If Congress Wants Better Service At Social Security, It Needs To Give The Agency A Greater Operating Budget

     From the testimony of Chad M. Poist, Deputy Commissioner for Budget, Finance, and Management, Social Security Administration, before the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce

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Age At Which Workers Claim Social Security Retirement Benefits

      From The Motley Fool:

• Age 62: 29.3%
• Age 63: 7.4%
• Age 64: 8%
• Age 65: 12.7%
• Age 66: 24.7%
• Age 67: 3.9%
• Age 68: 2.3%
• Age 69: 2.1%
• Age 70 (or above): 9.6%

Dropped Calls

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

 

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. ...