Biden Transition Team For Social Security

  

    President Elect Joe Biden has released the names of the members of his transition team for the Social Security Administration:

Name	Most Recent Employment
Carolyn Colvin, Team Lead	Self-employed
Scott Frey	American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
David Holmes	Rebellion Defense
Jack Smalligan	Urban Institute

      Colvin is, of course the former Acting Commissioner of Social Security. I could have predicted her as the Team Lead a year ago. I could also have predicted a union official on the team a year ago. Holmes is an Engineering Manager who has worked on projects at Social Security. Smalligan has promoted a "Work Disability–Functional Assessment Battery (WD-FAB)"  which "uses item response theory and computer adaptive testing to quickly interview people and systematically map physical and mental health functioning." 

     It's not impossible for one of these people to end up with a job at Social Security but that's not the purpose of a transition team. I'd guess a job at Social Security for a member of this team is unlikely, but who knows, maybe Colvin would be interested.

Happy Veterans Day

Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Social Security Cases

      The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Carr v. Saul and Davis v. Saul, two cases presenting the issue of whether the federal courts can consider Lucia objections to Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) having heard cases before the Social Security Administration when those objections had been raised administratively. The Supreme Court held in Lucia v. SEC that ALJs were unconstitutional since they had not been appointed by the agency head. Since that time they have been. 

     My opinion is that it's nuts to expect claimants to have raised Lucia objections when the Social Security Administration's stated position was that it wouldn't consider Lucia objections. It's also nuts because the Supreme Court had previously held that it was not necessary to raise other sorts of objections in Social Security cases administratively before raising them in the federal courts.

     It's possible but I imagine unlikely that the new Solicitor General for the Biden Administration could decide to settle these cases before they're heard.

Do People Retire Later If They Receive Frequent Mailings Of Social Security Statements?

     From Can Informational Interventions Be Effective Policy Tools? An Initial Assessment of the Social Security Statement by Barbara A. Smith, published in the Social Security Bulletin:

The Social Security Administration employs an informational intervention—mailing Social Security Statements—to inform workers about their potential benefits. I use linear probability models and agency administrative data to analyze the effect of Statement receipt on the age at which workers claim their Social Security retirement benefits. I compare results for individuals who received one or multiple Statement mailings by age 62 with those who received none during the 1975–2007 study period. I find that workers who received multiple Statement mailings were significantly more likely to claim retirement benefits at later ages than were other workers, and that Statement receipt is positively associated with employment at ages 62–70. I also compare the relative effects of an educational outreach (Statement mailings) and a direct policy change (involving the full retirement age) on claiming behavior and find that the magnitudes of the two effects are similar.

Early Retirements Declining

     From Sean Williams writing in the Statesville Record and Landmark:

 ...  Between 1995 and 2016, more than 70% of retired workers receiving a [Social Security retirement]benefit had their payout reduced for early retirement.  ...

But as of December 2019, 67.3% of the close to 45.1 million retired workers receiving a benefit had their payout reduced. That marks the ninth consecutive year that early retirees declined as a percentage of total retired workers. ...

Finally

 

Union Claims Bias In Performance Appraisals

      From Government Executive:

A union representing employees at the Social Security Administration this week accused the agency of failing to correct systemic bias in its performance appraisal process, in which white employees are receiving the lion’s share of top ratings despite making up less than half of the frontline workforce in recent years.

Officials with the American Federation of Government Employees said that management has been aware of the issue since at least 2015, when it agreed to settle a grievance with the union over the distribution of top performance ratings, but aside from two preliminary meetings, the agency has taken no action to correct the disparity.

According to data provided to Government Executive, in fiscal 2014, minority employees made up 54.3% of AFGE’s bargaining unit, but accounted for only 36.2% of the bargaining unit’s “Outstanding” performance ratings. The largest minority group—Black workers—accounted for 30.3% of the bargaining unit, but only 21.7% of top performance marks.

And while Latino employees made up 16.4% of the bargaining unit, only 8.7% of “Outstanding” ratings went to Latino workers. Similarly, while 10.5% of frontline employees at the agency have a disability, they only accounted for 5.5% of top ratings. ...

Social Security Administration spokeswoman Nicole Tiggemann said the union’s method of aggregating appraisal data is “not statistically valid,” because it does not “account for job type, employee experience and many other factors.”

[The Union president] said that in six years of filing grievances, Tiggemann’s statement is the first he has heard of the agency disputing the data management had provided. ...

Happens All The Time

      From CBS News:

Mary Hutson of Santo, about an hour west of Fort Worth, began teaching elementary school students in 1963.

Now, the great-grandmother sits and reads with her great-grandchildren and teaching them.

Hutson is very involved with her family.

She is very active.

And, she is very much alive as she explained staring into a zoom call, hair fixed perfectly, smiling from ear to ear with pink lipstick glowing. ...

But a couple of months ago, she was dead according to the government. ...

In June, Hutson’s brother passed away.

When she reported his death to the Social Security Administration, she says she somehow also ended up “deceased” according to records. ...

Particularly during a pandemic, both Hutson and Tuckett [another person who had also been wrongly declared dead] say “coming back to life” is not easy. They both had to visit the social security office in person. They then had to wait for every entity tied to that that magical nine-digit number to bring them back to life. ...

“I was glad they recognized that I am still on earth,” laughed Mrs. Hutson looking down at a letter from the Social Security Administration which she finally received stating that she is alive. “I’m old, but I’m still here.”