Did you miss today’s Behind the Headlines?
We discussed:
- The closing of Social Security field offices.
- Nursing home evictions in Louisiana.
- Mother’s Day!
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In a rare victory for seniors, the passage of the FY 2018 Omnibus Appropriations bill in Congress increases funding for several programs that assist the elderly – and gives a much-needed boost to the beleaguered Social Security Administration (SSA). SSA gets an increase of $480 million over the previous fiscal year, including $100 million for reducing the backlog in Social Security Disability Insurance hearings – which some 10,000 Americans died waiting for in 2017. The funding bump – which the National Committee has long advocated – should also alleviate some of the excessively long wait times for customer service on SSA’s toll-free phone line and in-person at SSA field offices.
The Omnibus bill also includes $59 million more for Older Americans Act Senior Nutrition programs and an increase of $250 million for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), while the State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) receives a modest increase in funding. The spending plan also gives a $414 million boost to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for Alzheimer’s and dementia research.
Read more from our press release by clicking here.
On behalf of the millions of members and supporters of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, I write to endorse your legislation, H.R. 5431, the “Social Security Administration (SSA) Accountability Act of 2018.” The National Committee commends you for introducing this legislation, which establishes important new tools and safeguards which will strengthen substantially the ability of the Congress to exercise its oversight obligations regarding the administration of Social Security programs.
Read more from this endorsement letter by clicking here.
Eighty-two years after Social Security was created, why doesn’t the agency that administers the program for 61 million Americans have an adequate budget? The Social Security Administration (SSA) is one of the most efficient federal agencies, yet its budget was slashed in 2011 and never fully restored.
Max Richtman via The Hill.
The “Maintain Access to Vital Social Security Services Act of 2018” establishes important new safeguards which will protect Americans’ access to the vitally important services provided by the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) network of local field offices.
![“The enemies of Social Security in Congress are making a very bad situation even worse [by proposing cuts to SSA’s operating budget.] They want to make it impossible to effectively administer the program, and ultimately want to destroy Social...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/1c78ed79e5e7168a42078f7b6d551a8c/tumblr_p2z1kt6Dqa1qd3gmvo1_1280.jpg)
“The enemies of Social Security in Congress are making a very bad situation even worse [by proposing cuts to SSA’s operating budget.] They want to make it impossible to effectively administer the program, and ultimately want to destroy Social Security.”
-Senator Bernie Sanders
More about the Fully Fund Social Security Administration event can be found here.
The Social Security Administration has been woefully underfunded since 2011 and Social Security claimants have been paying the price in the form of reduced service and long wait times. Social Security’s core operating budget shrank by 11% from 2010 to 2017 in inflation-adjusted terms.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) and Congress are causing undue hardship for Social Security claimants by closing field offices in mostly urban areas. The most recent casualty is the SSA office in Arlington, VA, scheduled to close its doors on June 21st.
The scheduled shuttering of the Arlington office comes on the heels of others in heavily populated urban areas, including in Milwaukee and Chicago during the past year and the announced closing of an SSA field office in Baltimore (also effective this June). Since 2010, SSA has closed more than 60 field offices nationwide and furloughed 3,500 field office employees.
The Arlington office currently serves some 25,000 claimants every year. Closing Social Security field offices like this one causes undue difficulty for the elderly, disabled and working people who rely on public transportation. The nearest alternate location in Virginia is a 2-hour round trip via subway and bus. When I asked the crowd at the rally (which included retirees who rely on these offices) if this was acceptable, they shouted, “Hell, No!”
Read more from this op-ed by clicking here.
We do actually know why all of these offices have closed… It’s because Congress continues to pass woefully inadequate funding plans for operating the Social Security Administration,
via CBPP.
Related Reading:
Rallying to Stop Social Security Office Closings.
- Closing Social Security field offices like the one here in Arlington causes undue difficulty for elderly and working-class claimants who rely on public transportation to get here.
- If the office is shuttered as planned in June, these individuals will have to travel nearly two hours round-trip on Metro and Metrobus to the nearest Virginia office in Alexandria.
Our President, Max Richtman gave testimony this morning before the Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security House of Representatives:
“Lacking a Leader: Challenges Facing the SSA After Over 5 years of Acting Commissioners”
- The National Committee agrees with you, Mr. Chairman, that the Social Security Administration needs strong leadership. We also believe that the problems confronting SSA cannot be remedied simply by nominating and confirming a new Commissioner.
- We urge Congress to also provide the tools needed by a new Commissioner to deal with the agency’s challenges, and that means adequate funding for this critically important agency. Unfortunately, what we have seen in recent years is a steady decline in funding for the agency at exactly the same time that its workload has soared.
It only took President Trump a scant 16 months to nominate someone to head the Social Security Administration (SSA), which oversees the Social Security program and Supplemental Security Income for some 67 million Americans. Trump’s nominee, Andrew M. Saul, is a New York businessman, Republican donor, and former chairman of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which administers the retirement plan for U.S. government employees.
Though he served on the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board for nine years, Andrew Saul has no real public record – good or bad – when it comes to Social Security. But his alignment with Republican politics (he was a top fundraiser for George W. Bush, who famously tried to privatize Social Security) and his membership on the board of a right-wing think tank, The Manhattan Institute, is not encouraging.
We need look no further than the Manhattan Institute’s website to glean the organization’s position on Social Security. In an article entitled, The Social Security Façade, the Institute propagates rightist myths that the program is going bankrupt and will no longer be able to pay benefits when today’s young people retire. In other words, it employs the time-worn tactic of dividing the generations to undermine Social Security:
“Young Americans are stuck paying into programs that, absent reform, will only partially be there for their retirements – if they’re around at all.” – Manhattan Institute website