Third Rail Alert

     I generally don't post about the silly ideas that various Representatives and Senators have for Social Security legislation when there's no hope of passage or even of the proposal having an impact on Social Security legislation that may be passed at some indefinite time in the future. I'm making an exception for the latest utterance by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. He's proposing that Social Security's guaranteed benefit payments should end, that Social Security benefits become subject to annual appropriations. This, of course, is going nowhere. I doubt that he could find more than one more Senator who would publicly agree with this or more than a handful of Representatives.  Senator Rick Scott, who has expressed his own absurd notions about Social Security, might agree with him. So why post about this nonsense? Senator Johnson is in a tight race for re-election against a Democratic opponent yet to be decided in a primary election. That race may determine control of the Senate in the next Congress. Johnson has touched the third rail of American politics. Here's hoping his audacity gets him the reward of spending more time with his family.

    By the way, Johnson argues that if annual appropriations are good enough for the Department of Defense, they should be good enough for Social Security. If Social Security were to receive the whooping budget increases that the Department of Defense has been receiving, Johnson's idea might not be so bad!

What's Going On At OIG?

    Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG), particularly the Inspector General herself,  has been in the news lately. OIG has been having trouble getting work out the door recently or, at least, posting notice of the work. OIG has posted zero reports online since May 26. Mostly the reports are studies of agency operations with recommendations. By contrast, here are the number of reports posted online in June and July of recent years:

• 2021 -- 13
  
• 2020 -- 11
  
• 2019 -- 11
  
• 2018 -- 14
  

Social Security Staffing At Low Ebb

    The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has posted updated numbers showing the headcount of employees at each agency. Note that these numbers do not tell the whole story. They don't account for part time employees nor for overtime. Overtime is a huge part of the story at Social Security. Here are Social Security's numbers as of March with earlier headcount numbers for comparison:

• March 2022, 59,257
  
• December, 2021 60,422
  
• September, 2021 59,808
  
• June 2021 59,707
  
• March 2021 60,675
• December 2020 61,816
  
• September 2020 61,447
  
• June 2020 60,515
  
• March 2020 60,659
  
• December 2019 61,969
  
• December 2018 62,946
  
• December 2017 62,777
• December 2016 63,364
• December 2015 65,518
• December 2014 65,430
• December 2013 61,957
• December 2012 64,538
• December 2010 70,270
• December 2009 67,486
• December 2008 63,733

WEP And GPO Elimination Bill Makes Progress In House

      From Federal News Network:

… The Social Security Fairness Act, introduced by Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) and sponsored by Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) now has more than 290 co-sponsors, more than enough to force a House floor vote.

The bipartisan legislation would eliminate two provisions of the 1935 Social Security Act that reduce or eliminate the Social Security benefits of more than 2 million retirees.

One is the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP), which reduces the Social Security benefits of local, state and federal retirees who worked in Social Security-covered employment — i.e. private-sector jobs — and also received a government annuity from their non-Social Security-covered government employment.

The other provision is the Government Pension Offset (GPO), which reduces the Social Security benefits of spouses, widows and widowers with pensions from a federal, state or local government job. …

     Spoiler alert: This stands little or no chance of passing the Senate in this Congress.

401(k)'s Aren’t Cutting It; We Need More Social Security

     From Helaine Olen writing for the Washington Post:

There are two schools of thought when it comes to how well Americans will fare in retirement. One says we are on the verge of a crisis, that the age of the 401(k) has left large numbers of us without sufficient money for our old age. A second group is more sanguine. They point out Americans spend less in retirement than when they worked, and claim the others are overreacting.

It’s increasingly looking like the chicken littles have it right. ...

The latest warning comes in the form of a research brief for the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College ...

[S]omeone born in 1945 has a better than half chance of living in a household where at least one person receives a pension. The number drops to about 25 percent for someone born a mere eight years later. By 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 1 in 7 private-sector workers worked at a firm with access to a defined benefit plan. ...

[M]ost Americans are not putting enough of their own money away, and what they do save is often less than ideally invested. ...

So what’s the most likely fix coming out of Washington? Double down.

