Appropriations Bill Advances

     The Senate Appropriations Committee is working on the FY 2024 Labor-HHS Appropriations bill. Their Labor-HHS subcommittee reported out a bill that includes a $292 million increase over the FY 2023 appropriations. This is lousy but ahead of the House bill which included a small cut in the appropriation for Social Security. The House bill is preposterous for reasons that go well beyond Social Security. It's no starting point for negotiations.

    Keep in mind that there will probably be an "emergency" appropriations bill, probably early next year. Extra money for the Social Security Administration in that bill is a distinct possibility.

Security Guard Assaulted With Knife -- But It May Have Been A Personal Matter

     From WKBN:

A security guard at the Neshannock [PA] Social Security office is recovering after police said he was attacked with a knife.

It happened just after 12:30 p.m. Wednesday.  

On the way to the scene, police learned the suspect was walking away from the plaza. They arrested Glenn Samuels Junior without incident.

The victim was sent to the hospital with lacerations to his head.

Samuels was arraigned on three counts of aggravated assault.

Police said the victim and suspect are related.

Martin O'Malley's Positions On Social Security

     Back in 2015 Martin O'Malley was running for President. He didn't get very far but he did take these positions on Social Security:

• Increase Social Security benefits. O'Malley proposed increasing minimum Social Security benefits to 125% above the poverty line and raising benefits for low- and minimum-wage workers, who the governor claims currently don't receive enough benefits and often don't have any retirement savings at all.
• Raise the cap on the payroll tax for workers making more than $250,000 a year. O'Malley claimed that raising the payroll tax — along with raising the minimum wage and enacting immigration reform — will pay for many of his proposed reforms.  ...
  

    Please remember that as Commissioner, O'Malley would have no ability to adopt such plans. Congress has to do that. As Commissioner, he probably couldn't even lobby for such plans. That seems to be an unwritten rule these days. It's not always been that way, though. I've read the autobiography of Arthur Altmeyer, the first Commissioner of Social Security and an extremely important figure in the history of Social Security in this country. As Commissioner, Altmeyer was engaged in lobbying Congress almost full time. Other people were actually running the agency. By the way, I do not recommend reading the Altmeyer autobiography. It's really dry and tedious.

     Also by the way, the White House has lined up quite a number of endorsements for O’Malley’s nomination but none from Republicans.

O'Malley Nominated To Be Commissioner Of Social Security

     From the Washington Post:

President Biden announced Wednesday that he will nominate former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley to lead the Social Security Administration, as the agency faces enhanced scrutiny over new management failures.

O’Malley, who ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, would oversee an embattled agency...

Fee Payments Have Declined

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a report on payments to attorneys and others for representing claimants before the agency. The data was already available but they've added charts. Below are a couple of them.

Can't Say Whether Some Automation Projects Have Helped

      From Manual Processes for Resource-intensive Workloads, a report by Social Security's Office of  Inspector General

Our objective was to determine whether the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) automation enhancements (1) reduced manual processing for resource-intensive workloads and (2) were cost-effective. ...

SSA’s automation enhancements reduced the need for manual processing for some workloads from FYs 2019 to 2021. These initiatives aimed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of SSA’s operations; however, they were not always immediately cost-effective. Additionally, SSA could not identify cost or savings estimates for some enhancements; thus, we could not determine whether they were cost-effective.  ......

Deaths During Waiting Period

     From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (footnotes omitted):

This report provides information on 610,219 Disability Insurance (DI) beneficiaries whose claims were approved at the initial claim level by various state disability determination services (DDS) during Calendar Years (CY) 2020 and 2021. In each case, disability examiners (1) determined the beneficiaries had disabling conditions that were permanent and that medical improvement was not expected, and (2) established a 7-year medical review diary. As of December 22, 2022, SSA had terminated the DI benefit payment status of only 319 (.05 percent) beneficiaries after determining they were no longer disabled. However, SSA had terminated the payment status of 75,857 beneficiaries who died after SSA approved their claims, including 4,444 beneficiaries who died during the 5-month DI waiting period. ...

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CCD Comments On Proposed Regs

  

   The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD), a large umbrella organization of non-profits who aid the disabled, has filed comments on Social Security's proposed changes in its regulations on manner of appearance at hearings. Their most important comment is to oppose changing the default manner of holding hearings from in-person to telephone. Now, if you don't specify, you get an in-person hearing. The proposed regulation would flip that.