Social Security & Medicare Notes

Republican Congress's failure to do budget bills to effect SSA

From: the Baltimore Sun Dec 15, 2006.

The outgoing Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner says that the proposed plan to continue the federal budget levels at 2006 levels through 2007 will require that SSA employees be furloughed for at least seven days during fiscal year 2007. This is the result of the fact that the Republican Congress has not met the requested budgetary requests for the last five years, then failed to pass any budget at all for fy 2007 (which started October 1, 2006) before adjourning last week.

Currently SSA is hiring one worker to replace each three who leave, and is under a hiring freeze through February 15, 2007. The result has been long waiting times for decisions on disability benefits and on processing appeals on denials of benefits.

posted by Richard @ 8:08 AM