A Blast E-Mail To Social Security Operations Employees

From Deputy Comm  Grace Kim. 

Subject: Operations Re-entry Plan

Earlier today, Acting Commissioner Kijakazi issued a broadcast message to provide preliminary information about SSA’s re-entry plan.  I am building on that message to share how Operations fits into that plan.  I want to emphasize that your safety and the safety of the public we serve continues to be a priority not only in our current operating posture, but also in how we will re-enter our offices. We will continue to monitor and follow the government-wide, science-driven advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I know most of you are curious about Operations’ future telework plan.  The global pandemic has changed our operating environment, how and where we work, and highlighted those areas where we are not meeting our public’s needs.  Over the course of the past 19 months, we have learned that we can effectively accomplish some work while teleworking, but our public service responsibilities mean that we still need to do some work onsite.

In Operations, I am planning for greater flexibility for telework for employees.  We will use the lessons learned throughout the pandemic to inform how we implement a telework plan that allows employees to work from home and ensures that we effectively serve the public and carry out our mission.  We will work closely with AFGE to ensure we meet all labor obligations.  I am excited to share that I have proposed a telework program that will allow most Operations employees the opportunity to telework between 2-5 days a week depending on your job duties. Soon, your supervisor will share the telework availability for your position and give you 30 days’ notice before we transition to our new telework plan, which at earliest will begin in January.  Until then, we will continue to operate as we have been under our current Workplace Safety Plan.

After we have completed re-entry and implemented our telework plans, we will evaluate how we are doing.  This evaluation will inform our longer-term plans as we enter Fiscal Year 2023.

I want to thank you for your hard work and commitment to serving the public during this unprecedented time.  I appreciate your patience as we consider how to safely re-enter the workplace. I will keep you updated on the re-entry process.

Grace

Class Actions On Same Sex Marriages Settled

      From NBC News:

Social Security survivors benefits will now be available to same-sex spouses and partners who had been denied access due to previous bans on gay marriage.

The Department of Justice and the Social Security Administration on Monday announced that they dismissed appeals filed by the then-Trump administration in two class-action lawsuits related to Social Security survivors benefits for same-sex partners and spouses.

In 2018, Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ rights nonprofit group, filed two class-action lawsuits against the Social Security Administration: one on behalf of surviving same-sex partners who had been prevented from legally marrying their loved ones by bans on same-sex marriage, and another on behalf of those who were able to marry, but were prevented from being married for at least nine months — the minimum set by the Social Security Administration — due to bans on same-sex marriage. …

SSA To Be Responsible For Paid Leave Under BBB Bill

      The current version of the Build Back Better Act, the major budget reconciliation bill pending in the Senate, contains a major responsibility for the Social Security Administration. If passed , Social Security will be administering Universal Comprehensive Paid Leave. (Begins on page 1065). Claimants will be able to appeal from determinations made under this program but not to federal court. (Page 1081). I am somewhat confused about extra funding. At one point the bill indicates that Social Security will be given an extra $1.591 billion in the first year and an extra $1.5 bill a year thereafter to administer the program. (Page 1090). At another point, it indicates that there will be as much as an extra $2.5 billion. (page 1091). It's not clear to me whether as much as $2 billion of this may be expended for Social Security operations generally. It appears that this will be effective sometime in the current fiscal year -- at least that's when Social Security gets a big appropriation -- but I have been unable to find the exact date.

     This will be the first major new responsibility for the Social Security Administration since SSI was adopted in the 1970s. It comes at a time when the agency's staffing is at a low ebb and there are massive backlogs across almost all agency operations. Also, the agency is being directed by an Acting Commissioner.

Ticket To Work Doesn't Work

      From a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO):

Disability beneficiaries participate in the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Ticket to Work and Self-Sufficiency program (Ticket to Work) by assigning a "ticket" to service providers who, in turn, provide help with employment. SSA compensates the service providers when Ticket to Work participants achieve designated levels of work and earnings. Using SSA data from 2002, when the program began, through 2018, the most recent year available, GAO estimated that 5 years after starting Ticket to Work, participants’ average earnings were $2,451 more per year than that of similar nonparticipants. However, the majority of participants remained unemployed 5 years after starting Ticket to Work. 

Based on GAO’s analysis, the costs of Ticket to Work exceeded the savings in disability benefits to SSA by an estimated $806 million from 2002 through 2015, the most recent year with reliable savings data. Savings accrue when Ticket to Work participants receive lower benefits or leave the disability rolls due to earnings from work. GAO estimates that participants were slightly more likely to leave the rolls (9.7 percent) than nonparticipants who are similar across a range of characteristics such as age, gender, disability type, and education level (8.6 percent). A greater percentage of participants left the disability rolls due to work rather than for other reasons, such as medical improvement ...

