Michael Astrue Has Lots Of Criticism For Democrats And Unions

      From an interview on Federal News Network with former Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue:

... The sense that I generally had was, [Andrew Saul was] trying to quiet things down. There was no successor between our time and there was an acting, long-term acting who quite frankly, did a brutal job. And pretty much every significant service metric went backwards dramatically. I mean, we spent six years driving down the hearing backlog, which was considered a national scandal and was on CBS Evening News and all that kind of stuff. And we took it down very significantly. And then under Carolyn Colvin, it went back up faster than it went down. And a lot of the other significant measures of service in the public deteriorated very rapidly. So I think my sense of what Andrew was trying to do, was to try to stabilize the agency, at a time when they didn’t have a lot of money, wasn’t getting a lot of attention from the White House or the Congress, and just trying to get some sense of normalcy back to the agency. And that’s kind of my sense of what they were trying to do. ... 

Well, I think what’s disappointing is just this sense of neglect. You know, it’s been 14, 15 months now that they’ve had the time to decide what they wanted to do at Social Security [about a new Commissioner]. And they haven’t made a decision. And I think that demoralizing for the agency, it tends to freeze decision making. I think it’s hard to justify. You look at sort of how positions are filled in other agencies, and you say, well, how come not at Social Security, is it just not as important? It’s frustrating. And I agree with you, I believe that the acting commissioner is up any day. And there’s been no announcement on that. The concern is that they’re just going to do nothing. And although violation of the vacancy act often doesn’t bring the agency to its knees, it’s demoralizing for employees, it invalidates certain types of actions, or keeps the commissioner from doing certain types of things, and creates enormous uncertainty. And the last thing that the agency needs, with underfunding and everything else that’s going on is uncertainty. So it would be a very helpful thing for improving service delivery for the White House to decide what direction doesn’t want to go at Social Security and try to find the very best person that they can to run the agency. ...

[T]here’s a history and yet again, both parties, but particularly with the Democrats of nominating candidates [for Commissioner], without any management experience whatsoever, and to get it into an agency where you have 60,000 to 70,000 employees to manage, and you’ve got enormous budgetary issues, you’ve got workloads going through the roof, you have antiquated technology, you have lots and lots of problems. It is really almost unfair to throw someone in who’s managing people for the first time and whose background is policy because they don’t get to do policy. But they got to do a lot of management of a very complex organization. And it’s a tough one to learn on the job. ...

[Interviewer]: And how did you find dealing with the major unions, there, the AFGE councils?

Michael Astrue: Impossible. I mean, they’ve been confrontational since the ’60s, and not really, in my opinion, interested in improving service to the public. They’re interested in expanding the number of employees and that type of thing. And I found them excessively confrontational, dishonest, really, in reporting what was being said and done in the agency, and really very determined not to cooperate in a Republican administration. Now in Democratic administrations, they have what’s called partnership, and at Social Security, White Houses have pretty much interpreted that almost as co-management, which makes it very difficult to make change, and very difficult to improve service, which is why, under Carolyn Colvin, for instance, service went backwards in every conceivable way, because I don’t think she had division but she also had her hands tied by the union. And you worry in this administration, that it’s going to be back to the same thing where you can’t make the changes that you need to improve the quality of work unless the union approves them. ...

As I've Said, Few Covid Disability Claims So Far

     From a Washington Post article on Covid disability claims:

... The Social Security Administration said it has received about 23,000 disability applications since the beginning of the pandemic that include a mention of covid in some way — less than 1 percent of all annual claims, it said. ...

Does Social Security Need A Beneficiary Advocate?

    From a press release: 

Today, U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy, Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Bob Casey (D-PA) sent a letter to President Biden urging him to create a “Beneficiary Advocate” position within the Social Security Administration (SSA). This position would be modeled off of the Taxpayer Advocate position at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and ensure that the tens of millions of Americans who rely on Social Security, often after a lifetime of work and paying into the system, have a dedicated voice in SSA’s day-to-day operations. ...

    It would have to be truly independent to be effective. My guess is that Social Security management would strongly oppose this since an independent taxpayer advocate would almost immediately start offering harsh criticism of service at Social Security. There's a lot to criticize and they know it. The problem is the low operating budget and that's the fault of Congress but Social Security management acts as if it's their fault and tries to cover it up.

NYC To Stop Taking Children's Benefits

    From National Public Radio:

Child welfare officials in New York City say they will stop collecting all of the Social Security checks from children in foster care and using that money to cover the costs of their care, altering a practice criticized by advocates for children. And those advocates say they hope New York's action becomes a model for agencies across the country.

Jess Dannhauser, commissioner of the Administration for Children's Services, New York City's child protection agency, says soon the Social Security money will be placed in savings accounts that children can access when they leave foster care–either when they return to family, are adopted or age-out of foster care between ages 18 and 24. ...

Does Anybody Care?

      I keep posting links to stories such as these from New York and California about terrible service at Social Security but I am getting an increasing feeling of futility. The national media seem uninterested. Congress just passed an appropriation for Social Security that was way below the increase in the cost of living, assuring that Social Security's service problems are just going to get worse. Poor public service at Social Security is just too boring a subject for a Congressional hearing. Agency management seems more interested in dealing with internal labor-management issues than with public service. Social Security basically didn't answer their telephones this week -- at all. They say it's technical problems but the agency couldn't be bothered to even put out a press release. How can a huge agency like Social Security fail to answer its phones for a whole week and no one notices other than those trying to call the agency? If agency management can get away with this, is there anything they can't get away with? Of course, it's hard to tell the difference between telephone service this week and most weeks because it's so bad even when they halfway try to answer their phones. What is it going to take to get public attention to the problems? Will it be noticed when people are lining up well before dawn to get into Social Security field offices to be helped? That's coming in April.

Contractor Problems Contributing To Social Security Phone Issues

    Social Security's telephone systems have been down this week. It's been essentially impossible to call in. I don't  get the impression that the agency is all that concerned about this. They haven't even put out a press release. Maybe by this point the difference between nearly impossible and impossible have become so slight that it hardly matters to them any more.

    There's an employee union podcast on reopening at Social Security, specifically at the teleservice centers, which says that there are MAJOR technical problems with new telecommunications contractors which are significantly affecting agency telephone service. There's a fair amount of whining on the podcast that would appeal only to union members but mixed in is real info on the agency's telephone problems. Talk about strategies to make sure agency employees can work in their pajamas everyday, forever, isn't going to win the union many friends nor are many likely to buy into the notion that Covid will still be a dire public health threat by late this month when agency employees start returning -- part-time -- to their offices. However, my point in posting this is the information in the podcast about the serious technical problems.

    Note that no matter how bad the contractor problems may be, Social Security lacks the manpower to answer its phones anyway!

OHO Caseload Analysis Report

      Posted in Social Security's Freedom of Information Reading Room:

Click on image to view full size

Finally An Appropriations Agreement

      There is finally agreement on an Omnibus Appropriations Bill to fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year. Social Security will get $13.2 billion for its operations. The FY 2021 appropriation had been $12.9 billion. The increase is not nearly enough to cover inflation. The agency remains on a starvation diet that assures that service will continue to decline.

     Whatever lobbying efforts went into obtaining an adequate operating budget for the Social Security Administration were completely ineffective. 

     Individual members of Congress who declare their concern over the state of service at Social Security may be sincere but, in general, there must be nearly zero concern in Congress over the state of the service that the public is getting from Social Security.