Trump Administration Says ALJs May Be Fired At Will

      From the New York Times:

The Trump administration told Congress on Thursday that it believed President Trump had the constitutional power to summarily fire administrative law judges at will, despite a statute that protects such officials from being removed without a cause like misconduct. …

To insulate the officials from political interference, Congress enacted a statute that says disciplinary action, including firings, may be taken against such judges “only for good cause established and determined by the Merit Systems Protection Board on the record after opportunity for hearing before the board.”

Ms. Harris’s letter to Congress also brought to wider attention that the Justice Department had said it would no longer defend the constitutionality of the law protecting administrative law judges in a little-noticed Feb. 11 filing in an appeals court case. …

     The Social Security Administration employs the vast majority of federal ALJs. 

The Rise Of Dudek

    From the Wall Street Journal:

Leland Dudek had spent more than a decade at the Social Security Administration, including time overseeing a fraud investigation office, but was largely unknown to senior executives at the agency.

Just last week, in a now-deleted LinkedIn post, Dudek said that he was put on administrative leave for cooperating with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

“I confess. I bullied agency executives, shared executive contact information, and circumvented the chain of command to connect DOGE with the people who get stuff done,” he wrote in the post, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. …

[Michelle] King was informed in an email Sunday morning that Dudek had been elevated to acting commissioner and she decided to retire from the agency after three decades, some of the people said.

Dudek’s elevation to acting commissioner followed a tumultuous period in which members of Social Security’s leadership team grew concerned about the manner in which he was helping DOGE personnel, some of the people said. They had received information that Dudek had been sharing information with nonagency personnel beginning in December, before Trump’s inauguration, and heard complaints from career staff who said he had pressured them to help DOGE representatives, these people said. …

Only 41 Employees Given Job Ultimatum

      From Government Executive:

The Social Security Administration on Thursday gave 41 probationary employees in the agency’s headquarters and regional offices the choice to be reassigned to frontline agency work or to get caught up in the ongoing governmentwide purge of recently hired or promoted workers….

Rich Couture, spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees’ Social Security General Committee, which represents more than 40,000 SSA employees, confirmed the initiative and said while the union appreciates giving probationary workers who weren’t subject to the agency’s exemptions a chance to stay employed, the agency needs more workers, not fewer.

“We are grateful that the probationary employees on the front line were not terminated,” he said. “With 10,000 new beneficiaries each day and a 50-year low in staffing, now is the time to be adding to our frontline staff . . . Should all [of the 41 probationary employees] accept reassignment, we still need to prevent attrition and add 20,0000 new hires to be able to deliver Americans their earned benefits efficiently and accurately.”

Can Anyone Confirm This?

 

We’ve Got To Get All Those 150 Year Old People Off Benefits

      The Trump Administration is asserting that there are literally tens of millions of people receiving Social Security benefits even though they’re way over 100 years old -- 150 years old in many cases! This is a disturbing allegation.

     I think that Social Security has to treat this seriously. The thing to do is to look at what private enterprise does to prevent fraud committed by crooks using the identity of deceased individuals.

     Private enterprise, particularly financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies, use a database of deceased Americans to prevent fraud. It’s called the Death Master File. It’s state of the art and all financial institutions rely on the Death Master File.

     Social Security ought to use the Death Master File to prevent fraud.

     I’m sure that most of my readers know I’m being facetious. That state of the art Death Master File used widely by financial institutions was created and is maintained by the Social Security Administration which certainly uses it to cut off benefits to those who have died. Social Security isn’t beset by fraud committed using the identities of the deceased. It’s the exact opposite. It’s literally the very model of how to prevent it!

     I wonder if Fiserv, Frank Bisignano’s old company, uses the Death Master File.

DOGE Claims To Have Already Saved Over $232 Million At Social Security But That Is Disputed

      Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” is claiming to have already saved over $232 million at Social Security, primarily by cancelling a contract with Leidos, Inc. Social Security has been contracting with Leidos for more than thirty years for IT support.

     NPR, however, is reporting that the Leidos contract with Social Security hasn’t actually been terminated.

Dudek Speaks

     A press release:

Statement from Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner, about Commitment to Agency Transparency and Protecting Benefits and Information

“I am honored and humbled to be appointed Social Security's Acting Commissioner pending Senate confirmation of Frank Bisignano to be SSA's next Commissioner. I accepted the position because I strongly believe in the agency's mission and the hardworking and dedicated employees who serve America.

Openness, transparency, and accountability are tenants of good government and demonstrating them begins with me. To that end, I want to share several points to reassure the public and our employees that I will continue SSA's history of transparency and protecting benefits and information.

I have experienced firsthand the impact that Social Security benefits have on family's lives. Since joining SSA in 2009, I have had the opportunity to work across multiple parts of SSA, and especially appreciated my experiences working alongside frontline employees in the Cambridge, MA field office.

Transparency begins with me: My first call as Acting Commissioner was to our Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to provide them an opportunity to oversee and review any and all agency activities, including my actions past, present, and future. I trust in the People to be informed, and I am making available my agency personnel and performance files to the OIG.

The law matters and we will follow it: I have invited the Government Accountability Office, the non-partisan and independent agency that works for Congress, to observe how we conduct agency business.

Good government means finding ways to do better: The Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, is a critical part of President Trump's commitment to identifying fraud, waste, and abuse, and better ways for the government to function to support its people. I want to be very clear about the DOGE personnel who are now working at Social Security.

• Our continuing priority is paying beneficiaries the right amount at the right time, and providing other critical services people rely on from us.
• DOGE personnel CANNOT make changes to agency systems, benefit payments, or other information. They only have READ access.
• DOGE personnel do not have access to data related to a court ordered temporary restraining order, current or future.
• DOGE personnel must follow the law and if they violate the law they will be referred to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution.

I also want to acknowledge recent reporting about the number of people older than age 100 who may be receiving benefits from Social Security. The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.

I am confident that with DOGE's help and the commitment of our executive team and workforce, that Social Security will continue to deliver for the American people.”

    Tenants? Tut, tut, tut.

Very Corrupt

      Donald Trump quoted by Aaron Rupar:

We have a very corrupt country. Very corrupt country. And it's a sad thing to say ... if you take all of those millions of people off social security, all of the sudden we have a very powerful social security.