Union heads are leading the fight to install new leadership at the Social Security administration. They want Commissioner Andrew Saul and Deputy Commissioner David Black out on day one. How quickly will President Biden replace them?
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) speaks for Social Security field office workers. The Association of Administrative Law Judges represents judges employed to make Social Security disability determinations. They say that neither the SSA Commissioner nor the Deputy Commissioner have any intention of either strengthening Social Security or supporting the reopening of its field offices post-pandemic.
Under the Trump administration, Social Security has granted disability benefits to one hundred thousand fewer people in the period between July and November 2020 than it did in that same period in 2019. It is estimated that, as a result, 230,000 individuals do not have access to SSI benefits, an average of $560 a month, or Medicaid.
The Social Security Administration has also put into effect a group of policies that undermine Social Security. It has weakened the power of union workers. It closed its 1,200 field offices during the pandemic but did not let most employees work from home. And, the unions allege it is violating labor laws.
McIntosh, president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges, said agency leadership has repeatedly violated federal labor laws in dealings with her union.
Leadership has directed salaried staff beholden to them, and not independent judges, to make disability determinations. There is no apparent Covid-19 plan in place and no plan in place for reopening the Social Security Field Offices and making them safe for workers and visitors.
Even though Saul and Black are political appointees, their term is not scheduled to end until 2025. That said, President Biden has the power to fire them for cause.
Here’s more from Just Care:
- Will Congress support raising the cap on Social Security contributions in 2021?
- Biden administration should remove Trump’s Social Security Administration appointees
- Health care costs eat into your 2021 Social Security benefits
- Will Congress allow Medicare drug price negotiation in 2021?
- Strengthening Medicare Trust Fund must be a priority
Social Security needs a raise and prescription medications are outrageously over priced. The Trump Administration has done nothing to ease the situation. Older Americans need help!
…as with many of his cabinet appointments, Mr. Trump had a policy of destroying government from with in by nominating and appointing individuals who had glaring conflicts of interest with the departments they were to manage. Some were quite obvious like Betsy Devos, Alex Azar, Andrew Wheeler (who caused me to rename the EPA the Environmental Plundering Agency), and Postmaster general Louis DeJoy. All of these people served personal and narrow special interests, one member even serving the political ambitions of Mr. Trump himself (Mr. DeJoy) rather than that of the American public at large.
This led me to rename the cabinet and other parts of the last regime “The Cesspool” rather than “swamp” as cesspools are man made repositories which are created to contain substances that are vile and toxic. We still have some these pools stagnating withing governments out like the SSA along with the USPS Board of Governors (which hired Mr. DeJoy) that need to be cleaned out. As in dealing with the Novel Covid Virus, we need to “disinfect” the remainder of our government to remove the the remaining taint of the previous regime.
If tightening the qualifications for getting SSI, which has been done notoriously for decades, is wrong, I demand an explanation. Fraudulent claims under both Medicaid and SSI hurt those who need these benefits the most. I am all for a better managed program with better control of how people qualify to eliminate fraud. Problem is too many hands in the pot and they don’t want to realize that they are wrong.