Nearly everyone, Democrats and Republicans, agree that the backlog of Social Security disability claimants waiting for a hearing is unacceptable, but they also disagree why the backlog of more than 1 million people waiting for a hearing keeps getting worse. The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report that seems to have an easy explanation for the backlog – inadequate staffing.
Previous blog posts have reported that Social Security’s staffing levels are less than what they were eight years ago and workloads have continued to increase over those eight years. Social Security’s budget has basically remained stagnant during this time so staffing levels have not increased. The OIG’s findings of workload reviews at hearing offices in Atlanta and New York backup the premise that increased staffing levels would reduce the backlog, but that would require increased funding.
“The hearings offices in both regions with high average processing times had below-average staffing levels, low morale, and issues with telework, claimant representatives, and the quality of the support staff’s work,” the report said. “In the New York region, local office management issues and state filing requirements were also negative factors. In the Atlanta region, an insufficient number of decision writers and information technology problems were negative factors.”
Similar reports are issued constantly by the OIG showing all the areas Social Security needs to improve upon to correct customer service issues and the OIG makes recommendations on how Social Security can improve the problems, but a majority of Social Security’s issues with customer service and long wait times relate to understaffing. Understaffing at Social Security offices will continue without increased funding and that is not likely to change anytime soon. The OIG can continue to issue reports about Social Security’s customer service problems, but until tangible funding solutions are offered it doesn’t seem to be doing any good.