GAO estimates that SSA incurred an additional $133 million to $169 million in costs (above the $806 million) from disability benefit overpayments to Ticket to Work participants. Overpayments can occur when beneficiaries who work do not report earnings to SSA or SSA delays in adjusting their benefit amounts. ...

     This report ignores an important reality.  No one makes claimants participate in the Ticket to Work program. Those who do participate are saying they believe they may have some capacity for work, meaning that they have better prospects for returning to work than claimants generally. Comparing the results in this group to claimants generally makes the Ticket to Work results look better than they are. Some of those who volunteered for Ticket to Work would have returned to work with or without Ticket to Work. We can't tell how many were only able to return to work due to Ticket to Work. If there were a control group, it would be some who volunteered for Ticket to Work but were arbitrarily denied Ticket to Work help but there is no such control group because none were turned away.

     Note the ridiculous level of overpayments associated with Ticket to Work even among a group of beneficiaries who told Social Security they planned to return to work. Don't blame claimants for this. Social Security's system for handling reports of return to work just doesn't work. 

     I'll make a modest suggestion. Social Security should almost completely stop relying upon wage reports from claimants because they do a poor job of reporting and Social Security does a worse job of recording what they report. We should define Substantial Gainful Activity on a quarterly basis and base work deductions on quarterly wages reported by employers. This can mostly be done by the computers. Yes, there will be problems with "wages" that are reported for work done earlier (such as sick pay, vacation pay and residual commissions) and yes, there will be problems with self-employment income but we'd be in a much better place than we're in now if those are the only problems we have to deal with.

Delays In Filing Retirement Claims

      The Washington Post has an article out displaying a couple of charts that they say show that during the pandemic people have been retiring but deliberately delaying claiming Social Security retirement benefits. Here's one of the charts:

     The thing about it is that there's been a similar decline in the number of SSI claims filed and there's no benefit whatsoever in delaying filing an SSI claim. One possibility is that office closures and the increased difficulty in reaching Social Security by telephone have caused people to delay filing claims out of frustration. People don't have to be deterred entirely or even for long to produce something like this graph. Just deter a certain percentage of claims for a month to three months and you end up with fewer claims filed for a time period. My experience is that few people are crafty about the date they file their retirement claim. That sort of behavior exists mostly in the minds of newspaper writers who are overly invested in the idea that simplistic economic theories explain human behavior. They don't factor in the service environment at Social Security.

What Passes For Justice In Northern Alabama

      From the Huntsville Item:

Getting approved for disability payments from the Social Security Administration isn't easy, but depending on where you live, it could be even harder.

In North Alabama, for example, three of the judges who hear disability claims have the lowest approval record of any administrative law judge in the state; two of them also have among the lowest approval rate of any of the 12,000 judges nationwide.  ...

Judge Cynthia Weaver approves only 12% of claims, giving her the lowest claims approval rate of any judge hearing disability cases in Alabama. Among nearly 50 judges in the country with similar disposition caseloads, between 250-260 dispositions, Weaver had the lowest approval rating for claims based on data reported in recent months. 

An applicant's odds are only slightly better if they go before Judge Patrick Digsby, who approves about 13.6% of the claims that come before him. Judge Mallette Richey has the third-lowest claims approval rate at 26%. ...

If applicants choose to appeal, their odds aren't good. The Appeals Council denies 82% of claims and remands another 14% back to the judge who heard the case. There is no data on the final outcome of cases sent back to judges. Only 1% of claims are approved by the Appeals Council. ...

Problem Avoided

 

     From the Detroit Free Press:

The pandemic-related economic shutdown in 2020 triggered all sorts of anxiety, including oddly enough a fear that those who turn 62 next year would be stuck with drastic cuts to their Social Security benefits. ...

The reason? A key wage index that Social Security uses as part of the calculation of benefits looked like it was set to plummet during the 2020 economic slowdown. 

In Congressional testimony in July 2020, Social Security Administration Chief Actuary Stephen Goss suggested that benefits could be 9.1% lower for this specific group, for life. ...

Now, amazingly, there is good news for those baby boomers born in 1960. Things didn't turn out as horrible as the original headlines suggested.

The average wage index — which is calculated by Social Security to track wage growth in the overall economy — didn't fall as once projected. Instead, the Social Security Administration recently posted that the national average wage index was up 2.83% in 2020 from 2019 — not down.  ...

Delayed SSI Report

      From a press release:

U.S. Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Todd Young (R-Indiana), Ranking Member of the Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions and Family Policy, pressed the Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration on when Congress can expect to receive the annual report on the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. 

The delay in reporting to Congress on the program relative to the statutory deadline of May 30 is the longest in the history of the report, and comes on the heels of the longest delay ever in the Social Security and Medicare trustees report.  ...

     I can't even imagine a political motivation for delaying this mundane report. Just accept the reality that I have to accept every day. Social Security isn't hitting on all cylinders. Work isn't getting done in a timely manner. This has to do with general understaffing and reduced efficiency because almost everyone is working from home. It sucks but there it is.