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SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION OVERSIGHT: 

EXAMINING THE INTEGRITY OF THE DISABILITY DETERMINATION APPEALS PROCESS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT 

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JUNE 10, 2014 

Serial No. 113–128 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

http://www.house.gov/reform 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California, Chairman 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

TIM WALBERG, Michigan 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan 

PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona 

PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

DOC HASTINGS, Washington 

CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming 

ROB WOODALL, Georgia 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

KERRY L. BENTIVOLIO, Michigan 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Ranking 

Minority Member 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

MATTHEW A. CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois 

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

TONY CARDENAS, California 

STEVEN A. HORSFORD, Nevada 

MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico 

Vacancy 

LAWRENCE J. BRADY, Staff Director 

JOHN D. CUADERES, Deputy Staff Director 

STEPHEN CASTOR, General Counsel 

LINDA A. GOOD, Chief Clerk 

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Staff Director 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on June 10, 2014 ............................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

The Hon. Tom Coburn, A U.S. Senator from the State of Oklahoma 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 2 

Mr. Harry C. Taylor II, Administrative Law Judge, Charleston, West Virginia, Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, Social Security Administration 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 20 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 23 

Mr. Charles Bridges, Administrative Law Judge, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 

Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, Social Security Administration 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 27 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 30 

Mr. Gerald I. Krafsur, Administrative Law Judge, Kingsport, Tennessee, 

Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, Social Security Administration 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 36 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 38 

Mr. James A. Burke, Administrative Law Judge, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 

Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, Social Security Administration 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 41 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 43 

APPENDIX 

June 9, 2014 letter to U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky 

by Rep. Speier, submitted by Rep. Cummings .................................................. 78 

Opening Statement of Rep. Cummings .................................................................. 81 

Staff Report: ‘‘Systemic Waste and Abuse at the Social Security Administration: How Rubber-Stamping Disability Judges Cost Hundreds of Billions 

of Taxpayer Dollars, submitted by Chairman Lankford ................................... 83 

Opening Statement of Chairman Lankford ........................................................... 138 

Questions for the record sent to all witnesses ...................................................... 140 

Judge Harry C. Taylor II responses to member questions ................................... 142 

Questions for Mr. Charles Bridges ......................................................................... 169 

Responses to committee questions for Judge James A. Burke ............................ 179 

(1) 

SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION OVERSIGHT: EXAMINING THE INTEGRITY OF THE 

DISABILITY DETERMINATION APPEALS 

PROCESS 

Tuesday, June 10, 2014 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, 

WASHINGTON, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:33 a.m., in Room 2154, 

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Darrell E. Issa [chairman of 

the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Issa, Mica, Turner, Duncan, Jordan, 

Chaffetz, Walberg, Lankford, Amash, Gosar, DesJarlais, Gowdy, 

Farenthold, Woodall, Meadows, Bentivolio, DeSantis, Cummings, 

Maloney, Norton, Tierney, Clay, Connolly, Speier, Duckworth, 

Kelly, Davis, Horsford and Lujan Grisham. 

Staff Present: Brian Blase, Senior Professional Staff Member; 

Molly Boyl, Deputy General Counsel and Parliamentarian; Lawrence J. Brady, Staff Director; Caitlin Carroll, Press Secretary; 

Sharon Casey, Senior Assistant Clerk; John Cuaderes, Deputy 

Staff Director; Adam P. Fromm, Director of Member Services and 

Committee Operations; Linda Good, Chief Clerk; Tyler Grimm, 

Senior Professional Staff Member; Christopher Hixon, Chief Counsel for Oversight; Mark D. Marin, Deputy Staff Director for Oversight; Emily Martin, Counsel; Laura L. Rush, Deputy Chief Clerk; 

Jessica Seale, Digital Director; Andrew Shult, Deputy Digital Director; Katy Summerlin, Press Assistant; Sharon Meredith Utz, 

Professional Staff Member; Peter Warren, Legislative Policy Director; Rebecca Watkins, Communications Director; Jaron Bourke, Minority Director of Administration; Aryele Bradford, Minority Press 

Secretary; Jennifer Hoffman, Minority Communications Director; 

Elisa LaNier, Minority Director of Operations; Juan McCullum, Minority Clerk; Suzanne Owen, Minority Senior Policy Advisor; Brian 

Quinn, Minority Counsel; and Dave Rapallo, Minority Staff Director. 

Chairman ISSA. The committee will come to order. The oversight 

committee exists to secure two fundamental principles: First, 

Americans have a right to know that the money Washington takes 

from them is well spent—well, at least that we are trying to have 

it well spent; and second, Americans deserve an efficient, effective 

government that works for them. 

Our duty on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee 

is to protect these rights. Our solemn responsibility is to hold govVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:53 Sep 08, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\89597.TXT APRIL
2 

ernment accountable to taxpayers because taxpayers have a right 

to know what they get from the government. It is our job to work 

tirelessly in partnership with citizen watchdogs to deliver the facts 

to the American people and bring genuine reform to the Federal 

bureaucracy. 

This is our mission statement. And, Senator, I only did that one 

because we are pleased to have you here today. We will do our 

opening statements after your testimony. Take the time you need. 

The fact is that there is no better watchdog in Congress, either side 

of the Capitol, than you have been, and the hearing we are going 

to have later today really is the result of the hard work you have 

done to bring this issue, this growing multibillion-dollar issue to 

the American people. 

So my friend, and Senator from Oklahoma, you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. TOM COBURN, A UNITED STATES 

SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA 

Senator COBURN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman and Representative Cummings. I appreciate the invite. I would correct your statement. Actually all this comes about because loyal Americans who 

work for the Social Security system have raised the issues that we 

looked at and found to be credible. 

Most of us know that the Social Security Disability Trust Fund 

is in precarious shape. At the end of this year, we will go into 2015, 

probably in this last year, where we don’t have to make cuts. And 

there are some pretty significant rules about whether we can transfer money to that Disability Trust Fund. Our research says we 

can’t, which means the 11 million Americans who are presently in 

need of those payments will receive a cut. 

I have been investigating this for about the past 4 or 5 years, 

and, again, it came on the basis of whistleblowers who actually 

work for the Federal Government. I look forward to reviewing the 

findings of your report, and that we continue to have an ongoing 

investigation. The first report we put out was bipartisan. We will 

continue to do that in bipartisan. Senator Levin and I have been 

very interested in making sure we know what the rules are, how 

the program works, how it is supposed to work, and whether or not 

there is compliance with that. 

What we do know is the size of the program is staggering. We 

spent $137 billion on this program last year. Senator Carl Levin 

and I did a review. My staff initially reviewed 300 random cases 

that were selected randomly through a computerized model from 

Social Security for three different offices, one in my home State. I 

try to do something for my home State every time to make sure we 

are not missing it when I am doing oversight. 

And what we found was alarming. What we found is 25 percent 

of those cases—and I personally read the medical history on about 

100 of these cases as a practicing physician. But what we found is 

25 percent of the cases should never have been approved for benefits based on Social Security’s own rules and procedures. So we had 

25 percent where their own administrative law judges didn’t follow 

their own rules. Interesting, they shared with us that their own internal review showed that they found 22 percent of like cases of 

3 

their own ALJs not following the procedures and rules that have 

been set up. 

We specifically looked in our investigation at Huntington, West 

Virginia, because the problems that we came to find were similar 

to those we found in our prior investigation, only much, much 

worse. And this got our attention because this office processed 

more disability cases than any other office in the Nation, and so 

when we looked at it, much of that could be accounted to one attorney, Eric C. Conn. In spite of practicing in a town of 500 people, 

he had become the third highest payment, Social Security, receiving over $4 million in agency fees in 2010. 

When we looked more closely at Mr. Conn’s operations, we found 

reasons for serious concern. Some of what Mr. Conn did was outright fraud; at times, he was simply able to exploit loopholes in the 

program. Both of those should be a concern for us in Congress 

given the precarious nature of the trust fund. 

