From Government Executive:
... In a letter
to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., O’Malley
warned of dire consequences if SSA is flat-funded past September, as
proposed in the House GOP’s six-month continuing resolution. House
Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday cancelled a planned vote on the
measure, after dissent within his caucus threatened to derail its
passage.
“If enacted, a six-month CR without any additional
funding for the Social Security Administration would be devastating,”
O’Malley wrote. “We would be forced to implement a hiring freeze with
minimal exceptions. We would lose over 2,000 staff in the first half of
the year alone and reach a new 50-year staffing low by the end of
December. We would need to significantly reduce overtime to historically
low levels, decreasing processing capacity for our most critical
workloads.”
And in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, O’Malley laid out
how both the House and Senate funding proposals for SSA would fall short
of the agency’s needs. Under the House plan, employees would be
furloughed by 20 days, while the agency would see its headcount fall by
3,400 staff, not including the 1,500 decrease in staff at state
Disability Determination Services offices. And funding for the agency’s
IT infrastructure would be “barely” enough to “keep the lights on.” ...
