SSDI

On September 9, 2021 President Joe Biden issued an executive order that required federal employees to be fully vaccinated against the COVID-19. In accordance with this executive order, the Social Security Administration sent an email to all employees on September 27, 2021 with specific deadlines on the vaccination process. Below is a portion of the executive order Biden issued September 9, 2021. Mandatory Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination for Federal Employees.  Each agency shall implement, to the extent consistent with applicable law, a program to require COVID-19 vaccination for all of its Federal employees, with exceptions only as required by law.  The Task Force shall issue guidance within 7 days of the date of this order on agency implementation of this requirement for all agencies covered by this order. The email sent to employees provided deadline specifics on when the first shots of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine needs to be obtained in order for employees to be fully vaccinated by November 22, 2021. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is just one shot so the timeline for people getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a bit different. In addition to the requirement to be fully vaccinated by November 22, 2021, Social Security is also requiring employees to provide documented proof of vaccination. The agency is providing accommodation for employees who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons and or religious reasons, but proper documentation is needed to obtain these accommodations. Below is a portion of the email Social Security sent to employees informing them of their responsibilities related to getting vaccinated. In accordance with the President’s Executive Order on Requiring Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination for Federal Employees, all employees must be fully vaccinated (i.e., receive a single dose vaccine or the second shot of a two-dose vaccine, excluding booster shots) by November 22.  Employees must therefore have received their final vaccine dose by November 8.  Two of the three vaccines being administered in the US have two-dose regimens.  Therefore, employees will need to start vaccination by the following dates in order to be fully vaccinated by the November 22 deadline: All employees will be required to provide documented proof of vaccination (e.g., a copy of the record of immunization from a health care provider or pharmacy, COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card, medical records documenting the vaccination, immunization records from a public health or state immunization information system, etc.).  Employees should take steps now to schedule a vaccination if they have not already done so or preserve their proof of vaccination if already vaccinated.  Please do not email your vaccine documentation to your supervisor.  Additional instructions will follow concerning collection of your documentation.  Employees will receive duty time of up to 4 hours per vaccination shot (up to 8 hours total for two-shot vaccines) rather than administrative leave to complete the vaccination process; other policies concerning administrative leave for vaccination reactions and to take family members for vaccination will continue unchanged. Employees who fail to comply with the vaccination requirement by the deadline or apply for and receive an accommodation will be subject to discipline up to and including termination.

Debt is a problem for millions of Americans and some of those Americans are receiving Social Security benefits. A question that seems to arise when many people are going through the Social Security disability process is “can my Social Security benefits be taken away if I become delinquent on my debt?” The answer is maybe. It really depends on the type of debt a person has acquired to determine if their Social Security benefits are subject to garnishment. The quick answer is that if you owe money to the government, in the form of student loans or back taxes, you have child support obligations that are not being met, or you have court-ordered debt then it is very possible your benefits could be garnished if you fall behind on payments. The Motley Fool recently published an informative breakdown of what types of debt could put some of your Social Security benefits at risk. Below is a portion of that story. Here are some scenarios where delinquent debt could result in smaller Social Security checks: You’re behind on your federal student loans. Social Security can withhold up to 15% of your benefit if you’re behind on student loans. However, the first $750 a month of benefits is off limits. You owe back taxes. The IRS can garnish up to 15% of your benefits if you have delinquent taxes. Unlike with student loans, the first $750 isn’t protected. You’ve been ordered to pay child support or alimony. If you’re behind on court-ordered child support or alimony, up to 50% of your benefit can be garnished if you support a spouse or child who isn’t the subject of the court order. Otherwise, up to 60% of your benefit can be garnished. If you’re more than 12 weeks behind, an additional 5% can be seized. You owe court-ordered restitution to a victim as part of a criminal case. Up to 25% of your Social Security could be garnished if you’re behind on restitution payments to the victim of a crime you’ve been convicted of committing. Note that in all of these cases, your Social Security will only be reduced if you’re delinquent on payments. Your benefits won’t be withheld just for owing the debt. If your Social Security benefits are garnished, only your current and future monthly benefits will be affected. Social Security won’t go after payments retroactively. What debt is off limits? Private creditors can’t garnish your Social Security. If you have credit card debt, medical debt, private student loans, a car loan, or a mortgage, your benefits won’t be affected if you get behind on payments. Of course, the consequences of missing these payments are still serious. Obviously, you could lose your home or vehicle if you fail to make mortgage or car loan payments. Becoming delinquent on any of the payments listed above will still tank your credit score. If you’re working while collecting Social Security, a private creditor could sue you and obtain a judgment to garnish part of your paycheck. A private collector could also win a judgment to garnish your bank account. However, for Social Security and many other federal benefits, two months’ worth of payments are generally protected from seizure.