To ensure that Mr. Conn’s cases were approved and keep his fees 

flowing, Mr. Conn colluded with an ALJ in Huntington, West Virginia, by the name of David Daugherty. The two worked together 

to award billions of dollars in fraudulent disability claims. Their 

plan involved several calculated steps. First, in order to make sure 

Mr. Conn’s cases were approved, Judge Daugherty needed to make 

sure Mr. Conn’s cases got in front of him. Normally, agency rules 

require that the oldest case goes to the first available ALJ. He bypassed that, and I won’t go into details. It is in my written testimony on how he did that. But he inappropriately reassigned cases 

when they weren’t assigned to him by going into a computer system and reassigning them to himself. 

The next thing he would do is he would call the attorney’s office 

with a list of names and Social Security numbers telling Mr. Conn 

what he needed in terms of either a medical or physical or psychological impairment to be able to approve the case. And it wasn’t 

really that difficult because Mr. Conn had prefilled out all the 

forms. He had about 30 different forms, and he would just randomly put one, whether it had any connection whatsoever to the 

patient’s history at all. And so he would assign one of those. 

Mr. Conn also collected a number of doctors who actually conspired to do what he wanted done at his bidding, and paid out millions of dollars to these doctors, many of whom had lost licenses in 

other States and had significant histories that would render their 

regular practice of medicine questionable. He paid around $500 per 

review, which sometimes took less than 15 minutes. So you can see 

that there was motivation for money with the physicians as well. 

In one instance our committee determined that 97 of Mr. Conn’s 

claimants approved by Judge Daugherty had the exact same residual functional capacity, a statistical impossibility, which showed 

that he was using preset forms to get the answers that he wanted. 

Judge Daugherty would then write a boilerplate decision to approve the claim for benefits, always finding that the information 

and evidence provided by Mr. Conn outweighed any and all other 

evidence in the file, most of which was never, ever looked at. 

Mr. Conn made millions, as I said. The committee also discovered that Judge Daugherty had deposited in his bank account 

$100,000 in unexplained cash deposits over this period of time. But 

4 

Judge Daugherty wasn’t only approving Mr. Conn’s cases. In just 

the last 5 years working for the agency, Judge Daugherty awarded 

more than $2.5 billion and had an approval rate in excess of 95 

percent. 

If that is not bad enough, the breakdown in the management of 

the Social Security system was evident as well. Judge Charlie 

Andrus—and Judge Daugherty could have been stopped by Judge 

Andrus. He chose not to do that. He chose not to discipline him. 

He chose not to reprimand him. He chose not to do what he had 

in his powers, the chief judge. 

He allowed Judge Daugherty to approve a high number of 

claims, and, because of this, Judge Andrus was touted and sent 

around the country on how to do things by the Social Security system. Mr. Andrus did nothing to stop Mr. Conn or Judge Daugherty. 

He looked the other way. At one point it became obvious that 

Judge Daugherty was no longer bothering to even hold any hearings. They were all done on the record. 

The other thing that we know is that Judge Daugherty would 

come in, sign in, leave the Social Security office, come back in the 

afternoon, sign out and leave. He wasn’t even there. 

The other thing that we found was that Mr. Andrus colluded 

with Mr. Conn to target a whistleblower in his office. That is a big 

charge. When he was questioned about this by our staff, he said 

he couldn’t recall whether or not he instructed someone to do certain things. 

However, he wasn’t happy about losing the top position in his office, so he teamed up with Mr. Conn to target a whistleblower trying to—when there was work from home on one Sarah Carver. 

What they did was spy on her, try to photo her, proving that she 

wasn’t actually working from home so that they could terminate 

Ms. Carver. 

Judge Andrus, after lying to the committee, later confessed to the 

plan, explaining what he and Mr. Conn were trying to do. He had 

asked a Ms. Sarah Nease to call one of Mr. Conn’s employees on 

the days Ms. Carver was scheduled to work from home, and then 

he would have one of Mr. Conn’s employees follow her and track 

her and stalk her to make sure during the work hours she wasn’t 

doing anything but work. And, of course, Sarah was a great employee. She actually did her work from home. That is why she was 

a great whistleblower. 

He was not truthful with the committee. Twenty-four months 

after he—correction, a few months after he lied to the committee, 

he had a sudden remembrance of the facts and confessed to exactly 

what happened, and signed a 24-page sworn statement to the agency, and he confirmed what I just laid out. 

After that Mr. Andrus was put on paid administrative leave and 

filed a claim with the Merit Systems Protection Board. This is after 

he admitted to conspiring with Mr. Conn to target one of his own 

employees. He voluntarily retired, according to a decision from the 

Merit Systems Protection Board. The system charged him with conduct unbecoming an ALJ, engaging in apparent conflict of interest, 

lack of candor—in other words lying—and unauthorized disclosures. 

5 

Despite these charges he had a settlement agreement, that this 

agency did nothing. He retired today with full pension intact. So 

there was no consequence. 

The final point I would make is when we finished our investigation on Huntington, the entire package was sent to the Department 

of Justice. To date nothing has happened. Mr. Conn has not been 

indicted; Judge Daugherty has not been indicted; Judge Andrus 

has not been indicted. 

So something has to change in terms of the enforcement of our 

laws and the rule of law if, in fact, we are to change Social Security 

system. We have a lot of great employees at the Social Security 

system, and we have a lot of people with true needs. If we don’t 

fix this through both oversight and legislative changes, this system 

will not be available to the extent it is today for those that are 

truly disabled in this country. 

I would be happy to take any questions you might have for me. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

The Senator has agreed to take a few questions. I am going to 

yield first to the ranking member Mr. Cummings. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much. 

Senator, thank you very much for being here. I have the utmost 

respect for you, and I thank you for looking into these kinds of 

matters. 

I must say that the Social Security Administration is based in 

my district, headquarters, and I am thankful that you said that we 

have a lot of great employees, because sometimes we can give this 

broad brush. And all those people who are working overtime and 

busting their butts, they get painted with the brush. So I am glad 

you said that. 

And I find, as a lawyer, the comments that—the descriptions 

that you gave, if people are doing those types of things, and I have 

no reason to believe they are not, it is reprehensible. And we are 

better than that, and we should be. 

I want to see if we can come to some areas. You know, a lot of 

times we have hearings, and in the words of my former sharecropper mother, she says, you have motion, commotion, emotion 

and no results. And so I want to see if we can find areas of agreement, and I want to ask you just three questions. 

The Social Security Administration is supposed to conduct continuing disability reviews every 3 years. These reviews ensure that 

individuals continue to have the disabilities that qualify them for 

disability assistance, that they are not receiving payments improperly. But there is currently a backlog of 1.3 million CDRs. 

During our investigation witnesses told us these reviews are 

highly cost effective, and I know that is a big deal for you, cost effectiveness, and for me, too. They estimate that every dollar spent 

on the CDR saves $9 in improper payments. The inspector general 

testified that if the backlog in CDRs were eliminated, we could 

save more than $2 billion per year. 

The problem he identified is a lack of adequate funding. In our 

previous hearing, Congresswoman Duckworth asked the inspector 

general if there was any reason for this backlog other than adequate funding. This was his response: No, because we can pretty 

much show from all the work that we have done is when Social SeVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:53 Sep 08, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\89597.TXT APRIL
6 

curity dedicates the resources of doing it, and the dedication is 

coming from their funding, they will reduce the backlog. 

Question: Dr. Coburn, Senator, do you believe that Congress 

should fully fund continuing disability reviews to eliminate the current backlog, and did your research go into that at all? 

Senator COBURN. Not under the way it is done today, because a 

lot of CDRs are just a postcard mailed to somebody that says, are 

you still disabled? And they fill it out and send it back, so there 

is no real investigation with a lot of them. 

What needs to happen, I believe, is those people who we know 

are going to be permanently disabled, you know, the medical 

science and the medical record would show there is not going to be 

a way for them to get into the workplace, those should never have 

a continuing disability review. We shouldn’t waste any resources on 

it. 

What we should do is recategorize those who get disability, ones 

with what should be a short-term, ones that have a chance, and 

then ones that have no chance, and then concentrate that, but it 

needs to be a CDR. So I am all for funding a real CDR at adequate 

levels, but you are fixing the wrong problem. 

Chairman ISSA. Yeah. 

