budget would change the mini-mum monthly withholding amount for recovery of Social Security benefit overpayments to reflect the increase in the average monthly benefit since SSA established the current minimum of $10 in 1960. By changing this amount from $10 to 10 percent of the monthly benefit payable, SSA would recover over-payments more quickly and better fulfill its stew-ardship obligations to the combined Social Security Trust Funds. ... 

• Simplify administration of the SSI program. The Budget proposes changes to simplify the SSI program by incentivizing support from recipients’ family and friends, reducing SSA’s administrative burden, and streamlining requirements for applicants. SSI benefits are reduced by the amount of food and shelter, or in-kind support and maintenance, a beneficiary receives. The policy is burdensome to administer and is a leading source of SSI improper payments. The Budget proposes to replace the complex calculation of in-kind support and maintenance with a flat rate reduction for adults living with other adults to capture economies of scale. The Budget also proposes to eliminate dedicated accounts for past due benefits and to eliminate the administratively burdensome consideration whether a couple is holding themselves out as married. This proposal costs $13 million over 10 years. ... 

• Exclude SSA debts from discharge in bankruptcy. Debts due to an overpayment of Social Security benefits are generally dischargeable in bankruptcy. The Budget includes a proposal to exclude such debts from discharge in bankruptcy, except when it would result in an undue hardship. ... 

• Establish replacement Social Security card fee. The Budget proposes to collect fees on replacement Social Security cards. First-time Social Security cards including cards issued at birth would not be subject to the fee....

Final Regs On Advance Designation Of Rep Payee

     From today's Federal Register:

We [Social Security] are finalizing our proposed regulations specifying the information Social Security beneficiaries and applicants must provide to designate individuals as their possible representative payee in advance of our determination that the beneficiary needs a representative payee. These regulations additionally set forth how we will consider an individual's advance designation when we select a representative payee, and fulfill our obligation under 201 of the Strengthening Protections for Social Security Beneficiaries Act of 2018.

New 1696 But Where Is It?

     From EM-2004 issued on Friday:

We are publishing a revised Form SSA-1696, Claimant’s Appointment of a Representative. The revised SSA-1696 incorporates information from the Form SSA-1695 and the Form SSA-1696-U4 and has two new supplements: SUP1 (Claimant’s Revocation of the Appointment of a Representative) and SUP2 (Representative’s Withdrawal of the Acceptance of an Appointment). The supplements are already available online in fillable format.

The revised SSA-1696 updates and reorganizes all parts of the older form SSA-1696-U4, and collects additional information about the appointed representative (AR) from the Form SSA-1695. The consolidation of these forms facilitates the collection of comprehensive data on a single form for faster and more accurate processing.

We incorporated the SSA-1695 into the revised SSA-1696 to reduce manual steps, encourage earlier submission of payment information, and minimize loss of personally identifiable information. Upon publication of the revised SSA-1696, we will make Form SSA-1695 obsolete. Processing of the SSA-1695 requires multiple manual steps that can lead to errors. In addition, ARs often submit the form late in the administrative process, which in turn, can delay the authorization of fees (note that neither the hearing office nor the Appeals Council can process the SSA-1695). Finally, for AR’s who have registered, the new Form SSA-1696 allows for the use of the Representative Identification (RepID) instead of the AR’s Social Security Number (SSN). We have included space for the RepID on each page of the revised SSA-1696, which will make easier to associate pages that become separated during transmission with the proper claims file. ...

     Despite what this says, I'm not seeing the new form SSA-1696 online.

Interview With Commissioner

     The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has posted an interview it did with Andrew Saul. Here are some excerpts with emphasis added:

... On one of my first field trips, I happened to notice on the door that we closed at 12 o'clock on Wednesdays. I frankly couldn't believe it, because we were losing basically 10 percent of our available time to service our customers by being closed on Wednesday afternoons. ...

The 800 number, that has been a major problem, major concern for all our customers. If you called in, you would find you had an unacceptable waiting time — sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes 40 minutes. So, what we've done is we've immediately hired about 1,100 new operators.

Our call time right now is down by about 50 percent. We've got farther to go, but I think if you watch over the next six months, we will get the call centers down to the proper waiting time, which will be close to zero. That's a prediction that I'm willing to make here, and I believe we will succeed in doing this. ...

We're reorganizing how the offices operate and how we handle the customers from the time they walk in the door. If you look at our field offices, over a third of our customers come in for card replacements, and another 20 percent come in for benefit statements. So we are now working on a process where customers coming in for a simple task like that are routed to an express agent, and they don't have to sit there and wait in the office for an agent who deals with more complicated tasks.

This sounds so simple, but if you think about it, almost 50 percent of our customers coming into the offices were waiting like somebody that had a very complicated problem, which is crazy. ...

Quite frankly, I don't think that we did the job we should have done [in fighting scams] over the last few years as this problem arose. ...

We have to modernize our disability operation. Some of our regulations are 40 years, 50 years outdated. We had a workforce 50 years ago that was very different than it is today: many more manual tasks, much more hard labor, for example, many more mining jobs, much more manufacturing. Today, it's much more office work.

Also, don't forget, health care has completely changed in the last 50 years. Fortunately, some diseases that affect a lot of people today, 50 years ago, if you were diagnosed with that disease, you were finished. Today, a lot of productive people have had serious strokes, heart attacks, cancer. Very, very life-threatening diseases. Today, we have medicine that has really cured the problems and allowed people to go on with very successful lives.

It's important that the disability plan services those people that really are in need of it, and that are really in bad shape. ...

     I think Saul is sounding two clear theme:

• The people who came before him were idiots who couldn't see simple solutions to problems, which is very Trumpian.
• He believes anybody can do office work and that's about all that's left in the U.S. economy and, besides, medicine has dramatically reduced the amount of disability, so there shouldn't be so many people drawing Social Security disability, which is very naive.

A Mother’s Plea For Help

     The New York Post has published a letter from a woman seeking help with a Supplemental Security Income (SSI) problem. Her circumstances are a bit unusual but the problem or at least the reduced payment problem is common. Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

Maria [her disabled daughter] turned 18 in November, and we applied for her disability on Sept. 5, 2019. At the request of the Social Security office, we returned for a follow up on Dec. 5. During the visit, I had explained to the officer that Maria would be paying $325 a month for rent and an additional $145 for utility expenses. 

The officer told me not to worry about the delay in receiving payments, and that the Social Security office would pay retroactively to October 2019. 

Yesterday, I received an SSI check dated Dec. 27, 2019, for Maria for $514. I have tried to contact both the local office and the main Social Security office to find out why the payment is for the reduced amount and why there is no payment for October or November.

     I’m seeing more and more of these one-third reduction problems. It’s like the field offices are being told to apply a one-third reduction regardless of what they’re told about the financial relationships.