Republicans Raise Questions About Andrew Saul's Firing And About Acting Commissioner

      Three Republican Senators and two Republican members of the House of Representatives have written the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to raise questions about the legality of the firing of Andrew Saul as Commissioner of Social Security and about Kilolo Kijakazi's tenure as Acting Commissioner. 

     I predict their effort is going nowhere. If the GOP really thought it had a case, it would be suing, not messing with GAO. The questions about Kijakazi are fairly ridiculous. They imply darkly that Kijakazi hadn't served long enough with Social Security to have been eligible to become Acting Commissioner. Leaving aside the question of whether the Vacancies Reform Act even applies in this situation since the Social Security Act itself says specifically that the President can designate anyone to be Acting Commissioner, Kijakazi started work at Social Security in January, 2021, in plenty of time to have been there 90 days, as required by the Vacancies Reform Act, before Saul was fired.

Getting A Bit Vicious

      From a blog post by the Revolving Door Project, which is sponsored by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington think tank:

HuffPost reported last week that the Biden administration is considering a few unusual names for the long-delayed nomination of Administrator of the Social Security Administration. On one hand, there’s Nancy Altman, the President of Social Security Works who has fought for the economic security of seniors and Social Security recipients for years. She has written three books on the history and economics of Social Security, and currently serves on the Social Security Advisory Board, which provides oversight of the program. In other words, she is eminently qualified for the job.

On the other hand are two well-connected political insiders, both of whom Revolving Door Project has a history with: Seth Harris and Donna Shalala.

Harris is the former Acting Labor Secretary under Obama who later turned to shadow lobbying and legal work for union-busting BigLaw firms. As I wrote for the American Prospect last October, Harris is one of the intellectual architects of Prop 22, the California law which protects companies like Uber and Lyft from having to recognize their workers as full employees entitled to the minimum wage and benefits. That’s actually a Social Security issue, too: now-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland championed a bill in 2019 to require gig economy companies to pay their workers’ Social Security and Medicare taxes, since firms don’t have to pay those taxes for independent contractors (which is how gig economy firms misclassify their workers.)

Harris’ work has rarely touched on Social Security directly, but in his own words, he believes the old retirement formula of Social Security and pensions “is largely gone,” and at least part of the solution involves simply having people work longer. As he said at a Brookings Institution panel in 2019, “we should be encouraging some people to work more unless we are going to really dramatically transform the system that we have. We have transformed it. But let me also say, we’ve transformed it to favor more work, not to favor less work.”

In 2020, notably, Harris was a founding member of a research program funded by the private annuities industry. He also wrote personal finance columns for an annuity company’s website.

For her part, Shalala was a first-term Representative from Florida when the Revolving Door Project helped expose that she hadn’t filed ethics paperwork regarding her personal stock holdings, just as she was appointed to a board overseeing CARES Act funding. That funding could have benefited firms in which Shalala was invested. She ultimately, predictably, lost reelection.

What makes an unremarkable one-time Congresswoman qualified to lead one of the largest and most popular benefit programs in the federal government? Shalala’s backers point to her eight years as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. But that’s an inauspicious credential for the would-be head of a benefits program: Clinton infamously campaigned to “end welfare as we know it,” a crusade against the poor and misfortuned which utterly failed to do anything but make the government less caring to the most vulnerable, as Bryce Covert documented at the New Republic.

Shalala’s HHS work touched Social Security most directly when she appointed the 1994 Advisory Council on Social Security. The Advisory Council originally was the body which provided oversight of Social Security, but was later replaced by today’s Social Security Advisory Board. The bipartisan board Shalala picked ultimately came back with three different recommendations for making Social Security less generous, in the name of balancing budgets. The proposals included taxing some benefits; investing Social Security in stocks and equities; and gradually moving the system over to a set of individual investment accounts, similar to switching out a pension for a 401(k). None of these proposals were ultimately adopted. ...

     At least I'm glad there are people who care who becomes the Commissioner of Social Security. There's always great interest in the programs Social Security administers but usually great apathy about the agency itself.

No Longer Even Tracking 800 Number Service?

     In the past, Social Security collected data on how well it was able to answer its 800 telephone number, calculating an agent busy rate -- the percentage of callers who receive a busy signal. That percentage for fiscal year 2019 was 14.1%. However, it appears from their recently posted numbers that they're either answering almost all of their calls or their system for tracking busy signals has broken down almost completely. I suppose it's also possible that their system is now set to keep ringing for a set number of minutes before just cutting off the caller and they're pretending that's not a busy signal. In any case, I'm pretty sure the recent numbers they've posted bear no reasonable relationship to caller experience. For the sake of completeness they post their 800 number speed to answer numbers as well but you can easily make those numbers look better just by hanging up on people more quickly.

     The published numbers on field office telephone service aren't so obviously fishy but they also seem way off from what I and my clients have been experiencing.

