$90,000 Backpay For Widower

      From Business Insider Personal Finance:

Anthony Gonzales and Mark Johnson were married at the Bernalillo County Clerk's Office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, alongside more than 100 other LGBTQ+ couples, on August 27, 2013. 

Same-sex marriage was legalized statewide in New Mexico in December 2013 — and was legalized nationwide on June 26, 2015 by the Supreme Court — however, some local county clerks in New Mexico began issuing marriage licenses to LGBTQ+ couples as early as August 2013, arguing that New Mexico's definition of marriage made no mention of sex or gender. … 

Johnson died on February 19, 2014, six months after he legally married Gonzales at the county clerk's office. … 

When he turned 60 in 2015, one year after Mark's death, Gonzales was let go from his job. He applied for survivor benefits, Social Security benefits that widows and widowers get when their spouse dies. … 

Gonzales was denied survivor benefits three weeks after he sent his application. He says, "I got a letter saying, 'Sorry, but you weren't married the required nine months.' And I was like, 'Well, how could we fulfill that requirement when we could not get married?" … 

In May 2021, the US District Court of Arizona ruled in favor of … same-sex couples who had been denied survivor benefits. According to records reviewed by Insider, Gonzales started receiving $1,700 a month in survivor benefits starting May 2021, along with $90,000 in backpay for the years he was denied benefits. …

Big Jump In DDS Processing Time

    This is the processing time at the Disability Determination Services. I don't think the report specifies but this looks like the initial level processing time.

From Medical Evidence Collection In Adult Social Security Disability Claims, a report to the Social Security Advisory Board

A Tale Of Two Newspapers

    From Rudy Boschwitz writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Social Security is a perennial crisis. Eighty-three percent of Generation X and 77% of millennials say they worry that the program will run out of money in their lifetimes, according to a June 2021 Harris poll for the Nationwide Retirement Institute. The latest report of the Social Security Trustees backs them up, finding that the Old Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund “will be able to pay scheduled benefits on a timely basis until 2034, one year later than reported last year.” That’s only 12 years from now. ...

I’ve updated my reform proposals:

• Raise the full retirement age further. ...

• Raise the early eligibility age. ...

• Change the way benefits are calculated for new recipients. [To cut benefits] ...

• Slow the growth of benefits for new and existing beneficiaries alike by changing the basis on which they’re indexed for inflation.  ...

• Withhold some Social Security COLAs from higher-income retirees. ...

• Give the COLA not annually but every 14 or 15 months using the 12 months of lowest inflation.

• Tax Social Security income for higher-bracket taxpayers, and give them the option to forgo all or part of their monthly payment. ...

• Raise the payroll tax by 0.1% of wages every other year—half from withholding, half for the employer’s contribution—for 20 years, a total tax increase of 1%. ...

    Social Security benefits are already taxed for high income recipients -- at least 85% of the benefits are taxed so that would be only a modest tax increase which would raise only a small amount of money. A rise in the FICA tax by 0.05%? That's hardly a token tax rise. No increase in the wage base. And all these cuts in benefits! That's what passes for a reasonable dialogue at Rupert Murdock's Wall Street Journal.

    From Michael Hiltzik writing for the Los Angeles Times: 

The army of perennial doomsayers about the financial condition of Social Security had to be a little crestfallen after the release of the program trustees’ annual report last week.

That’s because the report documented that the program’s condition had actually improved in the last year, if modestly.

More to the point, the trustees’ data underscored that the cost of maintaining Social Security benefits at current levels, or even expanding and improving them, is well within the capacity of the American economy at least to the end of this century, which is as far as the trustees looked. ...

This year, the trustees reckon, Social Security’s combined costs for retirees, those with disabilities and their dependents will come to about 4.98% of an economy valued at $25 trillion. Through the turn of the century, that percentage will peak at 6.18% in 2075, when GDP is estimated to be more than $208 trillion, then will fall to about 5.87% in 2100, when GDP is projected to be $574.5 trillion.

