Stanford Ross Passes

      Former Social Security Commissioner Stanford Ross has died at the age of 88. He served during the Carter Administration.

I'd Say Trump Walked Right Into This One

      From Jennifer Rubin writing for the Washington Post:

You might not have noticed it during his speech in Pittsburgh on Monday, but Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden slipped a big issue into the mix for 2020. While focusing primarily on President Trump’s liability for the ongoing pandemic, the rotten economy and the surge in racial violence, Biden also hit Trump’s plan to eliminate or suspend the payroll tax after the election. Biden declared, “The Social Security Administration’s chief actuary just released a report saying if a plan like the one Trump is proposing goes into effect, the Social Security Trust Fund would be ‘permanently depleted by the middle of calendar year 2023, with no ability to pay benefits thereafter.’” Oh, that seems like a big deal.

Biden was referring to Trump’s suggestion to eliminate the payroll tax, the funding mechanism that supports Social Security and Medicare. The Associated Press explained: “These taxes raised $1.24 trillion last year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Over a 10-year period, Trump’s idea would blow a $16.1 trillion hole in a U.S. budget that is already laden with rising debt loads.”

The chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, Stephen Goss, sent a letter last week to Senate Democrats, explaining, “If this hypothetical legislation were enacted, with no alternative source of revenue to replace the elimination of payroll taxes on earned income paid on January 1, 2021 and thereafter, we estimate that [the Disability Insurance] Trust Fund asset reserves would become permanently depleted in about the middle of calendar year 2021, with no ability to pay DI benefits thereafter.” Goss added, “We estimate that [the Old Age and Survivors Insurance] Trust Fund reserves would become permanently depleted by the middle of calendar year 2023, with no ability to pay OASI benefits thereafter.”     

      In a sign that this issue may have hit a nerve, the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and the senior Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee have written Stephen Goss, Social Security's Chief Actuary, to complain about his response to the hypothetical question. However, Goss had little option but to respond to the hypothetical question. That's what his office does. He can't refuse to answer questions because he thinks a question because it seems political. All the questions are political. 

     Republicans have long thought that Goss is against them. I think the problem is that they keep putting forward foolish proposals because they have never bothered to try to understand how Social Security works or even given much thought to the politics of Social Security.  It's not Goss' fault the GOP keeps coming up with untenable ideas.

Glitches With Some Telephone Hearings

      I don't know how widespread the problem is but I'm hearing of serious technical problems with Social Security's telephone hearings affecting several hearing offices in North Carolina and one in South Carolina. This could be just a regional thing. I hope that whatever is causing it gets fixed soon. My general impression, however, is that the audio quality on these telephone hearings has gone down over time.

Eliminating Barriers For Conducting Consultative Examinations?

     Social Security has asked the Office of Management and Budget to approve interim final regulations on "Eliminating Barriers for Conducting Consultative Examinations." I don't know what's in this package.

We Need To Make Sure This Works For Everyone

      I posted yesterday that the Microsoft Teams app that Social Security plans to use to hold Administrative Law Judge hearings wasn't available for my desktop and therefore probably wasn't available for laptops either. I received responses saying that it certainly was available to desktops. Take a look at this screenshot and tell me that it's available to everyone at the moment:

     Perhaps it's included in recent versions of the Microsoft Office Suite but I don't think people should have to buy that to participate in these hearings. Maybe there's some other explanation but the page shown above says what it says and the fact that you haven't gotten such a message doesn't make what I'm seeing an illusion. We need to make sure this works for everyone.

Social Security Planning To Use Platform For Video Hearings That Doesn't Currently Work With Most Laptops

     Beginning in November Social Security is planning to use the Microsoft Teams app for Administrative Law Judge video hearings during the pandemic but I see this message when I go to the Microsoft Teams website "Teams for your personal life is only available for iOS and Android. Desktop and web coming soon." This would rule out Windows laptops, which is most of them. You can do these hearings with handheld cellphones but that's not going to give you a stable image. Also, while they’re not heavy, holding up a cell phone for an hour could become tiring. I hope they get this sorted out by November.

Social Security Relies On The U.S. Mail

      From the New York Times:

Top Democrats are warning that the problems afflicting the United States Postal Service pose a threat to more than voting rights — a slowdown in services, they say, will also hurt seniors who rely on letter carriers for Social Security checks, medications and other critical mail. ...

Over the past two decades, the Social Security Administration has shifted to electronic payment for most beneficiaries, but that doesn’t mean the agency’s operations are not vulnerable to delays in mail service.

The agency currently pays 99 percent of Social Security beneficiaries via direct deposit to a checking or savings account, or a government-issued debit card. But nearly 850,000 paper checks still are mailed each month to recipients of retirement, disability and Supplemental Security Income benefits. Social Security also sends and receives millions of pieces of mail every year, including notifications, requests for information, Medicare enrollment forms and replacement Social Security cards. More isolated, rural parts of the country are particularly vulnerable to problems within the postal system.

Moreover, the shutdown since March of Social Security’s national network of field offices because of the pandemic means that more business is being transacted through the Postal Service that normally would be handled through in-person visits. ...

Nowadays, Social Security sends 350 million pieces of mail annually to support its programs, according to an agency report last year. ...

Sounds Bad But I’d Like To Hear The Other Side Of This

      From Government Executive:

Less than 24 hours before Hurricane Laura made along along the Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm, officials at the Social Security Administration told employees at its Lake Charles, La., field office that they would not be eligible for weather and safety leave.

Instead, employees forced to evacuate ahead of the hurricane were expected to work remotely from their hotel rooms on unsecured public Wi-Fi connections or take annual or sick leave, just three hours after the storm had left the area.  

Joel Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3184, which represents Social Security workers in Louisiana, said management informed employees they would not be able to take weather and safety leave in a teleconference meeting Wednesday morning. .Although there is no written record of the leave denial, an IT employee sent all employees in the office instructions on how to connect to the agency’s virtual private network over public wireless Internet connections. ...