The Bush administration tried to persuade the public to support dismantling the Social Security system through privatization by misrepresenting the financial solvency of the program, claiming falsely that the current system would not be able to deliver all the benefits guaranteed by law. At the same time, it offered wildly optimistic scenarios regarding the financial rewards the stock market would produce for those who traded in their promised benefits for private individual accounts.
Although President Bush’s Social Security privatization campaign was defeated, his efforts to undermine the agency responsible for delivering Social Security benefits to the American public have been far more successful. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has been underfunded and understaffed for more than two decades, but in the past eight years, the shortages have begun to have dire consequences for the public it serves.
The SSA commissioners who have served President Bush have instituted numerous changes to the Social Security Disability process that have been detrimental to those seeking Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security benefits. Because of staff shortages due to inadequate budgets, 25 percent of calls to the Social Security 800 number go unanswered and 51 percent of calls by claimants to Social Security offices go unanswered.
As a result, the SSA will forfeit billions of dollars in overpayments because it has resources to conduct 33 percent of scheduled Continuing Disability Reviews and only 60 percent of scheduled SSI redeterminations.
The workload of the SSA will increase dramatically over the next decade as Baby Boomers retire and reach the peak years for becoming disabled. In the past four years, SSA staffing has declined by 9 percent, and the SSA has attempted to compensate for its understaffing by encouraging the public to utilize its Internet services rather than interact with employees at field offices or through use of the 800 number call center.
Social Security programs assist people who are elderly, have disabilities, are uneducated, poor and sometimes homeless. Many applicants struggle to complete simple forms. SSA’s applications were created to obtain information, which will meet all requirements of the law, including identifying those who might be eligible for benefits on a wage earner’s record. To this end, the SSA has invested millions to train its claims representatives. Internet applications are not a suitable substitute for direct interaction with a claims representative, trained to help applicants make advantageous decisions and obtain all the benefits to which they are entitled. So far, Internet applications have created an enormous workload for SSA employees, who must endeavor to contact individuals who have made errors in their applications, thereby erasing any efficiencies designers of the “Internet solution” hoped to produce. The opportunities for fraud, identity theft and invasion of privacy are legion in Internet claims processing. In spite of this, SSA employees are required to tell each person who contacts Social Security to use the Internet for all subsequent contact; failure to do so constitutes “poor performance” in a performance evaluation.
The AFL-CIO endorses enactment of legislation that includes SSA administrative expenses with benefits, which are already off budget, and supports retention of congressional appropriations and oversight authority unencumbered by artificial budget caps and scoring restrictions. In addition, the AFL-CIO urges Congress to enact legislation requiring the commissioner to submit the SSA appropriation request directly to Congress.