Congressman John Tanner (D-TN), Chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, today praised the Social Security Administration (SSA) for the success of its efforts to reduce the unprecedented backlog in disability appeals hearings. Over the course of fiscal year (FY) 2009, the number of pending disability hearings declined for the first time, from 760,813 at the beginning of the year to 722,822 at the end. The average waiting time also declined, from 514 days in FY 2008 to 491 days in FY 2009.

“Social Security’s disability hearings backlog has skyrocketed in recent years due to a lack of resources,” Chairman Tanner stated. “This has caused untold hardship for hundreds of thousands of Americans with severe disabilities, who must often wait years to receive benefits for which they are eligible. Eliminating this backlog has been a top priority of this Subcommittee. I am very pleased that, due to the increased funding Congress provided and the concerted efforts of the Social Security Administration, we have finally turned the corner, and are now seeing the backlog go down for the first time in many years.”

From 2000 to 2008, the number of people awaiting a hearing on their disability claim more than doubled, from about 310,000 in 2000 to more than 760,000 by the end of FY 2008. The primary reason was severe underfunding even as SSA’s workloads continued to climb. In 2007, Congress committed to providing the resources needed to address this urgent problem. For the first time in many years, Congress provided SSA with additional funding for FY 2008 and 2009, beyond the level requested in the President’s budget, so that SSA could begin to hire the staff needed to reduce the backlog.

The recession brought a steep increase in disability applications, threatening backlog reduction efforts. To allow SSA to process these increased claims and keep on track with the backlog reduction plan, Congress provided $500 million in funding in theAmerican Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The increased funding allowed SSA to hire 190 additional Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) in FY 2008 to conduct hearings, and an additional 147 ALJs in FY 2009, as well as critically-needed support staff for these judges. SSA plans to hire 226 more ALJs, plus support staff, in FY 2010, increasing the size of its ALJ corps to 1450. The agency also plans to open 18 new full-service hearing offices by the end of FY 2010.

Assuming that adequate funding is provided, SSA projects that it will eliminate the hearings backlog by the end of FY 2013.

More than 50 million people each received payments of $250 last May. The administration expects that approximately 57 million would get $250 in 2010. Of those, 49 million would be Social Security beneficiaries. The rest of the recipients would be veterans, railroad retirement beneficiaries, disability beneficiaries, those on Supplemental Security Income and public-employee retirees not eligible for those programs. See full story here:

Bloomberg News and the LA Times report on the increases in applications for retirement and disability benefits, further stressing an already overloaded system.

“With job prospects bleak or nonexistent, more older Americans are turning to Social Security earlier than they — and the government — had expected.

“The Social Security Administration had projected an increase of 315,000 applicants for the 12 months ending Sept. 30 partly because the first baby boomers — those born right after World War II — are starting to retire.

“The actual increase was higher. Agency statistics show that 2.57 million people requested benefits, up from the 2.10 million applications received during the previous 12 months…”
See story here:

I once received a letter from a family member of a man who waited for a long time for his case to be heard, and before it could be heard, the man died,” said Randy Frye, an administrative law judge from Charlotte, N. C. “It made me feel terrible. . . . That just shouldn’t happen.”

Frye is the president and Zahm the vice president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges, a national union of judges that held an educational conference Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. About 130 judges attended the event in the Hyatt Regency Buffalo.

The two officials said the system in which they work is in a “crisis.” According to the judges, the long wait for hearings is only one of several serious problems that affect a system on which millions of Americans depend.

Among the other problems, according to the judges:

• Far too many applicants — about two of every three — are turned down, sometimes for no logical reason, when they first apply. Later — only after months of waiting and having to hire attorneys — most of those people are approved for disability.

• The system has little or no flexibility. The judges are required to approve disability pay for life to a person who, in their opinion, should receive it for a year or two.

• They are pressured by Social Security Administration officials to rush cases through the system, when, in some cases, they would like to spend more time researching a case in the best interest of taxpayers and applicants.

“Right now, the only pressure we get from Washington is to push the cases through the system,” Frye said. “That seems to be the only priority.” See full story from the Buffalo News:

Social Security has made one of its infrequent updates to the “Listing of Impairments” – the book that describes its criteria for disability for all diseases and conditions. The cancer regulations were last update ten years ago. New revisions are minimal, and you can see the response the agence made to all the comments on the proposed changes before they were made.See the comments and the new regulations here: