White House To Propose 9.7% Appropriations Increase For SSA

      From an attachment to a letter from the Office of Management and Budget to the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is responsible for providing essential benefits to retirees, survivors, individuals with disabilities, and elderly Americans with limited income and resources. The 2022 discretionary request would improve the timely processing of disability claims, expand outreach to vulnerable populations, ensure that SSA makes the correct payments to those who qualify, and modernize information technology to increase the accessibility of benefits for seniors and people with disabilities. 

The President’s 2022 discretionary request includes $14.2 billion for SSA, a $1.3 billion or 9.7-percent increase from the 2021 enacted level. This includes appropriations for program integrity activities. It: 

• Strengthens SSA Services. Each year, SSA processes over six million retirement, survivors, and Medicare claims as well as more than two million disability and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) claims. The discretionary request provides $895 million in additional funding to provide better service at SSA’s field offices, State disability determination services, and teleservice centers for the retirees, individuals with disabilities, and their families who rely on the agency. The request would address operational challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic by increasing staff to process additional disability claims, to reduce the processing time for disability claims, and to answer calls from those seeking assistance. 
• Increases Outreach to Vulnerable Populations. The discretionary request invests an additional $75 million in outreach to ensure that SSI benefits reach the most vulnerable eligible individuals, including homeless individuals, children with disabilities, and those with mental and intellectual disabilities. As part of this work, the request would invest in efforts that simplify and expand access to the program. These efforts include partnering with community-based organizations that work with vulnerable populations and delivering targeted mailers to potential SSI claimants. 
• Promotes Program Integrity. The discretionary request includes $1.9 billion for dedicated program integrity activities, including a $283 million increase above the 2021enacted level. This amount would ensure responsible spending of Social Security funds, including by funding work to ensure SSA is providing the correct benefit amounts only to those who qualify. These funds also support actions to investigate and help prosecute fraud. 
• Improves Customer Service. The discretionary request fully supports SSA’s modernization plans to maintain and improve its information technology systems, which would reduce customer wait times, improve accessibility and make more services available online, and improve the efficiency of SSA’s operations.

     I'll talk about this more later but I'm concerned about how the current leadership at Social Security will choose to spend additional money. There's a history of Republicans using increased Social Security appropriations on contractors, especially on long term contracts that tie up agency funds for many years into the future, thereby avoiding hiring additional employees to get the work done. There needs to be a balance but it was clear in the past that Republicans were not trying to balance; their fixed pole was keeping the workforce down.

Remembering Field Reps

      Tom Margenau remembers the old days when Social Security had field representatives who, like actually, went outside their offices, to the field, to help people file claims and otherwise deal with the agency.

     The lousy service we have come to expect from Social Security isn’t inevitable. It’s based upon decisions made over many years by people who are indifferent to the level of service the agency provides, if not hostile to good service.  We deserve better.

It's A Start

      To comply with guidelines from the Office of Management and Budget, Social Security has released a COVID-19 Workplace Safety Plan. However, the plan contains almost nothing about how the agency will handle the general reopening of its offices to its employees and the public, much less when that might be.

Why Is David Black Still On The Job?

      David Black was nominated to be Associate Commissioner of Social Security by former President Trump and confirmed by a Republican controlled Senate. According to the statute, the Commissioner of Social Security is appointed to a six year term and can only be removed "pursuant to a finding by the President of neglect of duty or malfeasance in office." Whether that limitation on the President's powers is constitutional is another question but, unlike the Commissioner, the Deputy Commissioner enjoys no protection against being fired by the President for any reason or no reason. Why is David Black still on the job?

I Wish There Had Been More Of This

      Nancy Altman, the President of Social Security Works and a member of the Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB), writes for The Hill on the harsh new musculoskeletal Listings that went into effect on April 2.  I wish there had been far more criticism of these rules, enough to have stopped them from going into effect. They just seem to technical to most people. That word "musculoskeletal" isn't in most people's vocabulary.

     By the way, there's still not been a public release of the study that supposedly showed that the new Listings won't affect the number of disability claims being released. I'd really like to see that.

Plan To Add $9,000 Covid Funeral Expense Benefit Administered By FEMA

      The Biden Administration plans to have the Federal Emergency Management Agency cut $9,000 checks to the survivors of Covid-19 deaths to pay funeral expenses. That's nice but I have a better idea. Why don't we do something about Social Security's absurdly low $255 death benefit? It's so low it probably costs more to administer than is paid in benefits. Covid survivors aren't the only ones facing difficulties paying funeral expenses. It's a common problem.

