From a
piece by former Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul for Townhall.com, a right wing website:
Even though my time as the Social Security Administration (SSA)
commissioner has ended, the partisan attacks on the agency and my record
have not. Just this week, U.S. Reps. John Larson (D-CT) and Bill
Pascrell (D-NJ) continued to repeat false claims about my tenure as SSA commissioner. ...
On April 21, 2021, I sent a letter
to Rep. Larson outlining the need for additional funding to make up
for the budgetary and workforce challenges SSA was facing during the
COVID-19 pandemic. Rep. Larson and the House of Representatives ignored
this request and as a result, SSA was forced to operate on a budget that
was $900 million less than I requested. ...
The only solution to addressing the backlogs of unprocessed mail and
other SSA services was to bring SSA workers back to the office. SSA
informed Larson and his staff in August of 2020 we needed to start
bringing union employees back to the offices involuntarily, but safely,
to address workloads that couldn’t be done virtually, such as mail.
Despite our warnings, on February 11, 2021, Rep. Larson and his staff
objected to our putting a handful of employees in an office in Houston,
Texas, to address problems similar to those noted in the recent SSA
Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report. Rep. Larson insisted I
call him, despite the fact he refused to take my calls when I was
seeking assistance in funding. ...
It is hypocritical that Rep. Larson now faults me for backlogged
workloads when he and his union bosses at SSA stymied my efforts to
address these challenges. ...
My office briefed Larson’s staff multiple times a week throughout the
pandemic. If he had concerns with our response to the pandemic, he
should have raised these issues to my attention or even offered to work
with me to solve problems. His response then, as it is now, was to
engage in political grandstanding and take his direction from the
unions. Rep. Larson was the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Social
Security the entire time I served as SSA commissioner. If he was so
concerned about my management, why didn’t he hold an oversight hearing
to address his concerns? He failed to hold a single hearing on the
service challenges facing SSA. One might think he was negligent in his
duties as Chairman and should resign, but I know he was afraid to allow
real facts to come forward. For instance, he avoided my calls when I
sought his support for funding and to get cooperation from unions.
Rather than conduct meaningful oversight, Rep. Larson prefers to hide
behind union talking points and issue uncontested press releases full of
lies.
Blaming Larson for Social Security's operating budget is mostly ridiculous. Larson isn't even a member of the Appropriations Committee that has jurisdiction over the agency's operating budget. The real problem was primarily in the Senate which was then controlled by Republicans. However, it is possible that if Larson had held hearings about Social Security's service delivery problems that the agency's appropriation might have been increased.
By the way, why is Saul only now admitting that his agency was unable to provide adequate service and that the agency's operating budget was the main reason? I know that insulting people you need to work with isn't a good plan but being completely quiet in public about a severely inadequate agency budget isn't such a good plan either.
Also, by the way, I'm glad that Saul is no longer making any effort to obscure the obvious -- he's a highly partisan Republican. That's how he ran the agency. That's why he had to be fired. He never should have tried to hang on after Inauguration Day.