An organization that uses the law to combat senior poverty is suing the Social Security Administration for wrongfully terminating and reducing Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. Justice in Aging recently issued a press release about the action. This group contends that Social Security wrongfully terminated or reduced benefits and failed to inform those impacted by Social Security’s move because the agency did not effectively inform beneficiaries of a simplified waiver process put in place on overpayment cases due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people on SSI had their benefits terminated or reduced. Below is a portion of the press release that explains the lawsuit in further detail. During the pandemic tens of thousands of people who rely on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to survive have experienced harmful and sometimes life-threatening disruptions in their benefits. Many people’s benefits were reduced through no fault of their own. Instead, in addition to the many other barriers that the pandemic created, the Social Security Administration (SSA) stopped processing certain paperwork and closed all of its offices, making it impossible for many to provide information to, or effectively challenge the decisions of, the agency. Yesterday, the New York Legal Assistance Group, Justice in Aging, and the law firm Arnold & Porter filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of five SSI recipients challenging these unlawful practices.  This is not a surprising turn of events. Many times Social Security has programs or initiatives in place, but the public has no idea about them and the agency does not always do a good job of informing beneficiaries of their options, especially during the pandemic. Social Security offices have been closed to the public since March 2020. Since then, except for very special circumstances, this has required beneficiaries to communicate with Social Security by phone and the communication between Social Security and its beneficiaries has always been lacking.  

Over the years this blog has informed readers of how difficult it is to obtain Social Security disability benefits because of the medical rules that more times than not deny disabled individuals benefits. This is not news, but there remains a sector of the population that stands firm that the Social Security disability program is full of beneficiaries who are cheating and scamming the system. Let’s be blunt, these people are ignorant and flat out wrong. In today’s hard-headed society where it is almost more possible to cash in a winning lottery ticket and change someone’s mind about their beliefs, some decide they don’t even want to try because of the toxic exchanges involved in having a differing point of view that is based on facts. So, we will try a different approach. In a facts-based opinion story published by The Dallas Morning News, Tom Margenau, and individual who has spent the better part of five decades maneuvering the Social Security disability program sets the records straight. Below is a portion of the story that makes the points clear. The Social Security disability program is universally recognized as one of the most difficult programs to qualify for. You simply don’t get benefits if you have a bad back or a bum knee. You must have a severe physical or mental impairment that is expected to keep you out of work for at least 12 months – or a condition that is terminal. Some people have written to complain about drug addicts and alcoholics getting benefits. Let me clear up that myth. You DO NOT get Social Security disability benefits simply because you are an addict or alcoholic. But you might get benefits if you have problems associated with those addictions. For example, you could qualify for disability if you have severe liver disease, a condition that might have been brought on by excessive drinking. But that’s no different than someone getting benefits who has lung cancer brought on by heavy smoking. Having explained how truly difficult it is to qualify for Social Security disability benefits, I can tell you from experience that everyone seems to know someone (a brother-in-law, a neighbor, that guy in the handicapped parking space) who they believe is getting such benefits fraudulently. The Truth However, I also can tell you from experience that 99% of you who claim to know people who are supposedly cheating the system will not do this. That tells me two things. First, people will believe what they want to believe. They think that government is corrupt and inefficient, so they want to believe there are a bunch of deadbeats who snookered the clueless bureaucrats and are ripping off the Social Security system. But the second thing the lack of fraud reporting tells me is that, deep down, these folks know it’s not true. They just like to gripe. Some of them like to hassle nice mothers with disabled sons who are parking closer to the front door of the grocery store than they can.  

Since March of 2020, when Social Security field offices closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic, agency officials have held firm on requiring original identity documents from individuals for processing. This has undoubtedly caused many people to lose driver’s licenses and other important identity documents in the mail because Social Security would not accept copies, but 18 months later the agency is now changing course and will no longer require original documents. An emergency message was sent to all Social Security employees informing of the change. The only way customers were able to provide original documents to Social Security were either through the mail or if they made an appointment to visit a Social Security office, but those appointments are few and far between due to Social Security limiting the availability due to the pandemic. Below is a portion of the emergency message sent to employees that provides guidance on original documents and in-person scheduled appointments. Purpose This Emergency Message (EM) provides Field Offices (FO) and Social Security Card Centers (SSCC) instructions regarding how to determine when to schedule an in-office appointment, given the current posture. Background SSA offers a variety of service channels: online, telephone, in-person, and mail. We continue to encourage the use of online and phone services prior to scheduling in-office interviews. Additionally, service options to support those channels, such as Express Interviews (EXI) for in-person, and Drop Boxes for mail, where available, continue to be options for brief interactions and evidence collection. While mail continues to offer an additional channel for the public to communicate with us, you must discourage customers from mailing important documents that they should keep secure and maintain in their possession, such as driver’s licenses, passports, or immigration documents. If they prefer, customers may choose to mail us secondary evidence of identity and less sensitive material. Effective immediately, FOs and SSCCs will follow the in-office appointment criteria outlined in Section C to identify situations that may be appropriate for an in-office appointment, based on customer needs, workloads, and local in-office staffing support.  

