Understaffing Strains Social Security

[Demeter]

Source: Washington Post


By Stephen Barr
Wednesday, July 25, 2007; D01


Staffing at the Social Security Administration will soon be at its lowest level since 1974. The number of disability claims waiting for hearing decisions is at an all-time high...The drop in staffing and budget constraints have led to crowded waiting rooms and jammed telephone lines at many field offices. For every two field employees who retire or quit, Social Security replaces one....Congress is trying to address the problems. The House Appropriations Committee has recommended that Social Security receive $100 million more than the White House requested, and the Senate Appropriations Committee has proposed a $125 million increase.

Social Security staffing will have declined by 4,000 positions over two years ending Oct. 1, and the proposed congressional funding should allow the agency to hire 1,000 employees in the next year, Warsinskey said...But the new hires would make only a small dent in the workload. The agency has a huge backlog of disability claims, with some applicants waiting three or four years for decisions, Rep. Michael R. McNulty (D-N.Y.) said during a House floor discussion of Social Security funding.

Employees also have been given extra work by Congress, such as making Medicare subsidy determinations for prescription drugs and imposing tighter requirements for obtaining or replacing Social Security cards...
Partly because of budget constraints, Social Security is closing field offices that serve areas with stable or shrinking populations. Offices are closing in California, Connecticut, New York, Texas and Pennsylvania, Skwierczynski said.

Michael J. Astrue, the Social Security commissioner, has said that inadequate funding since 2001 is largely to blame for staffing and workload problems. He recently told Congress that the agency was addressing workload issues, including the disability claims backlog...The agency's problems could become more serious in the next few years, as millions of baby boomers apply for retirement benefits and file disability claims...And, Social Security itself has its share of baby boomers nearing retirement. About 41 percent of claims representatives, a key part of the agency's workforce, will be eligible to retire by 2010, according to the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/24/AR2007072401993.html

[rodeodance]

1. "waiting three or four years for decisions,"---my god, this NO way treat people!!

[rodeodance]

2. 'inadequate funding since 2001'

[shanti]

21. how's that for timing?

2001....

[datadiva]

3. This is going to affect me personally

I am going to file for disability. I am already on State disability and have been waiting to file. Holy crap, I could end up on the street. I worked my whole life paying in to this program and now I'll have to wait three or four years? I am scared shitless by this.

[nealmhughes]

6. The system is wicked, and one is not at the point of obvious death, you will be denied.

Then you appeal. You will go before an administrative law judge, and probably be denied, and will be told you can be a WalMart greeter or gas station attendent. Then you appeal and bring suit in the federal court. Then you wait a year to hear.

Meanwhile, you have had no income and no insurance as the COBRA which you had after you stopped working is too expensive to continue, what with no income.

Then you usually either recover or else fall into a deep depression at the way you were treated, and tearfully sobbing, "Bbbbut I paid in since I was 18 years old and even when in college worked and paid my taxes. . ." falls upon deaf ears.

When in theory it is to be a fact finding exploration, the law judges use it as practice for belittlement and discounting of all medical and other testimony, using their own "experts" who find that you fall just one "point" away from being disabled. . . which means you aren't.

They will ask the most stupid questions such as, "Do you prepare your own meals?" as if a stroke victim cannot still cook, and fatigue from the anti-death drugs one is taking will be pshawed away. It is truly a farce.

I was told that it was my own fault that I quit my job, even though it was due to a brain infection that left me dazed and confused and paranoid and delusional. MY FAULT?! Even though every job I had ever had to that date said that I was an integral part of the team and a hard worker who lived for his job? Yep.

Good luck. Just remember that we have a "kinder gentler machine gun hand" for the working man. Evidently, those of us who trusted FDR are in error and should have been wiser and played craps with the stock market. . .

My own case: application for SSDI in January 2005, to the circuit court April 2007. Decision not to be made in most likelihood until October 2007. Meanwhile my distaste for government has been accentuated and all I had thought true about the US is proven false. Oh, yeah, I'm political now.

[Pastiche423]

15. Compare your case w/mine...

In 1993, I applied for SSDI due to an injury (TBI) that caused permanent paralysis.

