The Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing September 13, 2018 to consider the nomination of Gail Ennis as Social Security’s new inspector general, a nomination that was made in October 2017.
Ennis is a retired partner from the Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr Law Firm. The law firm’s website indicates Ennis conducted internal investigations of alleged improper accounting practices for global Fortune 500 companies, and defended these companies during investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission. After Ennis was nominated, The National Law Journal reported she earned $2 million over the last year as a partner for the law firm as reported on disclosed ethics documents. According to a brief biography from the White House, Ennis received a law degree from Brooklyn School of Law and bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at Social Security was established in 1995 pursuant to the Social Security Independence and Program Improvements Act of 1994. The OIGs responsibilities include:
- Overseeing the economy; efficiency; and the effectiveness of the administration of Social Security programs;
- Prevent and detect fraud, waste, and abuse in Social Security programs and operations;
- And informing Social Security and congress about agency problems and deficiencies and recommend corrective action.
The inspector general is still under the supervision of the Social Security commissioner, but the inspector may not be prohibited from initiating, carrying out, or completing any audit or investigation, or from issuing any subpoena. Earlier this year President Donald Trump nominated Andrew Saul to be the next Social Security commissioner, but there have been no hearings on Saul’s nomination. Saul was previously the chairman of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, an agency that administers the federal government’s retirement savings program.