The fact that dealing with Social Security can be extremely frustrating is not exactly breaking news, but many people attempt to contact Social Security for the first time every day and have no idea what they are getting into because they have no experience. If you’ve never had to deal with Social Security you might be surprised to learn that during a phone call to Social Security you could be on hold for an hour or longer, your call could drop or you could even be hung-up on. The answer is not to avoid the task, but to understand the situation and build up your patience level before contacting them. Things have been even more difficult in 2021 and most of 2020 because Social Security offices have remained mostly closed to the public. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic most days Social Security offices were packed to capacity with customers trying to obtain service. This was not an efficient way to receive service from Social Security either, but at least you have a fighting chance. Now, for most people, the option is either to conduct Social Security business online or by phone. If you decide you want to work the phone route there are some tips available that might make the process a bit less frustrating. Give it time – You should prepare yourself that a call to Social Security is going to take some time so don’t try to do it when you have limited availability. You could end up on hold for the better part of a day and not even receive the service you were trying to obtain. Social Security does provide customers the option of a callback. It may take several hours, but at least you will not have to be on the phone for hours waiting. In office appointment – You can’t walk into a Social Security office and just obtain service. The field offices remain closed with no indication when they may open again, but you can try scheduling an appointment with a representative for in-office service if the service you need is deemed “critical.” It does not hurt to ask for an appointment, but Social Security may deny the request. If this is the case you will have to settle for either phone or online service.

It is possible that you might not be aware that Social Security is a self-financing program with the ability to provide benefits to about 65 million people, but it is even more possible that you may be unaware of how Social Security invests in its two different trust funds. There are two different Social Security trust funds, one for retirement benefits and the other for disability. A couple of quick points regarding investment in the trust funds. First, in 2020, Social Security received more than 93 percent of its total income with dedicated tax revenues. The revenues that Social Security receives are then invested in interest-bearing U.S. government obligations held by the Social Security trust funds, which is required by law. The rest of the blog provides more details of how the trust funds are managed. Below is a description from the Congressional Research Service that explains how the government invests in the Social Security trust funds. Social Security operates with a trust fund financing mechanism. The Social Security trust funds are accounts within the U.S. Treasury that(1) track income and expenditures for the program and (2) hold the accumulated assets for the program. As such, they represent funds dedicated to pay current and future Social Security benefits. (There are two separate trust funds: the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance [OASI]Trust Fund and the Disability Insurance [DI]Trust Fund. They are referred to here on a combined basis as the Social Security trust funds.) As required by law, Social Security tax revenues are invested in interest-bearing U.S. government obligations. Currently, the trust funds hold about $2.9trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. In 2020, the trust fund holdings earned approximately $76 billion in interest, representing 6.8% of Social Security’s total income. In the past, attention has focused on alternative investment practices in an effort to increase the interest earnings of the trust funds, among other goals. This In Focus explains current Social Security trust fund investment practices.

The topic of Social Security reform is heating up now that the Social Security Trustees released their annual report that showed that the Social Security trust funds will remain solvent until 2033. This is a slight adjustment to the last report which estimated solvency would last until 2034. You might believe the Trustees report is bad news for Social Security, but many experts exhaled a sigh of relief when the report was actually released. Many thought the report was going to be much worse and expected the solvency of the trust funds to be diminished much sooner due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so there was some optimism after solvency was cut by just a year. Another issue that had people cringing until the report was released was that the report was well overdue. The Trustees annual report is typically released during the spring so the fact that this report was not issued until nearly fall had people wondering how bad the news was going to be? Now the discussion is how to solve the solvency problem. Forbes recently published a story regarding the political struggle that seems to be coming at some point of how to fix Social Security’s lack of funding. Below is a portion of that story. The Political Outlook for Social Security Reforms The Biden administration and its Congressional allies are focused on threading the political needle for an ambitious $3.5 trillion infrastructure spending package, while also dealing with the fallout from the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Leading Republican legislators have called for so-called entitlement reform (think Social Security benefit cuts), but that’s a tough sell in the current Democratically controlled Congress. “Does the report mean the timetable argues for real concrete action on [addressing solvency issues of] Social Security? Probably not. Will it revive the rhetoric that the sky is falling? Sure,” says Robert Blancato, national coordinator of the Elder Justice Coalition advocacy group, president of Matz Blancato and Associates and a 2016 Next Avenue Influencer in Aging. The issue over how best to restore financial solvency to Social Security isn’t going away. That’s because the program is fundamental to the economic security of retired Americans. Social Security currently pays benefits to 49 million retired workers and dependents of retired workers (as well as survivor benefits to six million younger people and 10 million disabled people). However, the tenor of the longer-term solvency discussion has significantly changed in recent years. To be sure, a number of leading Republicans still want to cut Social Security retirement benefits to reduce the impending shortfall. Their latest maneuver is what’s known as The TRUST Act, sponsored by Utah Sen. Mitt Romney. It calls for closed-door meetings of congressionally appointed bipartisan committees to come up with legislation to restore solvency by June 1 of the following year. The TRUST act would also limit Congress to voting yes or no on the proposals. No amendments allowed.