Senator COBURN. The problem is a census report—the Senate report came out. The approval rates dropped precipitously because 

the judges weren’t, in uniform, following their own regulations. So 

if you put people on disability who are not truly disabled, and you 

send a postcard saying, are you still disabled, they are going to answer yes. So it is not going to do anything. So I agree that we 

should fund it, but we need major changes. 

I would make one other point: Remember, when somebody comes 

before an ALJ, they have already been turned down twice by people very knowledgeable in the system. Two separate Social Security 

employees have looked at either the grid or the medical history, 

looked at the law and the requirements, and have said no. The key 

thing we need is that input, since the judges routinely won’t read 

their input, into the trial hearing, into the disability determination 

so that the input of the paid professionals working for Social Security is actually heard. 

There is a lot of other gimmicks and loopholes that Eric Conn 

used to change the medical record falsely so that the most recent 

piece of information would be there and only arrive a day before 

a hearing, and that is what routinely happens today. So we need 

structural change within how we do this, and we need continued 

oversight. 

If we do good work over the next year or so in terms of fixing 

this, and we don’t oversight it afterwards—you know, the reason 

this happened is because we weren’t doing good oversight routinely. What is your approval rate? Are you following the regulations? Are you doing the continuing disability reviews? So I would 

say if we have a good system, we ought to fund it adequately to 

make sure it can work. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I had said three questions, I am just going to ask 

you one more. The inspector general said that we should fully fund 

antifraud efforts because he believes that we can save a lot of 

money generally in Social Security. I mean, do you agree with that? 

7 

Senator COBURN. Yeah, I do, but the antifraud efforts have to 

look at those ALJs that are fraudulent as well. So you have to look 

inside as well as outside. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Again, I really appreciate you being here. 

Senator COBURN. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you. 

Chairman ISSA. Senator, our report found that 191 ALJs, administrative law judges, had allowance rates in excess of 85 percent, 

and these are people, as you said, that were turned down once or 

twice by the previous reviews, 85 percent over the past decades. 

These ALJs collectively awarded more than $150 billion in lifetime 

benefits. Does that seem about consistent with what you had seen 

during your investigation? 

Senator COBURN. It is, yes. 

Chairman ISSA. Now, in the Senate it takes 51 people to pass 

something. 

Senator COBURN. No, it takes 60. 

Chairman ISSA. It seems to take 51 lately, but okay. It takes 60 

to get a vote and 51 to pass. How many people got to vote on what 

these judges got to do? How many got to second-guess them? Were 

these effectively administrative law judges that each time they said 

yes when they should have said no, they were writing a $300 million appropriation of the taxpayers’ money—$300,000. I am sorry, 

$300,000. 

Senator COBURN. I actually don’t put the blame on the administrative law judges. I put it on us. You know, until we had whistleblowers come forward, we weren’t doing the due diligence that we 

are supposed to be doing. We weren’t having a hearing to see what 

was going on. 

Chairman ISSA. You have got Judge Huntington, who effectively 

was the Duke Cunningham of ALJs, wasn’t he? Similar to our colleague who took bribes in order to do appropriations, he was taking 

money in order for a lawyer to make a few hundred thousand dollars, a few tens of thousands of dollars, but a client to receive 

$300,000 over a lifetime. He was essentially selling for a few thousand dollars millions or billions of dollars’ worth of yours and my 

money. 

Senator COBURN. Well, to be fair to Judge Daugherty, we don’t 

know where he got the cash. So the assumption would be—— 

Chairman ISSA. He may have simply colluded with this guy for 

free. 

Senator COBURN. Yeah. 

Chairman ISSA. That is an incredible level of generosity. 

Senator COBURN. Either way, the fact is the system is broken. 

We are not following the guidelines. It is improving as we’ve improved our oversight. But we have not done the oversight, and that 

is why I am thankful that you all are doing this. What needs to 

come forward—we are working with the disability community right 

now to try to make the major reforms with the truly disabled to 

make sure we don’t put anything we do at peril for them, but at 

the same time exclude those that want to game the system. So we 

are trying to work with that. We have offered to work with your 

committee in terms of trying to formulate and then get it to the 

appropriate committee of jurisdiction what needs to be done. 

8 

I want to tell you one other story. There is a gentleman in Oklahoma that has been in a wheelchair his whole life. He works for 

the State Disability Determination Unit, and he has put over 300 

people who are totally disabled to work in the last 2 years, full 

time, paying jobs with health insurance. So, you know, that is the 

better answer is if we are going to spend money, let us spend 

money on helping people become productive members of the society 

with their disability. 

And so I think we need to do it all, but there certainly needs to 

be a continuing oversight, a continuing IG. The other question you 

should ask yourself, and this is no reflection on the IG that is there 

presently, is why wasn’t the IG catching some of this before, before 

it became a story through whistleblowers’ leaks through a newspaper? 

So we have real work to do, and it is not just in Social Security 

disability; it is throughout government. 

Chairman ISSA. I appreciate it. 

Real quick follow-up. In the case of Judge Daugherty, do you believe he should be prosecuted? You suggested—— 

Senator COBURN. Absolutely. 

Chairman ISSA. —referral, you sent it. The statute of limitations 

probably hasn’t expired for it. He could still be prosecuted as we 

speak. 

Senator COBURN. I believe he should be prosecuted, I believe 

Judge Andrus should be prosecuted, and I believe Mr. Conn should 

be prosecuted. 

Chairman ISSA. Now, I was just in Oklahoma this weekend, and 

the one thing I figured out quickly in Oklahoma is you love your 

football. 

Senator COBURN. We do. 

Chairman ISSA. And my understanding is when you win or lose 

a game, the coach doesn’t get to come out the next day and say, 

you know, what I needed was more players, or I needed to pay my 

players more. He gets to have—— 

Senator COBURN. We don’t pay players in Oklahoma like California, like some of the other States. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, minor versus major. But the—don’t the 

Texans laugh. Don’t even think about it. It was a Texan that built 

that big stadium in Oklahoma, so just get over it. I have got a lot 

of Texans here, and I have only got one great Oklahoman. I think 

he is right down there. 

But the fact is that the IG recommends basically a whole lot 

more money for a lot more people, a bigger team. Do you believe 

if that team were reviewing the excesses of these ALJs, the cases 

that were allowed that should not have been allowed, isn’t that the 

low-hanging fruit? Couldn’t you have basically moved the ball a lot 

of yards down the grid if, in fact, you were able to just simply look 

at people over 85 percent and say, let us look at those cases again? 

And if we look at those cases, those are the people we ought to go 

find out if they are really disabled. Would you agree with that? 

Senator COBURN. Well, I think, to some extent. But remember, 

you have had this swelling application because we have created the 

predicate that it is so easy to get disability, and you have lawyers 

advertising all the time telling them, we will get you taken care of. 

9 

So you have a workload there. And in that mix, 50 percent in that 

mix are people who are really disabled, and if we don’t attend to 

that, we are not. 

So I would agree that we ought to review where the outliers are, 

but we also ought to fund appropriately and also have the judges 

really pay attention to the career Social Security people who are 

making these determinations in the first place. Almost all of them 

get appealed to a judge. And then after two professionals within 

Social Security have said, no, you are not eligible, even now 50 percent of them get overridden by a judge who isn’t looking at the 

whole record. The professionals inside Social Security look at the 

whole record. The judges rarely do. 

You know, some of these stacks are this thick. Let me just give 

you a little bit of history. Michael Andrus was approved—Astrue 

was approved to be head of Social Security. The message Congress 

gave him is, get rid of the backlog. Guess what? He did. He didn’t 

do it right, but he got rid of a lot of the backlog while he was head 

of Social Security. Sloppy work. And that became their impetus. It 

is not whether they are disabled or not, it is to get rid of the case, 

and we created that demand on him. So Congress, again, we need 

to look at our own House, and we need to do continuing oversight, 

not just bullet oversight. We start it, and we continue it. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you, Senator. 

Mr. Lankford, do you have a quick question? 

Mr. LANKFORD. I do have a quick question. 

Chairman ISSA. Senator, we understand you are going to have to 

leave shortly, so we are on your schedule. 

