Every time there is a changing of the guard in Washington D.C. and a new administration occupies the White House you can expect significant changes of leadership at government agencies. This especially takes place when the outgoing and incoming administrations are made up of different parties.
Currently Carolyn Colvin is the acting Social Security commissioner. Colvin is only the “acting” commissioner because Congress never acted on her nomination as the new commissioner. Nothing is official yet, but it is expected that the new President-elect will name his own commissioner of Social Security and media speculation expects Colvin to step down from her post as of Inauguration Day which is Jan. 20, 2017.
It is also possible that there will be other changes in personnel at Social Security besides Colvin, but that has yet to surface and we should know a lot more about this come January.
Considering Congress has decided not to act on any new appropriations bills during the lame-duck session it remains to be seen what will happen to Social Security’s budget and the need to hire more Administrative Law Judges (ALJs). Congress continued current funding through December 9 of this year, but will need to extend that to keep the government running short of approving any new appropriations bills. As you can see from this story Congress is expected to pursue a short-term spending measure that would keep the government open and operational until March 31, 2017.
It will remain to be seen how many employees will decide to leave government agency jobs due to a new administration, but there is likely to be some substantial turnover and the danger during these types of transfers of power is that Americans can expect to wait longer periods of time until government agencies are fully staffed under a new administration.