Is this “unaffordable”? Not by international standards. Some of our closest allies in the developed world spend much more than we do on public retirement and disability programs — Japan spends 10.5% of its GDP, France 15.3% and Germany 12.5%. ...

That’s the point of efforts in Congress to expand and increase Social Security benefits, as would be done by a bill dubbed Social Security 2100, introduced by Rep. John B. Larson and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, both Democrats from Connecticut.

The measure would increase benefits across the board by an average 2%, set a minimum retirement benefit at 25% above the federal poverty line and extend dependent benefits for students up to age 26 (the current cutoff is 19), among other improvements.

 On the revenue side, the bill would eliminate, over time, the existing cap on wages subject to tax, which is $147,000 this year — a level that in effect gives the 1% a pass on their obligation to support this universal system. (The payroll tax is 12.4% up to that wage cap, shared equally by employer and employee.) ...

More could be done to provide additional revenue for Social Security. One option would be to make all income, not just wages, subject to the Social Security tax, thus bringing the capital gains and dividends that make up a disproportionate share of income for the wealthiest Americans into the revenue stream.

That option doesn’t get talked about much, perhaps because politicians know that the wealthy would go to the mat to protect their capital gains from higher taxes. ...

    I'm with Hiltzik. The idea that we can't afford an increase in Social Security benefits is nuts. There is no justification for even talking about benefit cuts, especially a plan that talks of huge benefits cuts coupled with the tiniest increase in taxes for the wealthy.

 

 

31% Complete?

     My firm has recently started receiving calls from clients informing us that their My SSA account is showing that work on their case pending at the initial or reconsideration level is 31% or 90% or some other percentage complete. This is nuts. The work at DDS doesn't translate into percentages like this. Where are they coming up with these numbers? Is there any point other than to try to get the claimants to hold off a little longer before they call to ask what's going on with their cases? If so, I don't think this is going to help for long. What are they going to do about claimants whose cases have supposedly been pending at "31% complete" for six months?

A Little Progress But So Far To Go

From Huffpost:

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has won a key Republican ally in his quest to improve one of the most outdated social welfare programs in the United States.

This week, Brown joined forces with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) to announce their co-sponsorship of a bill updating the Supplemental Security Income program, which provides benefits to nearly 8 million Americans with disabilities. 

The program pays less than $700 per month for the average recipient meeting its strict eligibility criteria, which include a requirement that recipients have less than $2,000 in their bank accounts. The Brown-Portman measure, called the SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act, would boost the asset limit from $2,000 to $10,000 for individuals and peg the limit to inflation.  ...

Getting the change into law, however, will be no easy task. Brown attempted unsuccessfully to hitch the measure to a big social spending bill Democrats tried to write last year, but Democrats omitted the proposal even before the bill collapsed. Its $8 billion cost is relatively small, but not exactly chump change, given current attitudes toward spending on Capitol Hill.

Having a Republican on board makes passage a bit more plausible. Brown and Portman said they would try to attach their bill to bigger pieces of legislation Congress may pass in the coming weeks. ...

The Brown-Portman bill would boost the limit to $10,000 for individuals and $20,000 for married couples, eliminating the marriage penalty. Lankford said he would need to see the bill’s text, but that he had been interested in addressing the penalty for years.

Brown has pushed to boost SSI’s meager benefits and limitations on earned income as part of a broader bill but said he would take what he can get in partnership with Portman. ...

    Brown needs not just one but at least ten Republican votes to pass this as a stand-alone bill because of the filibuster in the Senate.  Unfortunately, the enthusiasm for this bill seems limited even among Democrats. I have no idea what bigger piece of legislation may be forthcoming that this could be attached to. I hope there is one. The enthusiasm in the House of Representatives also seems limited. Is the reason the enthusiasm is so limited a perception that since this is a poverty program that it must be primarily something affecting African-Americans? That notion is not only offensive; it's inaccurate. Most people getting SSI are white. However, the awful "welfare queen" prejudices die hard.