Mr. Lankford. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Just a quick question. We have obviously had 

multiple hearings on this, as you have in the Senate as well. One 

of the things that comes up over and over again, the Social Security Administration says there is no way to be able to address to 

the CDRs overturning any of these cases because they can’t show 

medical improvement because of the way the opinion was written 

by the ALJ, that they don’t have anything. 

One quick note from one that is just an illustration, you have 

tracked all those well, the focused review—and I am going to pull 

out one judge’s focused review—said during the hearing, he asked 

the claimant if he had difficulty walking. They responded in the affirmative, and so he said he had degenerative disc disease, though 

there was nothing in the medical record that actually said it. 

Now, CDR doesn’t matter on that because you are not going to 

show medical improvement because they can’t show there is any 

medical problem at the beginning. How widespread have you seen 

that is, and what is the difficulty there with this evaluation on 

showing medical improvement when they can’t show there was a 

medical problem in the first place? 

Senator COBURN. What you are talking about is an incompetent 

ALJ that didn’t look at the record, because unless it is in the record 

and you have scientific proof for it, you have no basis to take the 

statement. Every one of us is disabled in a certain way, and so all 

of us could claim a certain disability for some aspect of our health, 

but the fact is is there is a record, and if the record isn’t looked 

at, you can’t ever get the right answer. 

10 

Mr. LANKFORD. And trying to overturn that, no matter what your 

CDR is, you can’t show medical improvement if you can’t show 

there was a medical problem in the first place. So you are permanently stuck in the disability system without any way to be able 

to come out of it. 

Senator COBURN. Well, here is the other problem with it. If you 

put somebody in disability that is not truly disabled, what you did 

is put a ceiling on their ability to achieve, perform, grow, succeed. 

And they carry that label as, ‘‘I am disabled, and I can’t,’’ rather 

than ‘‘I am not disabled, I have problems, but I can.’’ And so not 

only do we have an impact financially in our country, we take all 

these people’s—their hopes and aspirations and say, we confirm 

you can’t, instead of saying, we believe you can. 

And that is what is so great about Jason Price in Oklahoma is 

he has taken people who have real hard disabilities and showed 

them how they could. And that is what we need to do more of. 

Mr. MICA. [Presiding.] Thank you, Mr. Lankford. 

We will let Ms. Speier—I think she had a quick question. 

Ms. SPEIER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, Senator, for the outstanding work that you and 

Senator Carper have done in the Senate on this issue. 

Chairman Lankford and I have worked closely together in a bipartisan fashion in the subcommittee hearings that we have had 

on this issue. One of the things that is most disturbing to me is 

that even with the mountains of evidence against the ALJ 

Daugherty and Eric Conn, no action has been taken against either 

of them, and, in fact, my understanding is that Eric Conn is still 

handling cases in the Huntington office on behalf of claimants. 

So the inspector general—I think Patrick O’Carroll has done an 

outstanding job. I mean, I think he is top drawer, and his investigation with over 130 interviews suggests that there is plenty of 

evidence. Now, the Attorney General has not taken any action. The 

Social Security Administration has been waiting for a prosecution, 

and just yesterday both Mr. Lankford and I signed a letter to the 

U.S. attorney in the Eastern District in Kentucky to request an 

independent evaluation, because nothing is happening on these 

cases. 

In your reviews is there anything the Social Security Administration can do independent of waiting for a legal prosecution to take 

place? What administrative action do you think they still have the 

ability to take against both Judge Daugherty and Eric Conn? 

Senator COBURN. Well, I am not a lawyer, and so I really don’t 

know. What I can tell you is they can sanction Mr. Conn if they 

wanted to. I mean, the evidence is out there in the report that Senator Levin and I published along with Senator Carper and Senator 

McCain. They could sanction him; say, you can no longer practice 

before the Social Security Administration. They could do that. 

Now, there would be a fight, because he is going to fight that because he is making millions of dollars a year off of it, but they 

could do that. And that is called leadership. That is setting an example to send the same example to other law firms that are abusing the system. We are in the midst of taking a good look at another large law firm right now that specializes in this. 

11 

And the whistleblowers, the story they tell is not pretty: cheating, misinformation, nonauthenticated facts, not including pertinent facts in the records even though they assert that they do. 

So there is a lot of things they can do, but if Justice Department 

isn’t going to do anything, and Social Security isn’t going to do anything, it is not going to matter what we do if we don’t do something. We have to ask them to do that. 

And I am truly frustrated. We sent a very well-packaged case to 

the Justice Department on this with stuff under oath, documented, 

the facts laid out, and no action has been taken on them. 

Ms. SPEIER. So from a legislative perspective, I mean, I am with 

you 100 percent in terms of our responsibility in terms of oversight 

and that it has to be consistent and not just a drop in the bucket. 

But what legislative remedies would you recommend that we embrace to fix this problem? Now, in fairness to ALJs generally, there 

is 1,500 of them—— 

Senator COBURN. Yes. 

Ms. SPEIER. —and we cannot suggest that 1,500 of them are not 

doing their job. 

Senator COBURN. No, that is not true at all. 

Ms. SPEIER. In fact, the vast majority are doing their jobs. 

Senator COBURN. As a matter of fact, a lot of the information we 

got was from very good ALJs saying, here is what is going on. They 

would see it in their colleagues. 

Ms. SPEIER. So—— 

Senator COBURN. And they would say, how in the world could 

somebody do this when I am struggling to get through all these 

records every day and make a real determination? How can somebody do that? 

Ms. SPEIER. Right. 

Senator COBURN. So this is not to impugn all ALJs, but we have 

a large number of ALJs who are improving now, now that the story 

is out. 

Here is the answer: If we write a reform bill on Social Security, 

we have to be very specific about what we expect. Here is what 

Congress typically does. We pass a law, and we say, you figure out 

how to implement it, and what we need to do is start being very 

specific on what we mean and what we want to be implemented. 

Here is the standards. In other words, not let the bureaucracy set 

the standards; we will set the standards in statute so that they 

have to comply. 

Ms. SPEIER. So what would your standards be? 

Senator COBURN. My standards would be is, number one, a continuing review of ALJs to see that they are actually looking at the 

record; number two, continuing review of lawyers before the ALJ 

court to see if, in fact, they are abusing the privileges of practicing 

before that court, not submitting all the information. That is routine today. Pertinent medical information is excluded from the 

record on purpose, because if it was in there, they would not get 

their disability; adding new material after the case is set for docket, in other words, finally finding a doctor that will say what they 

want them to say and then that being the latest piece of information. So the system is gamed. 

12 

So we have to write a bill, and we have to put the rules and the 

specs, commonsense stuff. Not stuff—we want to err on the side of 

giving somebody disability that doesn’t have disability, because if 

we don’t, we are going to miss some people who are truly disabled. 

So a small percentage of that would be commonsensical, but we 

can’t do what we are doing today, and so what I would recommend 

is having Social Security before you, what are you doing to change 

this? How are you changing it? How are things improving? What 

is your approval rate? What is your denial rate? What is happening? What are you doing on late evidence? What are you doing 

to lawyers who bring up cases and don’t put the information in the 

medical record; in other words, exclude bad information. And that 

happens routinely right now. 

Ms. SPEIER. Thank you. I yield back. 

Chairman ISSA. [Presiding.] Thank you. 

Senator, I want to thank you for the generosity of your time. You 

stayed far longer than we thought you were going to be able to. 

Senator COBURN. Well, I just appreciate you all looking into this. 

We have got to fix it, because the people who truly are disabled in 

this country are depending on this system, and it is belly up in a 

year. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

We will take a short recess and just set up for the second panel. 

Thank you. 

[recess.] 

Chairman ISSA. The committee will come back to order. 

The Social Security Disability Insurance Program and the Supplemental Security Insurance Program have both seen explosive 

growth over the last decade. Through these programs nearly 20 

million people received $200 billion of annual benefits. At this rate, 

however, the program is financially unsustainable. The SSDI program is set to go bankrupt in 2016, when the trust fund is finally 

depleted. Those who have genuine disabilities who depend on this 

program will be hurt the most. 

