Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing

     From Reuters:

A Republican U.S. senator's accusation on Thursday that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had lied during a tussle over the future of the Social Security program obscured behind-the-scenes talks between the White House and lawmakers that have been underway for months, according to sources. 

The war of words came in a Senate Finance Committee hearing when Republican Senator Bill Cassidy asked Yellen if Democratic President Joe Biden was aware that Social Security funds will run out within the next decade unless Congress shores up the popular retirement program with 66 million beneficiaries.

When Yellen responded that Biden "stands ready to work" with lawmakers, Cassidy shot back, "That's a lie because when a bipartisan group of senators has repeatedly requested to meet with him about Social (Security) ... we have not heard anything on our requests."

For several months now, Cassidy and independent Senator Angus King, who caucuses with Democrats, have tried to address Social Security underfunding as approximately 10,000 baby boomers retire every day. ...

 Cassidy and King are leading a group of workhorse senators that include Republican Mike Rounds, Democrat Tim Kaine and independent Kyrsten Sinema. ...

"It's going to be tough. I don't think we should sugarcoat it. But there are serious conversations in the Senate ... on a package that would improve Social Security's finances," said Shai Akabas, economic policy director at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a centrist think tank in Washington. ...

    The Republican plan is to have a very few Republicans work with a very few Democrats to come up with a wildly unpopular plan that includes an increase in full retirement age. Republicans will provide only a few votes to pass the plan. It will only be passed if Biden strong arms Democrats and probably not even then. Republicans will then run against Democrats on the issue.

    Biden won't fall for this.

    By the way, I'm sure that the Democrats involved with these negotiations are well intentioned but they're fools. This is a dead end.

Probably No Big COLA This Year

     From CBS:

Seniors and millions of others on Social Security get an annual cost-of-living adjustment (or COLA) that's geared toward aligning their monthly checks with inflation. Next year, that COLA could be 3% — or even lower — based on recent inflationary trends, according to an early estimate from the Senior Citizens League. 

The estimate is based on the 12-month average rate for the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), a basket of goods and services typically bought by workers, according to Mary Johnson, the Social Security and Medicare policy analyst at the Senior Citizens League.  ...

What's Going On At OIG?

     The leadership of Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG), primarily the Inspector General, Gail Ennis, has come under fire recently. 

    It's far from all that OIG does but they issue various reports, mostly about audits they have conducted. Here are the number of audits for recent years:

• 2020 -- 55
• 2021 -- 47
• 2022 -- 38
• 2023 (so far) -- 1
  

OHO Workload Report

 

Click on image to view full size

More On President's Proposed Budget

     Some highlights from the President's proposed administrative budget for the Social Security Administration:

• Office of Inspector General would get only about a 5% increase in its operating budget. The rest of Social Security would get about 10%.
• "The Budget includes an increase of $60 million for teleservice centers to reduce wait times by over 40 percent and substantially reduce busy rates from 15 percent to 3 percent."
• "Addressing Processing Center Backlogs. The Budget includes an increase of over $75 million for PCs to handle more work."
• "To address the large backlog of initial disability claims and the additional claims we expect to receive in FY 2024, the Budget expands processing capacity by increasing staffing at the DDS offices. As a result, we expect the DDSs to process over 400,000 more initial disability claims and over 200,000 more reconsiderations than in FY 2023."
• Average processing time for initial disability claims would go down from 220 days to 195 days.
• Average processing time for reconsideration disability claims would go down from 224 days to 193 days.
• Average processing time for hearings would go down from 475 days to 320 days.
  

And remember, this is only a proposal. Congress must act on it and Republicans are saying they want dramatic cuts in agency budgets.

We’re Not This Easily Fooled

      Yuval Levy of the right wing American Enterprise Institute has written a op ed piece for the New York Times that starts out with a beautifully phrased defense of Social Security and Medicare as “an act of intergenerational gratitude and generosity” that he regards as laudable and necessary but then ends by endorsing a plan to end Social Security as we have known it and substituting a universal benefit set just above the poverty line. He doesn’t even suggest the possibility of survivor and disability benefits. The right wing never discusses survivor and disability benefits. They don’t fit into their Social Security “reform” schemes. Levy goes on about how a universal benefit set just above the poverty line plan lifts a few seniors out of poverty. He doesn’t mention that this plan would mean a dramatic cut in benefits for most. His idea for a voluntary defined contribution plan on top of his version of “Social Security” hardly changes things. At best, that’s a retirement crap shoot compared with the actual “security” in Social Security not to mention that a vast number, probably most, workers wouldn’t make the voluntary contributions. 

     In its own way this may be the most disgusting piece of right wing anti-Social Security propaganda I’ve ever seen. He must think that we’re all fools. This idiotic plan would destroy Social Security and lead to riots in the streets. Levy can dress up his rhetoric with paeans about intergenerational obligations all he wants but his hostility to the very concept of Social Security is obvious. The plan is simple. Transform “Social Security” into something that is widely despised, then end it. That’s the aim of every right wing plan for Social Security “reform.”

Faultless In Seattle

      The Seattle Times has a feature where readers can share their rants and raves. Here’s a recent one:

RAVE to the Social Security office downtown. Everyone in the building and the office was very kind, helpful and pleasant from the security people at the main door to the security in the Social Security office itself to the clerk in the office who handled my problem. The officer at the front door even saved my glove that I dropped when I went into the building to give to me when I left. A special thank you to all of the folks that I met there that day.

President’s Proposed Budget

     The President’s proposed budget proposes an appropriation for Social Security’s operating budget of $15.5 billion, an increase of nearly $1.4 billion, from the current Fiscal Year. This would be effective with the beginning of FY 2024 on October 1, 2023, if enacted, but Congressional Republicans say they favor massive spending cuts, even though they do not specify what they want cut.