A 25% Reduction In Social Security's Operating Budget?

     The House Appropriations Committee has voted along party lines for Subcommittee allocations, that is the amount that each Subcommittee will have to allocate among the agencies within its purview. This is for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 appropriations bills. As the Consortium for Constituents with Disabilities (CCD) points out, the allocation for the Labor-HHS Subcommittee which has responsibility for the Social Security Administration's Limitation on Administrative Expenditures (LAE), the equivalent of an appropriation for an agency that takes its money from a trust fund, is 25% below the current FY. The Subcommittee can then allocate the pain among the agencies covered by the Labor-HHS appropriation bill.

    As you may recall, the President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives earlier agreed to overall budget limits that were only a little below the current fiscal year. So why is the Labor-HHS allocation so low? The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives decided that they weren't bound by their agreement with the President.

    A 25% reduction in Social Security's operating budget would mean massive RIFS at Social Security and an almost completely non-functional agency -- an unmanageable situation.

    It is far from clear that the House of Representatives could pass an FY 2024 Labor-HHS appropriation bill that is 25% lower than the current fiscal year. It certainly couldn't pass the Senate or receive the President's signature. So they would negotiate, right? The President has little incentive to negotiate with leaders who refuse to be bound by agreements they have made.

    We may be heading towards a year long Continuing Resolution (CR), which means that Social Security could spend money at the same rate as in FY 2023. There are worse things that could happen.

Catch 22

     Let's say you're developmentally disabled, meaning you've been disabled from birth. You start drawing SSI as a child due to your disability. You become 18 and Social Security does a review to see whether you're disabled under the adult standard and they decide you are. Then, a parent dies or goes on Social Security benefits when you're 21. That potentially entitles you to Disabled Adult Child (DAC) benefits on your parent's Social Security number since you became disabled before age 22. Shouldn't Social Security just put you on the DAC automatically? You've already been found disabled under the same standard. Under a new addition to Social Security's POMS manual, the answer is not so fast. They first want to make sure they can't find a way to cut you off the SSI benefits you're already drawing. So, if you're the claimant aren't you a little afraid you're going to lose your sole means of support if you file that DAC claim? But, if you don't file the DAC claim, you may lose your SSI because you refused to avail yourself of means of support other than SSI. Nice Catch 22 they've set up for you. That's what all this fancy talk about collateral estoppel is about, finding ways to cut claimants off benefits, or, really, finding ways to avoid collateral estoppel since that doctrine should help the claimant in this situation.

Happy July 4th!

 

Recognize the location?

Average Speed Of Telephone Answer

     From The Social Security Administration’s Telephone Service Disruptions, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

Click on image to view full size. Yes, it’s a confusing way to present the data. What were they thinking?

 

Complaints About Charges For SSN Verification

     From Federal News Network:

A federal service used by financial institutions to verify Social Security numbers, recently highlighted as a prime example for how the government could reduce improper payments and fraud, is at risk of a “death spiral” due to a steep increase in user fees, according to proponents of the system.

The Government Accountability Office is now conducting a review of the Social Security Administration’s electronic Consent Based Social Security Number Verification (eCBSV) program after lawmakers flagged concerns with cost overruns and price increases.

Meanwhile, it’s not clear whether eCBSV factors into a forthcoming SSA plan to make real-time Social Security number verification available to federal benefits programs. ...

When SSA launched eCBSV in 2020, SSA said it would charge new users a $3,693 administrative fee and returning users a $1,691 renewal fee. SSA also charged transaction fees, ranging from $400 for a user to submit up to 1,000 transactions, to $276,500 for users submitting between 200,000 and 50 million transactions.

Beginning in 2022, SSA eliminated the transaction fees, but began creating more tiers and increasing the transaction rates for high-volume users.

And as part of the most recent fee structure published in May, SSA raised the rates again for higher volume users. Those submitting between 15 million and 20 million cases will be subject to a $6.25 million annual fee; between 20 million and 25 million transactions will cost $7.25 million; and between 25 million and 75 million transactions will cost $8.25 million.

The new fee structure goes into effect in July.

The upshot, [Katie] Wechsler [of a group composed of banks, credit card companies and other large users of eCBSV] pointed out during last month’s hearing, is that a user submitting 20 million cases this year will pay 22 times what they were charged in 2021 for the same number of transactions. ...

An Extra $1.4 Billion, Please

     From Money:

Government agencies aren’t exactly known for their stellar customer service. People looking for help from the Social Security Administration (SSA), however, may have it particularly bad.

Average call wait times with the agency have more than doubled in a year, according to SSA data. Even worse, AARP, a leading critic of the SSA's customer service, says that the average amount of time for a Social Security disability claim to be processed has increased to 223 days — and that 10,000 people die every year while waiting for approval. ...

The SSA received a $785 million increase in administrative funding this fiscal year to revamp operations. Now AARP is campaigning for the agency to get another increase of $1.4 billion to address its woeful customer service. ...

Telephone Service Disruptions In 2021 And 2022

    From The Social Security Administration’s Telephone Service Disruptions, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

Click to view full size

OIG Report On Pandemic Effect On DDS Processing Of Disability Claims

     From a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) on the effects of the pandemic on processing of Social Security disability claims:

While SSA received fewer initial claims during the pandemic, it took the DDSs [Disability Determination Services] longer to process them than the year before. Before the pandemic, DDS’ average processing time for an initial claim was 95.5 days. This increased to 139.4 days and 135.5 days, respectively, during the first and second years of the pandemic. Numerous factors contributed to this:

• CEs - The number of CEs [Consultative Examinations] performed during the pandemic decreased, as SSA suspended in-person CEs for a period of time. Once DDSs resumed in-person CEs, they still had issues scheduling CEs because for example, (1) not all CE providers returned to conducting CEs and (2) claimants refused to attend in-person CEs because of fear of exposure to COVID-19.
• DDS Staffing and Training – About 4,000 DDS employees resigned or retired during the pandemic, but DDSs hired 4,305 employees during this same time. However, it takes a newly hired disability examiner an average of 2 years to become proficient at processing most initial claim workloads.
• Telework and Communication with Claimants – During the pandemic, most DDS employees teleworked, so the DDSs needed to adjust to how they processed certain workloads. SSA provided the DDSs with basic cellular telephones to communicate with claimants, but claimants were wary of answering the calls as the telephones’ caller identification did not show the incoming call was from a state agency.
• Policies and Procedures – During the pandemic, SSA updated policies and procedures on how the DDS should operate. The updates included combined instructions with the field office, which confused some DDS employees about what pertained specifically to DDS processes.