AAJ Hearings To Remain A Possibility As CRA Resolution Fails

      In the twilight days of the Trump Administration, Social Security adopted new regulations allowing Administrative Appeals Judges (AAJs) to hold hearings on disability claims. Previously, only Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) were able to hold such hearings. AAJs have only handled cases pending on review at the Appeals Council. This has been concerning since AAJs, unlike ALJs, have not been thought to enjoy decisional independence.

     The Congressional Review Act (CRA) permits Congress to disapprove "midnight" regulations adopted as an Administration is leaving office. CRA resolutions may not be filibustered. A CRA resolution was introduced to disapprove the AAJs regulations. The problem with CRA resolutions is that they must be acted upon within a certain number of days. The computation of when the days start to run is a little tricky but, apparently, the time ran out yesterday but no action was taken on the CRA resolution on the AAJ regulations.

     I would be surprised to see any AAJ hearings scheduled in the near future. There's no plausible justification since there are enough ALJs to handle the current workload and Democrats control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives. Further out, who knows?

Express Interviews

      From Emergency Message EM-21041:

A. Purpose
This Emergency Message (EM) provides Field Offices (FOs) and Social Security Card Centers (SSCCs) information regarding the nationwide implementation of the Express Interview (EXI) process. In addition, this EM provides instructions for scheduling appointments, conducting interviews, and documenting interviews, as part of the EXI process. This process was established to address the challenges the public has faced in providing enumeration and documentary proofs, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

B. Background
Effective May 28, 2021, FOs and SSCCs nationwide will begin offering the new EXI option. EXIs are brief interviews, lasting approximately 5-7 minutes, which allow eligible individuals to apply for an original or replacement Social Security Number (SSN) card and submit necessary evidence in person.

While this initiative is primarily intended to assist customers who need an SSN card, EXIs are also available for purposes of gathering evidence needed for processing claims and other workloads, as well as for individuals who meet certain limited, critical situations.

 C. Express Interview Criteria

In order to qualify for an EXI, individuals must:

· meet existing limited, critical appointment criteria such as:
o original cards for individuals age 12 or older;

o replacement cards for individuals who need to update or correct their information, such as name, date of birth, or citizenship, or to obtain income, resources, medical care or coverage, or other services or benefits (e.g., filing a tax return, applying for housing, or seeking an Economic Impact Payment);

AND

· be unable to use our automated services (e.g. enumeration at birth, enumeration at entry or enumeration beyond entry) or online SSN replacement card service (iSSNRC).

Individuals also qualify for an EXI if they are unable or unwilling to mail original evidence documents.  ...

Overdue

     There's an annual Trustees Report on the state of the Social Security Trust Funds that gathers same public attention. Last year's report came out on April 22 but none so far this year so we're overdue. I suppose the pandemic might have something to do with the delay. The change in Administrations might also play a role.

Little Change In Social Security Headcount

    The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has posted updated numbers showing the headcount of employees at each agency. Here they are as of March with earlier headcount numbers for comparison:

• March 2021 60,675
• December 2020 61,816
  
• September 2020 61,447
  
• June 2020 60,515
  
• March 2020 60,659
  
• December 2019 61,969
  
• December 2018 62,946
  
• December 2017 62,777
• September 2017 62,297
• June 2017 61,592
• March 2017 62,183
• December 2016 63,364
• December 2015 65,518
• December 2014 65,430
• December 2013 61,957
• December 2012 64,538
• September 2011 67,136
• December 2010 70,270
• December 2009 67,486
• December 2008 63,733

      By the way, Full Time Equivalent (FTE) numbers would be more meaningful since those take overtime work into consideration. Social Security isn't posting those numbers as far as I know. I'd love to see them.

Guidance Coming Soon On Telework

      From the Washington Post:

As the Biden administration contemplates how to return the massive federal workforce to the office, government officials are moving to make a pandemic experiment permanent by allowing more employees than ever to work from home — a sweeping cultural change that would have been unthinkable a year ago. ...

Notice of the change is expected in June, when the administration is set to release long-awaited guidance to agencies about when and how many federal employees can return to the office — likely in hybrid workplaces that combine in-person and at-home options, according to officials and memos obtained by The Washington Post. The bulletin is expected to address remote work policies in the immediate and long term.