The Secure Act 2.0 passed the House this year in a bipartisan vote, with barely a whisper of dissent. It increases the amount of money people over age 62 can set aside in tax-advantaged retirement accounts, and ups the age at which they need to begin taking mandatory distributions from 72 to 75 — two things that will generally benefit only the wealthiest seniors. ...

It would be more helpful to buttress the Social Security Trust Fund and increase benefits, but there’s little action on that front. ...

Draft Senate Appropriations Bill Released

    The Senate Appropriations Committee has released its draft FY 2023 appropriations bill covering Social Security's administrative budget. The Committee amount is $14.2 billion, an increase of $902 million over FY 2022. This is $800 million less than the President's request and $200 million less than called for by the House bill. It's not enough to cover the costs of inflation.

    I  don't know why but the Social Security Administration is a disfavored agency, not just by Republicans, but also by Congressional Democrats. Could it be that Congress is convinced that Social Security's only problem is making its online services a bit better and to convince the public to use them rather than to call or visit the agency? If so, that's a serious misunderstanding of the Social Security Administration. About all you'll ever be able to do online is to file claims and appeals. Helping people do that is a part of what Social Security does but the far more time consuming part is actually adjudicating those claims and appeals. Computers aren't going to do that work for the agency.

    Here are a few excerpts from the draft report on the bill (begins at page 308):

• ...[T]he Committee encourages SSA to take any steps possible to limit the burden of overpayments on beneficiaries that were of little or no fault of the beneficiary, particularly those discovered years later.
• The Committee strongly encourages SSA to expand outreach to potential beneficiaries, prioritizing underserved communities and individuals most likely to need support. This could include grants to community-based organizations familiar with SSA programs for the purpose of assisting individuals with disabilities apply for benefits, including supporting them throughout the process.
• ... [T]he Committee directs SSA to report to the Committees on Appropriations within 60 days of enactment of this act detailing the agency’s plans for expansion of Express Services, including the expected timeline of such expansion, mechanisms for providing such services, and planned national availability and capacity.
  

    What are "Express Services"? Isn't the use of such a term inherently misleading in the context of today's Social Security Administration?

Former Foster Care Children Find That Answers Are Hard To Come By

     From WITF:

It’s been almost 45 years since Kathy Stolz-Silvis was in foster care in Pennsylvania. Stolz-Silvis was nine when her father died, making her and her siblings eligible for Social Security survivor benefits. But she didn’t become aware of those benefits until decades later — after reading an investigation published by The Marshall Project and NPR.

The report, published last year, found that foster care agencies in at least 49 states and Washington, D.C., have been applying for Social Security on behalf of foster youth in their care who are eligible for death, disability or veterans’ benefits. The agencies often keep the money, often without notifying the children, their family members or lawyers. ...

“Out of curiosity, I called them to find out what happened to my benefits when I was in foster care,” Stolz-Silvis said. “The person on the other end of the line told me they were not allowed to give me that information.”

In recent months, The Marshall Project and NPR have heard from dozens of former foster youth who described similar failed efforts to learn whether a state or local agency had applied to become their “representative payee,” allowing the agency to receive their federal benefits, a process permitted by federal regulations. ...

In an email, Darren Lutz, a spokesperson for the Social Security Administration, said that for those inquiring about past benefits: “We maintain records on the benefits we have paid and can answer their questions.”  ...

Jayden Kiley was 17 and in foster care when her mother died, and she became eligible for death benefits from Social Security. But for eight months, between October 2019 and July 2020, she said, nobody told her about the benefits — or that her mother had even died. She found that out from a sibling.

“I didn’t know any of this,” Kiley said.

For two years, Kiley tried to get information from Social Security about her benefits, but she said that a representative told her that every time she called she was put at the bottom of a waitlist, so she stopped calling for a while. Eventually she found out the amount due to her is about $8,500, but said she hasn’t received any of it. ...

    In case you're wondering, those who were in foster care are definitely entitled to information on what happened to any Social Security benefits they were entitled to as a minor but they aren't entitled to get the money back if it was paid to a foster care agency unless there was some unusual situation such as a child coming out of foster care but the foster care agency mistakenly continuing to receive payments from Social Security.

Waiting In The Heat In Louisiana

     KNOE in Monroe, LA has a report on the lines outside their local Social Security field office. Note that the TV station displays the then current temperature in the lower right hand corner of the screen.