 

Legislation Passes To Help Ukrainian Refugees With SSI

Click on image to view full size

     A new Social Security Legislative Bulletin reveals that recent legislation passed to appropriate funds to help Ukraine in its struggle for survival also contains language concerning Ukrainian refugees and SSI. Those refugees will now be eligible for SSI if they otherwise meet its requirements and Social Security must not count the income and resources of their sponsors.

    Now, if this could also be done for other refugees!

How Common Is Serious Long Covid?

      From the Washington Post:

… The coronavirus pandemic has created a mass-disabling event that experts liken to HIV, polio or World War II, with millions suffering the long-term effects of infection with the coronavirus. Many have found their lives dramatically changed and are grappling with what it means to be disabled. …

“We’re at this real confrontational moment of trying to educate as many people as possible about disability and structural inequalities and trying to make sure [long haulers] get the resources they need right now,” said Mia Ives-Rublee, director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress …

     There’s just one problem. I’ve seen virtually no Social Security disability claims based on long Covid. I’m pretty sure the Social Security Administration hasn’t seen many. I’m not disparaging those with long Covid problems. It’s just that I’m pretty sure this is a much less common problem than articles like this suggest, at least at a level that precludes work.

Some Questions

     On May 11, the Acting Commissioner of Social Security spoke to a Continuing Legal Education conference sponsored by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR). She announced that the cap on the fees that attorneys and some others can charge for representing Social Security claimants under the fee agreement process would go up from $6,000 to $7,200 on November 30.

    I have some questions. I imagine that some people reading this blog know the answers to most of these questions. I don't know whether they'll share anything with us but I'll ask the questions anyway.

• The increase in the fee cap isn't effective until November 30. Why such a long lead time? This length of time certainly isn't necessary in order to train staff. (I'll guess that there won't be any real training no matter how far in advance the agency announces this. There certainly wasn't in past years when the fee cap was raised.) When the fee cap was raised previously, the change wasn't announced this far in advance.
• There has been no notice in the Federal Register about the increase in the fee cap as there was in the past when the fee cap was hiked. Has the agency just not gotten around to the notice? Is this somehow still up in the air?
  
• Why $7,200? If adjusted for inflation, it should be more than a $1,000 higher. I can guess that there were proponents within the agency, and perhaps the Biden Administration, for a higher or lower increase. Who were the proponents on each side? What were their arguments? Did the Acting Commissioner make this call or was it the White House? (I don't know why the White House should have been involved but I also don't understand what took so long. I think it was last November when I first heard that an increase was coming.)
  
• Does the low increase reflect a desire on the part of some to change traditional representation patterns -- to force attorneys to be more amenable to a switch to all telephone/video hearings? A desire to generally reduce the effectiveness of representation? (I may be giving those involved too much credit. My impression has  long been that, in general, government employees have little comprehension of the economics of Social Security law firms. It's a high overhead, low profit margin kind of business. Reduce gross fees even modestly and the profit margin is greatly diminished or eliminated. What I've just written is painfully obvious to people like me but must seem like Greek to many who receive a paycheck every two weeks regardless. Of course, I heard a rumor that the Chief Administrative Law Judge has talked about attorneys needing to "become more efficient." What did he have in mind? Whether or not there was a desire to manipulate attorneys to become less effective and to agree to dispense with in person hearings, I predict those will be the effects. Attorneys are struggling under the effects of incredibly poor performance across most parts of the Social Security Administration which delays adjudication and payment of benefits as well as payment of attorney fees at a time when attorney fees have been effectively cut in a dramatic way by inflation. There's nothing we can do to stay afloat but to cut service to our clients which may be "more efficient" in the eyes of some. Claimants don't get the service they're willing to pay for but the service that others who may not have their best interests at heart are willing for them to pay.)