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The Social Security Administration needs $430 million beyond President Bush's fiscal 2008 budget request, in order to reduce a significant backlog of disability claims, three senators said earlier this week.

In a letter to leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Max Baucus, D-Mont., of the Senate Budget Committee urged appropriators to follow a recommendation in the fiscal 2008 budget resolution. The blueprint suggests that the additional $430 million is necessary to meet SSA's administrative needs.

"Increased funding will enable the SSA to reduce the long delays applicants must endure before they receive their Social Security disability benefits," the lawmakers wrote.

Several lawmakers have cited concern with SSA's staffing levels, particularly for processing applications to the disability programs. Waiting times for approval can exceed three years in some cases, lawmakers noted in the letter. SSA acknowledges that about half of these waiting times result from huge backlogs of initial claims and requests for hearings before administrative law judges.

By the end of fiscal 2007, the pileup of initial claims is expected to reach 577,000, and the number of cases pending for appeals hearings is expected to be 752,000, according to SSA.

Last week, the House Appropriations subcommittee charged with handling SSA approved a $100 million increase beyond Bush's request for the agency's administrative budget, $330 million less than that sought in the budget resolution. According to the American Federation of Government Employees and the Federal Managers Association, the subcommittee was forced to allocate additional funding to other agencies under its jurisdiction, with much of the funding apportioned to the Health and Human Services Department's pandemic flu preparedness initiatives.

"The $100 million is going to do very little to assist us," said Witold Skwierczynski, president of the AFGE national council of SSA field operations locals. "You have to have enough people to dig into the backlog and to reduce the processing time for a hearing."

The Bush administration's fiscal 2008 budget request proposed $9.6 billion for SSA administrative expenses, $843 million less than former SSA Commissioner Jo Anne Barnhart's request. Barnhart calculated the request in order to best deal with the agency's backlog challenges, said Darryl Perkinson, FMA's president.

Skwierczynski said SSA also faces a number of new challenges, largely because Congress has vastly increased the agency's responsibilities. SSA is now required to evaluate Medicare beneficiaries' incomes to determine whether Part B premiums must be increased pursuant to current law. The agency also is responsible for implementing a subsidy program to help individuals with low incomes obtain Medicare Part D coverage, and is charged with implementing some aspects of a recent intelligence reform law.

"This is an additional workload we have to absorb," Skwierczynski said. "As the agency doesn't get a sufficient amount of money to do the things Congress wants us to do, people are getting upset that they can't get through to us. We're getting a lot of criticism, and unfortunately we're not getting relief in the budget process."

At a hearing in February, SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue touted the accomplishments and increase in productivity in the last five years. But he also acknowledged that SSA could have accomplished much more had it received the president's budget request over the last two years. "In the last five years, reductions in the president's budget request have totaled $720 million, equivalent to approximately 8,000 work years," Astrue said.

Skwierczynski said AFGE is hoping the Senate will follow the Budget Committee's recommendation and provide the additional $430 million to SSA. "We're hoping that if that happens," he said, "we can convince the House in conference committee to up their amount."

COMMENTS

• I retired from SSA after 34 years - serving 30 of those years in Field Office (FO)Management. The majority of SSA employees are extremely dedicated but cannot keep up with the demands placed on them due to continued underfunding. I am so glad to see that 3 Senators are now publicly saying what FO Management has been telling Congress for years. SSA is underfunded. As Mr. Keating points out there are many retirees who could assist SSA, but it is not just AFGE and WEP that are issues. It seems SSA has never gotten approval from OPM to use the reemployed annuitant provision - heavily used by DOD. This provision would allow pensioners to supplement their income while assisting SSA. As Mr. Greenwald points out SSA's administrative costs are extremely low - only 1% of total budget. No other non-profit agency comes close to this level of efficiency. It is high time that Congress not only recognizes SSA's needs but funds them as well. Bernadette Aley Posted June 19, 2007 9:50 AM
• I cannot boast of the efficiency of the Social Security Administration. My husband received his first month SS payment in December of 2004 and passed away in Jan 2005. In Feb 05, I went to the local SS office to see if he was entitled to keep the check. Yes, he was entitled to keep it but all accounts had been closed and the check was no good! The clerk explained I could return the check and have it reissued in my name, which I did that day. Since the clerk had never done this procedure before he asked the supervisor to show him how to do it. He said to me, "She will make sure it was done correct." I figured in 4-6 weeks I would be reimbursed. In July I returned to the SS office to check on it and was told "Oh, you did not fill out the form." How was I supposed to know I had to fill out a form also when I gave them the check when they did not tell me a form was necessary? I figured another 4-6 weeks before I would see the refund. In September 2005, I returned again to the SS office and was told Hurricane Katrina put everything in a backlog. They already had six months to take care of the problem before Katrina. In October 2005, I sent an email online to the SSA and received a notice they were checking into it and received nothing after that. In January 2006, I again visited the SS office and the clerk just shook her head and said she did not understand what the problem was and she asked her supervisor for assistance. The supervisor said the SSA had just put a big software package on their computers which caused the delay. I made one more visit and was fed up with the excuses and wrote to three Congressmen. I don’t know which Congressman to give credit to but I received my husband’s money within two weeks and was able to buy his headstone. Had I owed the money to the government I would have had to pay interest for over a year! American Taxpayer Posted June 19, 2007 9:40 AM
• I'm glad to see, from Mr. Greenwald's comments, that I'm not the only retiree who still cares how his former employer is making out. There are a lot of former SSA employee's who could and would do something for the agency but are locked out by the AFGE's attitude towards contractors and SSA's own policy regarding the Windfall Elimination Provision. SSA has most likely reached the point where there is not enough slack in their staffing to take experts off of production work to do training work. Sustaining and maintaining an effective workforce is a systemic crisis in all of government. SSA has always been so under-budgeted that the strategy for day-to-day problem solving is mostly about putting out fires. The appeals process (which is now subject to a complete hiring freeze) is the current fire d'jour. The office of disability adjudication review (formerly the office of hearings and appeals) is a functionally and culturally detached part of SSA. Money alone is not going to help a lot. A real solution is going to require that SSA (and ODAR) reach out for technical as well as budgetary assistance. This would require the AFGE to tolerate more contractors in the workplace. SSA would also need to do something about the strange arrangement that requires government pensioners to pay FICA taxes as contractors but limits the monthly social security benefit that they are eligible for. greg keating Posted June 18, 2007 12:45 PM