It is no secret that serious problems within the disability programs are contributing to the insolvency. Today’s hearing will focus 

on the role of administrative law judges, often referred to as ALJs, 

and concerns about the agency’s lack of oversight for these key actors. 

ALJs work in the executive branch. They are, in fact, executive 

or, if you will, nonjudges in the sense of the other branch. They 

work for the President and for the administration. These quasiindependent government adjudicators are responsible for determining whether or not a person who has already been denied disability benefits should, in fact, receive those benefits. 

Every case that comes before an ALJ has already been denied at 

least once, and often twice. Yet ALJs overturn a shocking number 

of these denials. Between 2005 and 2013, two-thirds, 66 percent, of 

all applicants who appealed benefit denial decisions to an ALJ were 

awarded benefits and placed on Federal disability. 

During this time period seven different ALJs went an entire year 

where they approved every single case that came across their desk. 

Some even repeated this dubious feat, receiving 1,000 batting average, if you will, for another year. In a previous hearing ALJs told 

13 

this committee that denying a claim requires more paperwork to 

justify the decision and invites scrutiny. This gives ALJs a bureaucratic incentive to approve cases. 

ALJs also told the committee that they felt pressured to meet 

quota of decision each year. The judges testified that they received 

training from the agency to speed up their decisionmaking, including instructions to set an egg timer, limiting reviews to no more 

than 20 minutes per case. And again, that is 20 minutes per case 

that might be, as the Senator said, 2 feet high. 

Prior to 2011, the only metrics the Social Security Administration used to evaluate ALJs was the number of cases the judges decided; in other words, the measure of quantity but not quality in 

their review. In 2010, the agency finally decided to publish allowance data. These are statistics about how often ALJs reverse denials and/or allow benefits. Tellingly, the national allowance rate 

began to fall after the agency made the data public. Again, it was 

not known; once it was known, the rate of approval began falling. 

During the time after it was made public, not a single ALJ received 

a perfect batting average. 

As we see time and time again, transparency and access to information improves governing. The fact that ALJ allowance rates declined so rapidly in such a short period of time raises serious questions about the high national allowance rate prior to 2010, meaning 

prior to 2010 it is likely that hundreds, thousands or even millions 

of individuals who were not disabled received that lifetime benefit 

of approximately $300,000 in disability payments. 

On 60 Minutes last fall, one administrative law judge stated that 

‘‘if the American public knew what was going on in our system, 

half would be outraged, and the other half would apply for benefits.’’ Today’s hearing is an opportunity for the American people 

and the American public to see just what exactly is going on in 

these disability programs and how much it is costing the American 

taxpayer each year. 

The four administrative law judges who join us here today have 

approved an average of more than 95 percent of disability cases 

they have received combined. These ALJs have awarded more than 

$11 billion in lifetime benefits in just over the last decade. Internal 

agency reviews of their decisions shows significant and frequent 

problems in both decisions they made and the hearings they conducted. 

The reviews raise serious concerns about how many of the individuals they awarded benefits to actually met the criteria for disability compensation. The committee staff report released today 

found evidence the ALJs disregarded established procedures for deciding cases. Some examples: Instead of following procedures to inform applicants in writing after all evidence had been considered, 

ALJs sometimes made it their practice to immediately tell applicants when they testified that they would be awarded benefits. 

Vocational experts hired by the Social Security Administration to 

provide professional expertise during hearings were sometimes ignored, not permitted to testify, or even only permitted to testify 

after the ALJ had proclaimed the conclusion granting the disability. Some ALJs actually discussed, perhaps even bragging to 

14 

applicants during proceedings, about how many cases they heard 

and approved. 

In short, and despite the fact that every appeal they heard had 

been denied at least once before, some ALJs rubber-stamped for approval almost every single case that came before them. For a program that is staring down bankruptcy, this lack of accountability 

is unacceptable and must be changed. I am looking forward to today’s testimony as we try to get to the bottom of the problem before 

us and restore integrity to these important programs. 

I now recognize the ranking member for his opening statement. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I truly 

thank you for holding this hearing today. I think it is a very, very 

important hearing. And today the committee begins 2 days of hearings to examine the actions of administrative law judges who determine whether individuals with disabilities qualify for financial assistance under the Social Security Disability Insurance Program. 

Congress created this program in the 1950s as a lifeline for millions of Americans who pay their taxes and show up at their jobs 

every day, but experience disabilities that stop them from working. 

Recently there have been allegations of criminal fraud by one particular judge. These actions are reprehensible, and they diminish 

the confidence that most Americans have in this program. 

Yesterday our colleague Jackie Speier, the ranking member of 

the Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Health Care, and Entitlements, sent an important letter to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. She asked them to evaluate evidence of 

criminal activity committed by an administrative law judge there. 

I want to thank her for these efforts, and I ask that her entire letter be included in the hearing record. 

Mr. LANKFORD. [Presiding.] Without objection. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I also want to thank Senator Carper, who was supposed to be 

here, who I also had a chance to talk to, and Senator Coburn, who 

was here with us today, for their role in exposing the details of this 

case. 

Today’s hearing does not concern allegations of criminal activity, 

but rather claims that some judges simply approve too many disability cases. Today the majority has invited four judges with allowance rates higher than 90 percent. This means that on an average they find disabilities and award financial aid in 90 percent of 

the cases they hear. 

I believe that it is appropriate to review the actions of individual 

judges not to compromise their independence, but to ensure that 

they are following agency policy. It is interesting that Senator 

Coburn said that there are some judges that don’t even follow 

agency policy; said that in 25 percent of the cases that he looked 

at, that was the case. That is most unfortunate. 

All four judges here today received attention from the Social Security Administration long before this committee ever got involved. 

They received in-depth reviews of their decisions and training to 

address problems identified by the agency. In fact, the Social Security Administration is in the process of removing one judge, one of 

our judges here, from his job to a filing with the Merit Systems 

Protection Board. 

15 

Although I support these individual reviews, I strongly oppose 

the broad condemnation of all administrative law judges. As Senator Coburn said, a lot of the information that he got, and others, 

in looking at these cases came from those administrative law 

judges who do their jobs and follow the rules. The 4 judges here 

today are not representative of the 1,500 judges who work at the 

Social Security Administration. Even they admit that they are 

outliers. 

According to the Social Security Administration, last year the entire pool of administrative law judges had an average allowance 

rate of 57 percent. That is the lowest overall allowance rate since 

1979. The fact is that over the last decade, the Social Security Administration has significantly improved its efforts to collect and 

analyze data about judges’ decisions. It has expanded training, improved performance, sharpened disciplinary procedure and enhanced efforts to combat fraud. 

But if more needs to be done, we have to make sure it is done. 

We cannot continue to have this kind of situation where 90 percent 

of the cases are being approved. But those efforts have been hindered by failure of Congress to provide adequate funding. Right 

now the agency cannot hire enough judges to hear cases. So individuals now wait more than a year for disability hearings, and it 

is even getting worse. We even received testimony during our investigation about people dying while they waited for their benefits. 

Congress has also underfunded antifraud programs to save taxpayers money. There is a huge backlog of continuing disability reviews, for example, which are supposed to be conducted every 3 

years to make sure beneficiaries continue to have the disabilities 

that make them eligible. Again, Senator Coburn said we should do 

that, but we should find a way to make it more effective and properly funded, and I agree with him. These reviews save taxpayers 

$9 for every $1 they cost, but Congress has not provided enough 

funding to conduct them. 

Congress has also failed to fully fund inspector general’s antifraud investigating units, so they simply do not exist in nearly half 

the country. This is the price of austerity. When we starve an agency of resources, it affects not only my constituents in Baltimore, but 

the constituents of every member of this committee in the House. 

If we care about improving this program, we need to invest in its 

success. 

Let me close by noting the inaccuracy of claims that judges with 

high allowance rates are contributing to the insolvency of the Disability Insurance Trust Fund. The projected insolvency of the fund 

was forecast in 1995 by the chief actuary of Social Security, and 

the cause has brought demographic changes across the country. As 

he explained, Congress can address this issue by passing a modest 

reallocation of payroll taxes to extend benefits by decades as Congress has done several times before. 

And with that, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing our witnesses, and I yield back. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. 

