When a decision is made without understanding the impact it might mean danger is around the corner. This is what is happening after President Donald Trump ordered a hiring freeze of all federal employees. Social Security, an agency that was already understaffed with a smaller budget than it had seven years ago, is soon to face a crisis with drastically increasing wait times for disability hearings and decisions on claims.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently examined the Social Security budget crisis and identified just how little money Social Security has to work with. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Social Security’s “core operating budget shrank by 10 percent from 2010 to 2016 in inflation-adjusted terms even as the demands on SSA reached record highs. The freeze on SSA’s operating funds in the 2017 continuing resolution (CR) only stressed the agency further. Anticipating the CR, SSA imposed a hiring freeze in the spring of 2016 and then eliminated nearly all overtime when the CR began. With the hiring freeze, SSA isn’t filling positions that open up due to attrition, so the staff is steadily shrinking. Due to inadequate funding, fewer people are serving the public, they’re working shorter hours, and service is deteriorating.”
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities identified the following specific deficiencies Social Security has gone through in recent times:
- SSA has lost 1,400 field staff since the hiring freeze began. As a result, 18,000 field office visitors every day must wait more than an hour for service. Nearly half of visitors must wait at least three weeks for an appointment.
- SSA’s teleservice centers have 450 fewer agents than they need to handle the 37 million calls they receive each year. As a result, most callers to SSA’s national 800 number don’t get their questions resolved. The average wait for an agent is 18 minutes, and nearly half of callers hang up before connecting. Another 13 percent of callers get busy signals.
- SSA has been able to hire more staff to address appeals for disability benefits, in part due to the $150 million in dedicated funding that policymakers provided for this purpose in 2017. As a result, SSA has made initial progress in reducing its record backlogs. But that progress will disappear unless the President and Congress continue to provide adequate funding in the final 2017 appropriation bill and in future years.
- The hiring freeze and cutbacks in overtime have hampered SSA’s ability to complete behind-the-scenes work, leading to growing delays in processing applications or changing benefits when a beneficiary’s circumstances change. This creates unnecessary hardship for beneficiaries. It also costs taxpayers, since it allows overpayments to build up and delays their collection — increasing the risk that they will never be recovered. By the end of 2016, the number of pending behind-the-scenes tasks had more than doubled.
During the campaign for president Trump said he would protect Social Security, whatever that means? Protecting Social Security should be more than making sure there are no cuts to current beneficiaries. If Trump really wants to protect Social Security he will insist it is adequately funded so that the American people receive the type of customer service they deserve.
