The Social Security Administration When Trump Was President

     From the Revolving Door Project:

... Former President Trump filled top roles at the SSA with people actively hostile to Social Security beneficiaries, as well as campaign donors with no real experience relevant to the agency.

 For the role of SSA commissioner, Trump nominated Andrew Saul, a GOP mega donor and “one-time handbag king” with tens of millions in assets. Saul was not entirely lacking in public service experience, however. While serving as the vice chairman of New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), he ran a short-lived congressional campaign in the run-up to the 2008 presidential cycle, but he dropped out of the race four days after the New York Times revealed he had accepted donations from companies bidding on MTA contracts—potentially a violation of state ethics rules.

Saul’s most relevant experience was as George W. Bush’s Chair of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which manages the retirement savings plan for federal workers, the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). But the TSP is much more similar to a private 401(k) plan than publicly-funded Social Security benefits, which led advocates like Nancy Altman of Social Security Works to point out at the time of his nomination that while Saul’s experience with the TSP “was undoubtedly valuable, it has little value to helping him run the Social Security system, unless he seeks to privatize the program.”

When President Biden fired Saul, an action he should have taken on day one but instead held off for months, Saul embarrassed himself by calling his firing a “palace coup.” He argued that his termination was illegal—despite the Supreme Court clearly ruling that the President has the authority to fire the Commissioner.

Trump appointed Mark Warshawsky to be Deputy Commissioner for Retirement and Disability Policy, despite his record of hostility to Social Security. At the Department of the Treasury, Warshawsky worked on President George W. Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security, which later earned him a nomination to the Social Security Advisory Board. In 2016, in the midst of stints at various private companies specializing in retirement income, Warshawsky published an article peddling the lie that SSDI is rife with “waste and fraud,” and bloated by people who could be working. (In reality, even the austerity-minded Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget acknowledges that fraud is “less common in the SSDI program than many believe” and “not a major cost driver for the program.”)

Several other papers Warshawsky wrote while at the Koch-funded Mercatus Center expressed skepticism about whether or not the SSA’s extremely stringent standards for assessing disability were in fact too lenient. After his SSA role, Warshawsky joined the American Enterprise Institute, a longtime proponent of cuts to Social Security and privatization.

When SSA’s Inspector General position opened up, Trump nominated Gail Ennis to the role. Inspectors General are supposed to function as independent watchdogs, but seemingly her only qualification was being a campaign donor (including up through August 2017). In her first financial disclosure, she disclosed receiving a salary of over $2 million working for WilmerHale, representing three massive banks and one hedge fund—Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, HSBC, and Ken Griffin’s Citadel. ...

2.5% COLA

      The Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) effective for 2025 is 2.5%.

Listen To The Voters Part II

      From Data For Progress

I Have Been Seeing More Of This Problem In The Last Year

      From a recent report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG):

… [W]e reviewed a sample of 274 cases from a population of 1.5 million recipients SSA placed in non-payment status codes from March 2020 through May 2022 after determining the recipients failed to provide requested information or take requested actions. Additionally, we identified 61,176 recipients who were placed into 7 non­payment status codes during periods SSA had prohibited their use. 

Results 

SSA did not act in accordance with its policy and procedures when it processed SSI ineligibility determinations and suspensions based on applicants’, recipients’, or representative payees’ failure to provide information. SSA’s employees did not complete all required steps for 156 (57 percent) of the 274 sampled cases placed in non-payment status, which led to 96 of the 156 recipients not receiving $203,133 in SSI payments they should have received. Projecting these results to our population, we estimate SSA did not follow its policy before it denied or suspended SSI payments for 871,330 recipients. Of these recipients, we estimate 536,203 did not receive $647 million in SSI payments they should have received. …

     It’s way too easy for field office employees to deny on the basis of failure to provide information without making any serious effort to contact the claimant.

Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Conn Case

      The Supreme Court has declined to hear one of the Conn cases. The issue in this case is the statutory provision requiring that the agency act “immediately” when it detects fraud. In the Conn cases the agency didn’t act for 15 years. Did this failure give affected claimants who were not themselves guilty of fraud (their lawyer, Eric Conn, was the one who did that) a get out of jail free card? The lower courts didn’t buy that argument and the Supreme Court has refused to hear the case.

ALJ Hiring

      Social Security has posted an announcement that it is accepting applications for Administrative Law Judge positions. The announcement is only open until Wednesday.

It’s Hard To Administer SSI

      From a recent report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:

… SSA’s SSI financial account validation process for applicants and recipients who alleged having less than $400 in financial accounts did not always lead to accurate SSI determinations. SSA’s process led it to make inaccurate SSI resource determinations for 27 of the 140 recipients reviewed. Based on these determinations, SSA paid the recipients $130,430 in SSI payments they were not eligible to receive. Based on these sample results, we estimate SSA incorrectly made SSI resource determinations that led to 198,960 recipients receiving $718 million in SSI payments for which they were not eligible because applicants/recipients under­reported their financial account balances by $100 or more. 

SSA’s policy did not require that it validate the recipients’ financial account balances because they alleged they had less than $400 in liquid resources. The AFI reports we requested identified 102 of 140 applicants/recipients under-reported their financial account balances by $100 or more. Additionally, the AFI reports showed 28 of the applicants/recipients owned financial accounts of which SSA was unaware. Based on these sample results, we estimate 800,140 applicants/recipients under-reported their financial account balances by $100 or more, with 219,640 failing to report all the financial accounts they owned to SSA. ..

 

Rep Payee Problems

     From a recent report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:

SSA did not ensure employees made complete and accurate capability determinations for disabled beneficiaries who previously had payees.  We estimate, for approximately 19,000 disabled beneficiaries who previously had payees, there was no evidence SSA determined the beneficiaries were capable of managing, or directing the management of, their benefits.  In addition, there was no evidence SSA performed proper follow-up development.  SSA paid approximately $887 million in benefits directly to these beneficiaries without evidence to show they were capable of, or were, using the benefits to meet their basic needs.  Finally, we estimate SSA did not properly document capability determinations for approximately 6,700 beneficiaries. 

This occurred because SSA did not have effective system controls to ensure employees properly documented their capability determinations.  Additionally, SSA did not have controls to ensure employees authorized direct payments to incapable beneficiaries in accordance with SSA’s policy and properly performed the follow-up reviews after they made interim direct payment to those