I will do a brief opening statement as well, and then I will yield 

to the ranking member on the subcommittee. 

16 

Mr. LANKFORD. As you know, my subcommittee has held three 

hearings over the past year on the problems with Federal disability 

programs. It is clear that the growth of these programs is 

unsustainable for the Nation’s taxpayers and it threatens the livelihood of the truly disabled who face large benefit cuts in the future 

if the program is not reformed. 

The Social Security Board of Trustees and the Congressional 

Budget Office estimated that without reform the Social Security 

Disability Insurance Trust Fund will be depleted in 2 years. At the 

outset, let me state that I appreciate the bipartisanship which my 

subcommittee has been able to approach this in all of our oversight. 

Ranking Member Speier and I both recognize there are significant 

problems with these programs and that reform is needed. I thank 

her very much for her work and our partnership on this issue. 

For all practical purposes the decision to allow benefits is an irrevocable commitment of taxpayer funds, since favorable decisions 

are not appealed and less than 1 percent of disability beneficiaries 

ever return to the workforce. Therefore, it is a decision which must 

be made with great care and proper consideration of all the evidence. It appears some ALJs are being very benevolent with other 

people’s money. 

In June last year, my subcommittee heard testimony from two 

former and two current Social Security administrative law judges. 

That hearing showed that the agency’s emphasis on processing 

cases quickly likely had the unintended consequences of ALJs putting too many people onto a program who are able to work. We 

learned that many ALJs use shortcuts and don’t have time to consider all the evidence prior to rendering a decision. 

In addition to discussing problems within the appeals process, 

my subcommittee has also explored problems with the agency’s 

continuing disability review process. The agency allowed a huge 

backlog of CDRs to develop. Moreover, the agency’s current medical 

improvement standard is so flawed that a claimant who is not disabled and wrongfully received benefit initially cannot be removed 

from the program. This was part of my conversation with Dr. 

Coburn earlier. 

Today’s detailed staff report and the hearing continues the committee’s important oversight. I would like to add into the record the 

staff report for this. Without objection. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Here are some of the central facts explained in 

the committee report. First, Jasper Bede, regional chief administrative law judge for the agency, testified that it raises a red flag 

when ALJs allow benefits at a high rate, which he defined as over 

75 or 80 percent. Between 2005 and 2009, over 40 percent of ALJs 

had an allowance rate in excess of 75 percent and over 20 percent 

of ALJs had an allowance rate in excess of 85 percent. 

Second, between 2005 and 2013, over 1.3 million individuals 

were placed onto disability by an ALJ with an allowance rate in 

excesses of 75 percent. 

Third, the raw numbers also suggest that the historic problem of 

ALJ decision making has been one-sided. For instance, 191 ALJs 

had a total allowance rate in excess of 85 percent between 2005 

and 2013. Only a single ALJ had a total allowance rate below 15 

percent during this same time period. 

17 

Fourth, prior to 2011, the agency failed to assess the quality of 

ALJs’ decisions in any way. The agency even failed to monitor 

whether ALJs were appropriately awarding benefits when ALJs 

awarded benefits without holding hearings. Instead, it appears that 

the only metric used by the agency to evaluate ALJs was the number of cases processed. 

Fifth, a 2012 Social Security Administration internal report confirmed this ‘‘A strong relationship between production levels and a 

decision quality on allowances. As ALJs’ production increases, the 

general trend for decision quality is to go down.’’ 

A committee analysis of 30 internal agency reviews of high-allowance ALJs confirms this. The 30 reviews showed troubling patterns 

in judicial decision making, particularly how ALJs with high allowance rates failed to utilize medical and vocational experts in their 

hearings, how they improperly assessed drug and alcohol abuse in 

their decisions, and how they improperly assessed whether individuals can work. 

Tragically, evidence suggests that the agency’s emphasis on highvolume adjudications over quality decision making has eroded the 

credibility of the disability appeals process, and, as a result, a large 

number of people are inappropriately on disability. 

In addition to the problems the excessive growth has on the truly 

disabled, these programs have too often limited people from reaching their full potential. According to a 2010 paper published jointly 

by the liberal Center for American Progress and the left-of-center 

Brookings Institute, the Social Security disability insurance program provides strong incentives to applicants and beneficiaries to 

remain permanently out of the workforce. 

I look forward to these two hearings today and tomorrow, and I 

hope to facilitate a productive discussion about how we can fix the 

systemic problems in the Federal disability programs so that precious taxpayer dollars are preserved for the truly disabled and 

those that we need to work and be engaged in work in our economy 

for their families are also incentivized to be able to return to the 

workforce. 

And with that, I recognize the ranking member on the subcommittee, Mrs. Speier. 

Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and thank you for your 

outstanding leadership on this issue. 

During the course of the committee’s oversight of Social Security 

Administration we have learned that there is room to do disability 

insurance better. We need to have more program integrity, more 

prevention of improper payments, and more commitment to improving quality. While the agency has taken steps towards reform, 

it has become clear that some of the concerns can only be addressed by Congress with additional resources for quality assurance and program integrity efforts. 

In April of this year, Chairman Lankford and I sent a bipartisan 

letter to the Social Security Administration that outlined several 

reforms and recommendations to improve the disability adjudication and review process to restore confidence in Federal disabilities 

programs. Just yesterday, I sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney for 

the Eastern District of Kentucky requesting an independent review 

for prosecution of the evidence Social Security Administration has 

18 

gathered with regard to an administrative law judge and a claimant’s representative who allegedly colluded with fraudulent medical 

evidence to obtain disability benefits awarded to some thousands of 

individuals. And Senator Coburn has provided us with ample evidence of those cases. 

The American people expect and deserve action. I am concerned 

that justice has been long delayed in this case. Administrative actions against the judge and the lawyer have been put on hold pending a possible criminal prosecution. White the Inspector General 

has conducted over 130 interviews, examined bank and phone 

records, reviewed decisions, and collected thousands of documents 

to build a case, we have heard nothing—I repeat, nothing—from 

the U.S. Attorney in West Virginia. It is long past time to prosecute this case. 

I would like to acknowledge the work of Chairman Carper and 

Ranking Member Coburn of the Senate Committee on Homeland 

Security and Government Affairs for its investigation into these 

matters and reported findings released in a committee staff report. 

To echo the words of Chairman Carper, while we don’t have any 

evidence that this is more than an isolated case, one example of inappropriate actions of this nature is one too many. 

Our oversight has also determined that the vast majority of administrative law judges are hardworking and strive to be compliant 

with the policies and regulations of the Social Security Administration. I do not believe that the judges invited to testify today are 

representative of the judge corps. Today the committee has invited 

a panel of current ALJs with extraordinarily high allowance rates. 

They are not reflective of the 1,500 judges nationally whose allowance rates averages are much lower. 

Some of today’s invited judges also have alleged personal conduct 

issues that also raise concerns. All four of these judges have been 

evaluated by Social Security for their conduct and performance and 

have received additional training and counseling to help them become more compliant and responsive to the policies of the agency. 

Two of the judges are facing or have faced disciplinary actions for 

persistent conduct or performance problems. 

I don’t know what this panel of witnesses can tell us. But I 

would alert all members that no one should appear at this hearing 

to try and influence how the Social Security Administration conducts its actions regarding the discipline of these specific judges. 

We should not thwart, influence, or sway the legal actions that are 

pending against these judges. 

Social Security disability benefits are an important lifeline for 

millions of American taxpayers with disabilities. It is critical that 

this lifeline is preserved. Our investigation is focused on identifying 

improvements to ensure that only those who meet the eligibility 

guidelines receive benefits so that the truly disabled can access this 

important lifeline and the American public can have confidence in 

the disability determinations process. 

Tomorrow, during Part II of this oversight hearing, we will hear 

testimony from Social Security officials on the efforts to enhance its 

abilities to oversee ALJs to ensure consistent and quality decisions. 

Our investigation has shown that Congress has not provided the 

19 

funding the agency needs to fulfill its mandate to effectively monitor program integrity and save taxpayer dollars. 

