A map showing geographic variation in representation of Social Security disability claimants at the initial level from Legal Represetation (sic) in Disability Claims a presentation by Hilary Hoynes, of the University of California, Berkeley, Nicole Maestas, of Harvard University and Alexander Strand of the Social Security Administration at the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium:
From a letter from Senator Ron Wyden to John Roberts, the Chief Justice:
I write with concern that federal courts are failing in their legal obligations to protect Americans’ private information, putting Americans at needless risk of identify theft, stalking and other harms. Each year, federal courts make available to the public court filings containing tens of thousands of Americans’ personal information, such as their Social Security Numbers (SSNs) and dates of birth. However, federal court rules — required by Congress — mandate that court filings be scrubbed of personal information before they are publicly available. These rules are not being followed, the courts are not enforcing them, and as a result, cach year tens of thousands of Americans are exposed to needless privacy violations.
The Judicial Conference, the courts’ policy-making body, has known about this problem for at least a decade and has refused to act. …
The most recent report, which was provided to my office in draft form, says the Federal Judicial Center (FIC), the courts’ research arm, has twice studied the problem of personal data appearing in public court records, in 2010 and 2015, and in both cases found significant violations of the judiciary’s privacy rules. In the most recent study, the FIC examined 3.9 million court records filed duringa one month period in 2013. It found 5,437 of these documents included one or more SSNs. If these statistics are representative of the problem, it would mean that the courts have made available to the public roughly half a million documents containing personal data since 2015. …
I hope this isn’t happening in Social Security cases. Many, many years ago we used to put the claimant’s Social Security number in the case caption but those days are long gone.
Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has belatedly posted four reports for the time period of June and July. I had written recently about the lack of reports for that time period. Four is still far below what OIG had been averaging but better than nothing,
Here's a quote from one of those newly posted reports, The Social Security Administration’s Appeals Council Workloads:
In FY 2020, 76 AAJs [Administrative Appeals Judges] issued approximately 85,000 total dispositions. While 22 AAJs issued fewer than 500 dispositions, 4 issued more than 2,500, see Figure 6. The number of dispositions per AAJ ranged from 3 to 3,731, and the median number was 1,064 dispositions.
These files probably average around 1,000 pages now but one AAJ is carefully reviewing 3,731 of them a year? Yes, they have help but 3,731 in a year? Calling the Appeals Council a rubber stamp is an insult to rubber stamps.
An announcement from Social Security:
We have exciting news to share! We redesigned my Social Security!
It’s now easier for your clients who receive Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to do business with us online and find the information that they need.
With the new design, people who receive Social Security benefits or SSI are now able to update their telephone number online and see more information under the Benefits and Payments section. People who receive Social Security benefits can also change their address and direct deposit information under the My Profile tab.
While signed into their personal my Social Security account, your clients can continue to:
- Get their Benefit Verification or proof of income letter.
- Obtain replacement SSA-1099/SSA-1042S tax forms, if applicable.
- View their Social Security Statement.
- Request a replacement Social Security card.
Your clients can access their redesigned my Social Security account at www.ssa.gov/myaccount.
Now, if they'd just allow those who have pending disability claims to access their earnings records or file retirement claims ...
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!
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: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:
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.