After completing the application, I had to see one of their doctors and one of their shrinks. Each doctor's visit lasted no longer than five minutes.

I did not need an attorney.

Four months later, I got my 1st check. It included the back pay from the time my application was filed.

I was supposed to get yearly recertifications that I was still disabled. It's been fourteen years and I've had one recertification.

The difference in our two cases, is the administration under which we applied.

I am so very sorry this is happening to you. It is un-American.

[Progressive_In_NC]

20. We rolled my dad in there on a wheelchair.....

A lady before him with a lawyer and a letter from a State Rep got disability for having an anxiety disorder. The lady after him got disability for hypertension. My dad was denied three times after having a tumor the size of a baseball removed from the base of his neck and being unable to stand walk or sit for more than 30 minutes at a time.

The system sucks. It took a letter from (yuck) Jesse Helms to finally get him into the program. Otherwise, he'd still be trying I think 10 years later.

[Massachusetts]

4. And who has been in charge since 2001?

"funding since 2001 is largely to blame for staffing and workload problems."

This is an effort by Bu$hco to try and prove that SS is inadequate and ineffective.Gee, we better do something about that and streamline it, like offer privatization to those who choose it.

[madrchsod]

5. these people contribute nothing to the fatherland....

they are expendable

[brentspeak]

7. It's not "understaffing"; it's DELIBERATE understaffing

Part of the Bush/Cheney/Rove plan to destroy Social Security.

[devilgrrl]

9. Ding ding ding ding

We have a winner!


You can say that again brentspeak!

[sarcasmo]

8. This 39 year old knows it won't be available when I am 65 if I make it that far.

[CANDO]

10. Only if you allow it. Don't fall for their propaganda.

They've been drumming this into the younger generations for a reason. So they buy into the logic that it won't be there for them. Baloney! Demand it to be there for your generation.

[UpInArms]

13. here's the retirement age chart

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/retire2/agereduction.htm

[sarcasmo]

14. You don't think the Government isn't going to up the age limit in the next 25 years?

[UpInArms]

19. personal opinion - short and sweet - yes

maybe not so sweet - with the assistance to the tobacco industry and the corporate food industry (think ADM, ConAgra, et al) they are hoping that you live less long and will never collect anyway.

:hi:

[mainer]

11. Norquist did say he wanted to drown gov't in the bathtub

I'd say the baby's drowning even as we speak.

[lovuian]

12. Bush is purposely grounding the government to a halt on

any services and feeding his war machine

[Hekate]

16. All is going according to plan, Herr Fuehrer. nt

[skids]

17. Oh, that reminds me of yet another shrub impeachable offense...

"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, <...> shall not be questioned" -- 14th amendment

"Although Sec. 4 \u201cwas undoubtedly inspired by the desire to put beyond question the obligations of the Government issued during the Civil War, its language indicates a broader connotation. . . . \u2018he validity of the public debt\u2019. . . whatever concerns the integrity of the public obligations,\u201d and applies to government bonds issued after as well as before adoption of the Amendment.74" -- CRS annotated constitution

"A lot of people in America think there is a trust \u2014 that we take your money in payroll taxes and then we hold it for you and then when you retire, we give it back to you. But that\u2019s not the way it works. There is no trust fund -- just IOUs that I saw firsthand." -- dubya, trying to sell SS privatization.

"The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article." -- 14th ammendment again.

http://www.dccc.org/stakeholder/archives/002556.html
http://www.polianna.com/2005/04/08.myths.soc-sec.shtml

[dollie300]

18. Succession planning was a big part the SSA under the Clinton administration.

I worked there then and some really good customer service changes were made and the processing of area of SS were revamped with very favorable results. The end of the first term of the Clinton administration oversaw many, many good government reforms....then the Republicans gained control and everthing became about the bottom line and most favored contract status. Career employees were marginalized in favor of political appointees and succession planning became null and void. Excellent employees couldn't wait until retirement eligiability, many left and not only in the SSA but all across government. Under the Republicans the Clinton/Gore mantra of "putting people first" became "putting Monica first" and the rest of the story you know.