We know continuing disability reviews, CDRs, yield a return of $9 for every $1 spent. Social Security Administration and the OIG 

have also established cooperative disability investigations programs 

to coordinate and collaborate on efforts to prevent, detect, and investigate fraud in Federal disability programs. Those efforts pay 

for themselves many times over. Yet for some reason Congress has 

refused to fully fund the Inspector General and the agency to carry 

out its program integrity efforts. 

I hope all of my colleagues would agree that given the results of 

various quality improvement measures and program integrity efforts we should ensure that the agency has sufficient funds to address alleged ALJ misconduct, review ALJ decisions for errors and 

policy compliance, and conduct all its scheduled continuing disability reviews and continue other program improvements. 

I look forward to hearing the testimony from today’s witnesses 

as well as tomorrow’s testimony from the Social Security Administration officials on improving the disability appeals process and 

how Congress can support and enhance these efforts. 

With that, I yield back. 

Mr. LANKFORD. And I would like to add that I also concur, this 

is not a judicial proceeding today, this is a congressional hearing. 

So this is not about trying to pull out additional information that 

may be used by the Social Security Administration in the days 

ahead on any actions they may take. 

Members will also have 7 days to submit any other opening 

statement they would like to put on the record as well. 

I would like to welcome our second panel of witnesses today. Mr. 

Harry C. Taylor II is an administrative law judge for the Social Security Administration, Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, 

in Charleston, West Virginia. 

Mr. Charles Bridges is an administrative law judge for the Social 

Security Administration, Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 

Mr. Charles Krafsur is an administrative law judge for the Social 

Security Administration, Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, in Kingsport, Tennessee. 

And Mr. James A. Burke is an administrative law judge for the 

Social Security Administration, Office of Disability Adjudication 

and Review, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

Gentlemen, thank you for being here. 

Pursuant to committee rules, all witnesses are sworn in before 

they testify. If you would please rise, raise your right hand. 

Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you are about to 

give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 

so help you God? 

Thank you. You may be seated. 

Let the record reflect the witnesses have answered in the affirmative. 

In order to allow time for discussion, I will ask each of you to 

limit your testimony to 5 minutes. Of course, your entire written 

statement will be made part of the record. 

I’d Like to recognize Mr. Taylor for an opening statement. 

20 

STATEMENT OF HARRY C. TAYLOR II 

Judge TAYLOR. I’m Harry C. Taylor, the—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Taylor, can I have you push the—there’s a 

talk button right in front you. Apologize for that. 

Judge TAYLOR. I’m sorry. 

Mr. LANKFORD. No, that’s fine. This is new for everybody on it. 

There’s a little button that’s in front of you. If you’ll hit that when 

you talk and that will put your microphone on. When you finish, 

if you’ll turn that off, and we’ll make sure that we’re not getting 

your side conversations as well. 

Mr. Taylor, you’re recognized. 

Mr. TIERNEY. I’m Harry C. Taylor II. I’m a United States administrative law judge currently assigned to Charleston, West Virginia. 

I was asked to provide input concerning the role of the administrative law judge and how decisions are made. 

Basically, the ALJ is the third layer in the administrative process which a claimant must go through in order to apply for Social 

Security disability benefits. Additionally, it’s the only level where 

the claimant has a right to a due process evidentiary hearing in 

order to present his or her case. 

The ALJ will conduct an evidentiary hearing wherein the claimant has certain due process rights to present evidence on his or her 

behalf, to cross-examine expert witnesses, to appeal an adverse decision, and to obtain counsel, as well as experts to assist in the 

presentation of his or her case. Due process involves giving the 

claimant every opportunity to prove his or her entitlement to benefits and perhaps to help him or her obtain evidence helpful in their 

case, if unrepresented. 

On the ALJ’s part, due process involves being open minded until 

the evidentiary hearing and the record are closed. After the hearing is closed, the record is closed, the ALJ must make a written 

decision as to the claimant’s entitlement to benefits or whether he 

or she should be denied. In so doing, the ALJ has help from clerical 

staff, paralegal and attorney writers, medical experts, and vocational experts. The ALJ must consider the facts of each case, the 

applicable agency regulations, and of course the applicable law. 

One’s experience is also helpful in making an informed decision. 

A decision adverse to the claimant may be reviewed by the Appeals Council in Falls Church, Virginia. A decision adverse to the 

claimant that is affirmed by the Appeals Council may be appealed, 

too, and reviewed by the claimant’s geographical Federal district 

court. If adverse again, the decision may be reviewed by the pertinent Federal appeals court. 

Although most appeals stop here, it’s possible that the United 

States Supreme Court may review the adverse decision. And of 

course there’s no restriction on a claimant filing again for benefits 

and going through the process again. 

In my case, I prefer to review a case assigned to me as early as 

possible in the process. This allows me to identify the issues in the 

case and make notes, both written and mental, to determine what 

is needed to complete the record and to determine the need for experts, such as medical, psychological, or vocational. I make a point 

to stay balanced and keep an open mind on each case until it’s 

closed and ready for a decision. 

21 

In making a decision as to disability, the Social Security ALJ 

must always use the sequential evaluation process as defined by 

Social Security regulations. This process involves a logical way of 

thinking for the ALJ who must make a decision as to disability. 

And the sequential evaluation process includes five steps. 

The first step is referred to as what we refer to as substantial 

gainful activity. Is the claimant engaging in substantial gainful activity? If the claimant is engaging in SGA, this is an automatic denial, and the process stops there. If the claimant is not engaging 

in SGA, the ALJ will then go on to step two. As to what constitutes 

SGA, it is a level which is changed every year. 

Second step involves determining whether the claimant has a, 

quote/unquote, ‘‘severe impairment.’’ A severe impairment is by 

definition one that has significant impact on one’s life and which 

decreases a person’s RFC or MRFC to perform SGA. If the claimant 

does not have a severe impairment, the claimant is found to be not 

disabled and the process stops there. 

If, however, a severe impairment is found, then the process goes 

to step three. Studies have shown, of course, that not a lot of 

claims are denied at this step. Step three involves a finding of 

whether the claimant’s impairment or impairments meet one of our 

listed impairments in the CFRs, or whether the impairment/impairments in combination would equal any of our listed impairments. 

An ALJ may decide whether there is a meeting of a listing. 

Often, though, listed impairments are those medical or mental conditions deemed to be so bad by experts that those conditions meet 

the severity would be considered to be totally disabled and unable 

to work. 

If the claimant meets or equals the listing, the claimant is found 

disabled and the process stops there. If the claimant does not meet 

or equal the listings, the process goes to step 4. 

Step 4 involves whether a claimant can return to past relevant 

work, or PRW, as we call it. In other words, if a claimant’s impairment is such that he or she can return to past relevant work, the 

claimant is denied benefits and the process stops there. If, however, 

a claimant’s impairments are such that he or she is precluded from 

being able to perform past relevant work, then the process continues to step 5. 

Step 5 involves whether there is any other work which exists in 

significant numbers which the claimant can do despite his or her 

limitations. At this step, if the claimant cannot do past relevant 

work, the burden shifts, at step 5, shifts to the Commissioner to 

show that there are jobs that exist in significant numbers which 

the claimant can do despite his or her impairments. 

In its decision, the Fourth Circuit, of which West Virginia is 

part, has stated that vocational experts are necessary at step 5. I 

don’t know about any other location, but if we’re going to deny one 

at step 5 in West Virginia, we need a vocational witness at step 

5. 

A hypothetical question to the VE will include all the claimant’s 

limitations and impairments. If the VE finds no jobs, the process 

is complete and the claimant is found disabled at step 5. If the VE 

finds there are jobs which the claimant can do based upon his or 

22 

her limitations, the VE will state what those jobs are, what the 

number of those jobs are in the national economy, and whether his 

or her testimony on those jobs is consistent with the Dictionary of 

Occupational Titles. 

The claimant’s counsel is permitted to cross-examine the VE. If 

there are no jobs available and if the ALJ agrees with the vocational witness, the claimant is found not disabled at step 5. By regulation, the sequential evaluation process must be used in all cases 

involving disability. 

Certain cases can be decided at step 5 using our vocational rules, 

our so-called Grid Rules, which I’m sure the committee is aware of. 