Some COLA History

Click on image to view full size

 

From the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College

Good Job!

     From the Twitter feed of Social Security's Office of Inspector General:

Social Security OIG

@TheSSAOIG

·

Holly (left, pictured with our agent) noticed a customer trying to buy gift cards and asked a few questions. Holly saved the customer from being scammed out of thousands of dollars. Thank you Holly! #SlamtheScam #SocialSecurity #HollySlammedtheScam #GiftCardsAreForGifts

Relief For Some Disabled People With Student Loans

      From National Public Radio:

The U.S. Education Department announced Thursday that it is discharging the outstanding student loans of more than 323,000 borrowers who have significant, permanent disabilities, and will remove barriers for borrowers who qualify for this relief in the future. The announcement will erase some $5.8 billion in debt and marks a significant step toward fixing a troubled debt relief program meant to help borrowers with disabilities. ...

Now, relief will become automatic for those who are identified through a data match with the Social Security Administration. The next match is in September, and based on those who were identified in June, the department expects more than 323,000 people to receive relief amounting to $5.8 billion. ...

     This won't be for all recipients of Social Security disability benefits -- just those assigned to the MINE (Medical Improvement Not Expected) category. Those who are not in the MINE category may still get relief they must apply and it's not automatic.

Social Security Benefits Suspended Because Of The Pandemic

U.S.-Mexico Border Crossing In Normal Times

      I received a message recently from a woman whose Social Security benefits have been suspended because of the pandemic. (Note the contact form on the right side of this page which allows you to send me a message, anonymously if you wish.) You may wonder how Covid-19 could lead to suspension of benefits but you'll see how this is happening.

     This woman was receiving widows benefits on the account of her late husband who was a U.S. citizen but she's not a U.S. citizen. She's a Mexican national living in Mexico. A somewhat odd provision of the Social Security Act says that she can only receive dependent benefits while living outside the U.S. if she comes to the U.S. on a regular basis, either at least once every 30 days or at least once every six months if she stays in the U.S. at least 30 days. 42 U.S.C. §402(t). Before the pandemic, this wasn't a problem for her. I don't know her circumstances but she probably lives near the border. In normal times, she might have crossed the border frequently to visit family or friends or do some shopping but border crossings are now limited to "essential travel" so she can't visit the U.S. which means her widows benefits are suspended.

     The provision cutting off this woman's benefits doesn't apply if the U.S. has a Social Security treaty with the other country providing an exception. 42 U.S.C. §402(t)(3). The U.S. has a Social Security treaty with seven countries providing an exception but not with Mexico. We might have a Social Security treaty with Mexico covering this issue except that some years ago Republicans got word that the U.S. had negotiated a Social Security treaty with Mexico and went ballistic, spewing ridiculous lies about what a Social Security treaty with Mexico would mean. A Social Security treaty with Mexico would only address boring, uncontroversial issues such as this lady's situation, avoiding double taxation of wages, mutual assistance between social security agencies, totalizing wages for a handful of people who have legally worked on both sides of the border but who couldn't otherwise qualify for benefits in either country, etc. The result of the Republican lies is that the treaty that was negotiated in 2004 has never been officially approved and that for years Social Security's appropriations have included a provision that no money can be used to implement a Social Security agreement with Mexico. 

     I think it is long past time to approve the U.S.-Mexico Social Security agreement and remove the restrictive provision in Social Security's appropriations. Quit appeasing the racists.

     I also wonder about the provision in 42 U.S.C.§402(t)(2) that says that the limitation on paying benefits to non-resident non-U.S. nationals doesn't apply if the "Commissioner of Social Security finds [that the other country] has in effect a social insurance or pension system which is of general application" and meets certain requirements. I know that Mexico has a social security system but I don't know enough about it to say whether it technically meets the requirements of this provision. I can't even find a list of countries who do qualify under this provision. I'd be grateful if somebody could point me to a list.

     By the way, don't waste your time trying to post racist MAGA crap in response to this. I'll never allow it to show up.

AARP Concerned About Idea Of SSA Administering Paid Leave Plan

     From the AARP:

...  Lawmakers are considering a paid leave benefit that is funded by taxpayers.  Such paid leave benefits would be administered through an existing federal agency.  Currently, the Social Security Administration is being considered to manage the paid leave benefit.

AARP sought to understand the views of voters 50-plus on the topic.  While there is broad support for such a program, older voters are concerned that administering this benefit through the SSA would negatively impact the administration of Social Security benefits to retirees. ...

     This is the first I've heard that Social Security might be involved in administering a paid leave plan. If that's to happen, the agency certainly needs a lot more resources. It would be a throwback to the 1960s when Social Security was running Medicare and to the 1930s and early 1940s when Social Security was running a number of other programs. Social Security's administrative funding was vastly better in those days.