Hear From The Acting Commissioner

     From the Urban Institute:

Join the Urban Institute for a conversation with Kilolo Kijakazi, acting Social Security Administration (SSA) commissioner, and Sarah Rosen Wartell, president of the Urban Institute. They will discuss the challenges and opportunities facing SSA. In 2023, SSA will administer benefits and payments for over 70 million people, and Social Security will cover about 181 million workers and their families. 

Following the conversation with Kijakazi, an expert panel will discuss challenges facing Social Security retirement and disability programs. Researchers will present policy options that could promote equity and bolster the financial security of retirees, people with disabilities, and their families in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. ...

    You can attend this by Zoom. It's at 2:00 Eastern Time on Tuesday, April 11.

Video CEs To Continue On Limited Basis

     Prior to the Covid pandemic, the Social Security Administration used video technology to perform consultative medical examinations (CEs) -- to help evaluate disability claims -- on a very limited basis. For understandable reasons, the agency has made much more extensive use of video technology for CEs during the pandemic but the pandemic is waning. The President has declared that the Public Health Emergency will end on May 11, 2023. Social Security has just issued an Emergency Message detailing how it will use video technology for CEs after May 11. They will use video technology only for psychiatric CEs, psychological CEs without standardized testing and speech and language CEs. The claimant must agree to the video CE.

Why Did Anybody Ever Take This Seriously?

    From Semafor:

The closely watched effort by a club of Senate moderates to craft a bipartisan Social Security reform plan may be stalling out for the foreseeable future. ...

No Democrats so far are willing to sign on as original co-sponsors of a potential final proposal, despite the fact that Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia, D-Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, another independent who caucuses with Democrats, form part of the bipartisan gang. Both are up for re-election in 2024. ...

    And no Republican would have been a sponsor for a bill that increases taxes so the whole thing was a waste of time. Nobody in Congress is willing to admit they favor a "bipartisan" approach. Nobody.

Any Politician Who Supports Raising Full Retirement Age Is Way Out On A Political Limb

     From The Hill:

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans said in a new poll that they would oppose the federal government raising the full retirement age for Social Security from 67 to 70. 

In a new Quinnipiac University poll published Thursday 78 percent of respondents said they would oppose the move, while 17 percent of those surveyed said they would support it. 

In the survey, 77 percent of Republican respondents said they would oppose raising the full retirement age for social security, while 81 percent of Democrat respondents and 75 percent of independent respondents also agree with the same sentiment.  ...

Members Of Congress Press For Social Security To Receive An Adequate Operating Budget

     One hundred and six (if I've counted correctly) members of Congress have signed a letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee having jurisdiction over Social Security asking that the Social Security Administration receive the full funding requested by the Biden Administration for the next fiscal year.

Fewer Applications Where There Are Fewer Field Offices

     From Does the Drop in Child SSI Applications and Awards During COVID Vary by Locality? a study by Michael Levere, Jeffrey Hemmeter, and David Wittenburg:

Child applications and awards for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) fell sharply at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cumulative applications from April to September 2020 were about 30 percent lower than applications over the same period in 2019. Yet the decline varied substantially across local areas. In this paper, we explore the factors correlated with the change in applications and awards at the beginning of the pandemic.

The paper found that:

• The restriction of in-person services at all Social Security Administration (SSA) field offices in March 2020 played an important role in changes in SSI applications; counties with their own field offices, where the change in service availability is largest, experienced larger declines.
• The pandemic’s myriad disruptions to social and service networks through which people may learn about SSI also contributed to declining applications, as declines were largest in counties with more children that participated in SSI before the pandemic and in counties where more people had a self-identified disability.
• New macroeconomic stabilization policies such as economic impact payments and supplemental unemployment insurance payments also appear to have led to fewer child SSI applications. Counties with larger employment reductions early in the pandemic, which likely benefited most from these stabilization policies, subsequently also had fewer SSI applications.

Trustees Report Released

     From a press release:

The Social Security Board of Trustees today released its annual report on the financial status of the Social Security Trust Funds.  The combined asset reserves of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance (OASI and DI) Trust Funds are projected to become depleted in 2034, one year earlier than projected last year, with 80 percent of benefits payable at that time. 

The OASI Trust Fund is projected to become depleted in 2033, one year sooner than last year’s estimate, with 77 percent of benefits payable at that time.  The DI Trust Fund asset reserves are not projected to become depleted during the 75-year projection period. ...

What Is This Supposed To Prove?

     From a notice posted today by the Social Security Administration in the Federal Register:

We are announcing a demonstration project for the Social Security Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program under title XVI of the Social Security Act (Act). In this project, we will test the effect of providing guaranteed income to adults with cancer in active treatment to learn about its interaction with the SSI program. We will modify the program rules that apply to certain project participants who apply for and who already receive SSI payments under the title XVI program.