 “We anticipate this guidance will leave room for decision-making at departments and agencies, to provide maximum flexibility for defining work requirements to meet mission and workforce needs,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because plans have not yet been finalized. ...

How much other federal employees will be able to work from home will be up to individual agencies and is likely to vary widely depending on employee needs, manager preferences and the department’s mission, officials said. ...

Mark Hinkle, a Social Security Administration spokesman, said in an email that the agency is “carefully and incrementally increasing the number of employees working in our local field offices” to help whittle down workloads and is beginning to increase in-office appointments. ...

If You Have To Ask The Question, You Really Are A Fool

      The Motley Fool asks “Is Bitcoin Safer For Retirement Than Social Security?”

ALJ Union And Social Security At Odds

     From Government Executive:

An independent arbitrator this week took the rare step of ordering the Social Security Administration and a union representing administrative law judges to completely redo negotiations on a new contract, after he found several instances of illegal bad faith bargaining by the agency.

In a decision dated May 17, Arbitrator John T. Nicholas found that management at the agency engaged in unfair labor practices in relation to five different articles of its contract negotiations with the Association of Administrative Law Judges. The ruling marks the third instance in which an arbitrator has found instances of malfeasance on the part of management at the Social Security Administration in connection with their negotiations with the judges’ union.

In those previous cases, the arbitrator issued narrow awards to the union, such as requiring the agency to provide previously improperly withheld information and rescind an effort to implement a partial contract. But Nicholas instructed the parties to completely restart the contract negotiation process from the beginning with negotiations on ground rules for bargaining over an entirely new contract. ...

 The arbitrator also found that the Social Security Administration engaged in “surface level” bargaining on official time, in essence making tweaks to their proposal without actually trying to find a solution amenable to both parties, and he found the agency engaged in bad faith bargaining in its negotiations over provisions intended to protect the judges’ judicial function. ...

In a statement, Social Security Administration spokesman Mark Hinkle downplayed the potential impact of the arbitrator’s ruling, and accused the judges’ union of blocking efforts to negotiate a new contract.

“The arbitration decision was substantively moot by the time the decision was issued, as SSA has offered the AALJ the opportunity to renegotiate the entire CBA on several occasions,” Hinkle said. “In fact, the agency’s chief spokesperson for these negotiations has sent at least four communications making that offer to the AALJ chief negotiator . . . Despite these repeated efforts, AALJ has refused to even meet with the agency.” ...

     Melissa McIntosh, the president of the ALJ union, recently appeared on Tom Temin's show on WFED. The posted transcript demonstrates the depth of the gap between union and management at Social Security.

Stimulus Payments Cause Problems For Some SSI Recipients

     From HuffPost:

Stimulus payments aren’t supposed to count against eligibility for social insurance programs like disability benefits, but some people might have lost benefits because of too much money in their bank accounts.

The Social Security Administration has suspended disability benefits for some Supplemental Security Income recipients because the stimulus payments pushed their bank accounts above the program’s archaic $2,000 limit, according to legal aid attorneys. ...
It’s likely that relatively few of the program’s nearly 8 million beneficiaries have been affected. ...

Everyone on SSI is subject to the resource limit, which hasn’t been updated since 1989. It’s $2,000 for individuals and $3,000 for couples, with exclusions for a home, a car and certain other assets. 

Because the coronavirus stimulus payments are technically tax credits, they shouldn’t have affected eligibility for any social program, whether it’s food benefits or Social Security. Under federal law, tax credits don’t count as income or “resources” for eligibility purposes within a year of their receipt.

But the Social Security Administration is a huge agency with lots of employees, and it’s possible some have made mistakes, said Stacy Cloyd, director of policy and administrative advocacy with the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives. What should happen, Cloyd said, is that when the agency sees more than $2,000 in someone’s bank account ― the overall balance is all the agency sees ― it should investigate and then back off if the cash came from a tax rebate within the past year.

 “If the resource limit were $10,000 this would be a lot less of an issue,” Cloyd said. President Joe Biden has proposed updating the asset limit, but Democrats haven’t yet reintroduced their bill to change the policy. ...