Could SSI Changes Be Coming?

      I had earlier posted the names of the members of the House Social Security Subcommittee. However, it's unlikely that that Subcommittee will advance any significant legislation in this Congress or, at least, that it could be passed. It would take 60 votes in the Senate to overcome filibuster and pass such legislation. It's hard to imagine any significant Social Security bill garnering 10 Republican votes in the Senate. Specifically, the Byrd Rule prevents budget reconciliation bills (which don't require 60 votes in the Senate) from containing provisions that affect Title II of the Social Security Act. 

     Legislation affecting Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a different story. My understanding is that SSI legislation could be passed as part of a Budget Reconciliation bill. However, the budget reconciliation rules do forbid anything that extends beyond 10 years so anything affecting SSI would have to include a 10 year sunset provision. That's not a complete bar. Much tax legislation including 10 year sunsets has been passed as part of budget reconciliation bills. It's basically a challenge to future Congresses to re-up the provisions. Would that happen with SSI legislation? I don't know. The Biden campaign released an ambitious SSI plan but I've heard nothing about SSI since the election. 

     I do know that the Social Security Subcommittee lacks jurisdiction over SSI. That's under the jurisdiction of the Worker and Family Support Subcommittee. It could be the more important subcommittee in this Congress. Here are the Democratic and Republican members of that Subcommittee:

Worker and Family Support Subcommittee

Chair: Rep. Danny K. Davis

• Democrats 

• Rep. Judy Chu

• Rep. Gwen Moore
• Rep. Dwight Evans
• Rep. Stephanie Murphy
• Rep. Jimmy Gomez
• Rep. Dan Kildee
• Rep. Jimmy Panetta

Republicans

Republican Leader Tom Reed (R-NY)

Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC)

Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX)

Rep. Ron Estes (R-KS)

Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK)

“Kick Them Laterally To The Associate Commissioner Of Recycling”

      From Government Executive:

Officials at the nation’s largest federal employee union said that they have seen little progress from agencies in the days since President Biden signed an executive order rescinding Trump administration edicts on labor-management relations last week. ...

Ralph de Juliis, president of AFGE’s Social Security Administration Council, said he has seen a similar reluctance to move forward with the implementation of Biden’s order rescinding the previous president’s workforce policies.

“At SSA, we already sent the executive order to the agency and said that we wanted to return to the table, and Jim Julian, the associate commissioner for labor-management and employee relations, responded by saying, ‘Good point, we’ll talk about this on our February call,’” de Juliis said. “And earlier today, I sent the recent order from [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] on COVID and social distancing, and I sent it to various SSA people who had given me floor plans on how they plan to squeeze us into cubicles [when we return to the office], and I asked, ‘How are you going to redo the floor plan?’ And the answer we got back was, ‘We’re not doing anything yet, we need to wait until we’re told what we can do.” ...

de Juliis said that, at least at the Social Security Administration, that relationship with the current labor-management officials can never be mended. AFGE’s council of unions at the agency, along with other labor groups and advocates, have called on the Biden administration to force Commissioner Andrew Saul and Deputy Commissioner David Black to resign before their terms expire in 2025.

“[The officials] in the labor-management office have to go,” de Juliis said. “They’ve overseen the discipline of too many union officials during the pandemic, of too many employees. The trust cannot be restored . . . Employees are held accountable and held responsible, while leaders are being given a pass, and they cannot be given a pass. There’s no working with these people, so get rid of them, kick them laterally to the associate commissioner of recycling or something, but just get them out of dealing with labor relations.”

PII Failure In Charlotte

     From WCNC:

A failure by Social Security Administration employees in Charlotte resulted in the wrong people receiving original copies of others' Social Security cards, passports, birth certificates and other private documents.

"I'm just shocked and really disappointed in the Social Security Administration," said Brandi Soles, whose records were among those compromised. "This isn't an incident that you have when you go and place an order at Wendy's and they forget your fries or they give you somebody else's order. These are personal life documents, originals, that you would expect the Social Security office to handle with care and to make sure that they send them back to the right persons, and that did not happen."

Conversations with several people in Charlotte revealed at least four people were impacted by the mistake. An SSA spokesperson wouldn't reveal how many others were affected.

"Social Security takes its responsibility to protect the information it maintains seriously," SSA Regional Communications Director Patti Patterson said. "Due to employee error some information was mailed to incorrect individuals. We are working to contact these people and secure the information." ...

 

GOP Announces Its Members Of Social Security Subcommittee

      House Republicans have announced their members on the Social Security Subcommittee:

• Republican Leader Tom Reed (R-NY)
• Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC)
• Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX)
• Rep. Ron Estes (R-KS)
• Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK)
  

Are TV Stations Social Security's Ombudsmen?

      From a TV station in the San Francisco area:

It's a common mistake, but one that proved costly for a Danville man. You might say, this is a case in point -- a decimal point. ...

He sent in an online payment to Social Security for his Medicare B coverage for what he thought was for $1,695.60.

When he received verification of his payment, he discovered he put the decimal point in the wrong place.

The payment ended up being for $16,956.

"So I about freaked out. And obviously the numbers were right, but the decimal was put in the wrong place," he told us.

Russ called Wells Fargo, requesting a stop payment. The bank told him it couldn't do that.

"It was an electronic transfer, and not a check. That I'd have to contact Social Security. So that's when all my woes began," Bernard said.

Social Security told him it could only give him a credit and not a refund for the overpayment. That was the policy. ...

 He learned on Christmas Eve that Social Security denied his appeal.

That same day, his wife Carla came down with COVID-19.

"All of a sudden the room went sideways, and I was sick," she recalls.

Still, Carla had enough strength to suggest Russ call 7 On Your Side.

"I said if anybody can get this fixed, it's 7 On Your Side, call them," she said.

He did, and we contacted Social Security.

A spokesperson told us it couldn't comment due to privacy reason.

But it refunded $15,000 back into Bernard's bank account.

"7 On Your Side can't be beat," said Bernard. ...

Social Security Subcommittee Democrats Named

      The House Ways and Means Committee has finally announced its subcommittee assignments for this Congress, at least for the Democrats. I can't find an announcement about the Republicans. Below is the lineup for the Social Security Subcommittee. Let's hope we can get some oversight hearings in this Congress. I've never before seen the passivity displayed by the Social Security Subcommittee in the last Congress.

Chair: Rep. John B. Larson

• Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr.
• Rep. Linda T. Sánchez
• Rep. Brian Higgins
• Rep. Steven Horsford
• Rep. Earl Blumenauer
• Rep. Terri A. Sewell
• Rep. Gwen Moore

Disability Trust Fund Holding Up Despite Pandemic

      Social Security's Office of Chief Actuary has released the numbers on the performance of the Disability Insurance Trust Fund in 2020. Things went pretty well despite the high unemployment caused by the pandemic. The Trust Fund ended 2020 having gained about two and a half billion dollars since the end of 2019. We'll have updated long term projections in a few months but if you were dreading (or hoping) for a Disability Insurance Trust Fund collapse due to the pandemic, it hasn't happened. See the table below. As always, click on the image to view it full size.

Online Services Outages

      According to Down Detector, Social Security started experiencing significant problems with its My Social Security portal sometime over the weekend and apparently the problem is continuing into today. It may not be connected but Social Security just announced on Friday that claimants can now request access to documents that the Social Security Administration has concerning their cases through the My Social Security portal.