     Let me make it clear to any unsophisticated reader of this blog that it isn't the Social Security Administration's choice to pay only a $255 death benefit. That was passed by Congress many, many years ago and the agency has no authority to deviate from it. The $255 payments were inadequate at the time Congress added the benefit to Social Security and they were never indexed for inflation.

No Labor-Management Progress At SSA

      From Federal Computer Week:

The Social Security Administration is under fire from unions and congressional Democrats unhappy with the agency's pace in implementing the Biden administration's changes to labor-management relations, and many are seeking the ouster of the Trump-appointed agency leaders.

The American Federation of Government Employees wants a return to the bargaining table to renegotiate a contract that is based in part on limitations on union activity included in Trump administration executive orders that have since been repealed.

In rolling back those orders, President Joe Biden ordered agencies to bargain over a broader set of "permissive" topics.

"SSA is looking for any reason not to reopen the current contract," said Ralph DeJuliis, president of AFGE Council 220, which represents 29,000 SSA employees in field offices and telephone service centers. "SSA is, in our opinion, not following the Biden executive orders." ...

SSA is implementing Biden's executive order "responsively and responsibly," a SSA spokesperson told FCW. "Building collaborative working relationships with our union partners" is "critically important" to the agency.

SSA asked unions for input after receiving guidance sent out to agencies by the Office of Personnel Management. Agencies are required to review any collective bargaining agreement sections that implemented the rescinded Trump orders.

SSA's assessment should be done by April 23, the agency spokesperson said. ...

The agency and the union have made progress on official time -- the practice of permitting senior union officials to conduct union business on the job. Official time, which was nearly eliminated by the Trump executive order, has been temporarily reset to levels closer to those in the 2012 bargaining agreement, Bryant said. That temporary agreement changing that can last up to seven months. ...

     I don't understand the delay coming from Social Security. I'm sure management understands the need to reopen offices as soon as practical. They need union agreement to do so. Let's get moving. Actually, I could understand a little more trepidation about negotiations coming from union officials than management since I'm sure union members have a lot of concern about reopening.

     The current messaging from CDC to keep most things closed is confusing but temporary. Most of the population isn't yet fully vaccinated so we still need to keep things buttoned up. However, CDC's message will change as more of the population is vaccinated. That's happening rapidly. By the end of June, just about the only people who won't have been been vaccinated will be those who have deliberately refused it. I expect that the country will really start reopening by Independence Day and that just about everything will be open by Labor Day assuming there's no break through Covid-19 variant that makes current vaccines ineffective. We're not going to keep things closed just to protect fools who have refused the vaccine. Vaccine passports will help in the process. Those who refuse vaccines can yell all they want about discrimination against them because they lack vaccine passports. The vast majority of the population who have vaccine passports won't be listening. They're going to be enjoying getting back to their normal lives, not listening to cranks.

     It's going to be impossible to keep Social Security field offices closed once we get everyone vaccinated who is willing to be vaccinated. There's too much pent up demand for Social Security services. No, Social Security hasn't been getting all its work done with its offices closed. I'm on the receiving end of these services. Don't try to tell me that things have gone great with offices closed. I know better.

     Those who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 but remain frightened need to realize that to this point not a single person who has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 has ended up in the hospital much less died due to Covid-19. That's an incredible record of vaccine success. Unless something changes, once you're fully vaccinated against Covid-19, if you need to worry about any infectious disease, it should be our old friends influenza, salmonella, garden variety pneumonia, hepatitis, meningitis, etc, not Covid-19. We haven't significantly restricted our activities in the past due to these minor risks and there's no reason to do so in the future.

EM On New Musculoskeletal Listings

      Social Security has issued an Emergency Message on the new musculoskeletal Listings that went into effect last Friday. I would not say that these soften the blow much. 

     The new EM does speak to a question I had. What about claimants who use electric wheelchairs operated with one hand, as in Stephen Hawking (although his problem wasn't musculoskeletal). Since these wheelchairs don't require both hands to operate, can these claimants meet the Listings? The answer is yes, assuming the claimant couldn't get around with just one cane, for instance. Yes, these Listings are so bad that we need an answer to a question about whether someone as impaired as Stephen Hawking would meet them. 

     These Listings don't merely require that a claimant be unable to work. They require that it be immediately obvious to others that a claimant can't work. I guess people like Andrew Saul heard enough complaints from people about a neighbor or acquaintance who couldn't be "truly" disabled based solely upon limited lay observation. They wanted to make sure that disability is obvious and undeniable.