Grid Rules are rules set forth in the CFRs wherein if a claim is 

limited to a certain RFC, have had a certain set of skills during 

their life, or are of a certain age, then the particular Grid Rule will 

dictate a finding of disabled. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Taylor, can you wrap up this part of it fairly 

quickly? 

Judge TAYLOR. With regard to my own bio, as humble as it is, 

I was born and raised in Wheeling, Ohio County, West Virginia, 

ranking second in my high school class. I went to West Virginia 

University, there graduating as an honor student. I received an 

academic scholarship to attend the George Washington University 

here in Washington, D.C. I spent a year in D.C. studying here. I 

got a master’s. In between serving 5 years as a military officer, I 

was able to earn my law degree from the law school at West Virginia University and my doctorate of philosophy degree from the 

graduate school at West Virginia University. 

I’ve always been a person driven to work, with very few hobbies 

except those of my children. My dedication and attention has always been on my workdays, nights, and even weekends. I enjoy 

work. Even though I have always felt the need to work, I have 

never failed to include my family time in my thoughts and efforts. 

People would call me a workaholic. 

I believe this need to work came from the times in which I was 

raised. At the end of World War II, Americans knew that if they 

wanted to make something of their lives they had to work hard, get 

an education, and above all be a loyal American. This is how I was 

raised and this is how I live. 

I would like to make a note that when I was in private law practice, my background was in medical legal issues. I was largely involved in personal injury, workers’ compensation, Social Security. 

And I have completed certain continuing education classes in those 

issues and have completed two 6-week classes in medical terminology. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. 

[Prepared statement of Judge Taylor follows:] 

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Mr. LANKFORD. Before we move on, we are obviously well aware 

that we have some storms in the area. There is flooding and everything else that is happening. Someone’s phone is notifying them 

frequently. If that happens to be yours, if you could try to silence 

that as quick as you can when that goes off so that we do not enjoy 

the reminder every few seconds here that we are having storms in 

the area. 

Mr. Bridges, you’re recognized. 

STATEMENT OF CHARLES BRIDGES 

Judge BRIDGES. Good morning, members of the U.S. House of 

Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. 

My name is Charles Bridges. I am an administrative law judge 

for the Social Security Administration, Office of Disability and Review, located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 

I want to start off by saying a hearing before the ALJ is de novo 

and impartial. This is required by the Federal Administrative Procedures Act, known as the APA. The ALJ has been granted independence to render decisions under the APA without agency interference and a decision is issued in his own signature on behalf of 

the Commissioner of SSA. 

This hearing is not, however, adversarial. The ALJ considers the 

full record, has access to medical, vocational, and psychological experts, as well as treating sources and any other sources he or she 

may deem necessary in order to render informed decisions. More 

importantly, the judge is given an opportunity to observe the demeanor and candor of witnesses and make credibility assessments. 

The decisions of the ALJs at this level are appealable to the SSA 

Appeals Council. The decision may be appealed directly to the 

United States District Court. The Appeals Council renders a postdecision review of a judge’s decision. I have been recently reviewed 

with no adverse findings. 

At the hearing at the office level the HOCALJ is responsible for 

supervising and distribution of disability appeals cases to subordinate judges. However, HOCALJs do not physically perform this 

function. Since the electronic age, cases are distributed rotationally 

as far as practical by lower management officials called GS’s. The 

GS’s distribute those cases. There are exceptions to this process. 

The exceptions are factors that involve terminal illnesses of a 

claimant, military personnel injured in Active Duty, and also claimants who have dire need. 

The Group Supervisors are also responsible for the match-up, assembly, collection, organization, and preparation of the claimant’s 

file for the judge to hear. This is called working up a file. 

Recently, I was referenced in a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, CBS 

local affiliate television station which reported waste, fraud, and 

abuse in government. This report came inaccurate, false, and misleading numbers concerning my record as a judge and misconceptions concerning the Social Security disability and supplemental insurance program. 

I have been specifically mentioned in prior testimony before this 

committee by employees of the Social Security Administration. This 

Harrisburg CBS affiliate reported a figure of $4.6 billion dollars of 

taxpayers’ money—how erroneous a statement was that—and was 

28 

contributed to my record. The numbers were not verifiable, factually inaccurate, in my opinion an unfortunate example of irresponsible and sensationalist journalism. 

Further, significant points I wish to make, emphasize here, that 

at the conclusion of the Inspector General report in August 2008, 

pursuant to request of Honorable Michael R. McNulty, House of 

Representatives, Chairman, Subcommittee on Social Security, Committee Ways and Means, concerning ‘‘Administrative Law Judge 

and Hearing Office Performance,’’ called as Congressional Response 

Report #A–O7–O8–28094, which was dated August 8, 2008. That 

report provided significant review of the roles of the poor performance of administrative law judges with SSA. The central problem 

addressed by this Congressional report was to reduce the backlog 

of SSA cases. Congressional Report #A–07–08–29094 concluded in 

its executive summary the following things. SSA was facing the 

highest number of pending cases, highest average of cases of processing time, ever since the inception of the disability program. As 

of April of 2008, there were over 755,000 cases awaiting decisions 

at the hearing levels. Furthermore, in fiscal 2008, ALJ processing 

time averaged 505 days in April 2008. While the average number 

of cases processed for ALJ has increased from fiscal year 2005 to 

fiscal year 2007, some ALJs continue to process cases at levels 

below agency expectations to increase ALJ productivity. 

Congressional Report, I repeat, #A–07–08–29094 further concluded: Our interviews disclosed that ALJs have varying levels of 

productivity due to factors such as motivation, number one, and 

work ethic. In fact, our interviews with RCALJs, regional chief administrative law judges, disclosed that motivation, number one, 

and work ethic were one of the main factors that contributed to 

higher or lower productivity of ALJs. 

The reference of the 2008 congressional response report is supportive of two essential points that I want to make here today. The 

first point is there are many factors affecting the productivity of 

SSA administrative judges. However, the 2008 congressional report 

cited motivation and work ethic as the main factors in this area. 

A highly productive judge would necessarily have more cases on 

which a sample may be taken. I have been a highly productive 

judge in the Social Security Administration because of my motivation and work ethic. According to statistics produced by administrative law judges and hearing office performance audit of 2007 of the 

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, office, under supervision myself, we had 

an average processing time of 265 days. This processing time was 

the best SSA time in the United States. And, in fact, this fact 

placed the Harrisburg office as one of the most well run offices during my tenure at HOCALJ. 

The second point I wish to make, it is clearly misleading and factually inaccurate to suggest that there is or should be a numerical 

basis on which to compare administrative law judges on their outcomes on the adjudication and the disposition of Social Security appeals. When the public hears statements that a judge approves X 

percentage of cases assigned to him or reverses a denial of benefits 

X percent of the time, these figures are misleading to the public. 

They are simply contrary to the law, in violation of the Federal Administrative Procedures Act and United States Constitution for an 

29 

administrative law judge to make an adjudication of the entitlement to Social Security benefits on the basis of any factors that are 

outside the record of that particular case. 

As noted, judges apply the facts to the law and the record before 

him or her and concludes whether or not that claimant meets the 

legal requirements of disability. Any judge who considers factors 

outside the record of that case would commit, in my opinion, a 

gross violation of the rights of that claimant. When any person 

uses a numerical figure which to compare judges and the outcomes, 

that suggests an impermissible and unlawful use of quotas, q-u-ot-a-s, quotas. 

In conclusion, after the claimant is successful in receiving an 

award of benefits, there is a process in place and funded for a postaudit review to determine if those conditions resulted in award still 

exist. It was apparent that post-audit reviews were not being conducted. That is an issue not of the ALJ’s concern. That is agency 

issue and a powers—a separation of powers issue to be concerned 

with that. 

That’s why a preposterous figure of $4.6 billion was tossed out 

in my particular case because there evidently and could not have 

been any post-audit reviews. Because if you consider one’s lifetime, 

starting about 25 to go up to about 80, and figuring some figure, 

I don’t know how it could be determined $300,000, this is preposterous. We hear no cases, set of cases that has these kind of specific parameters. There are too many changed circumstances by 

which we cannot make a determination that no one fits that particular parameter at all. 

And all I can say is that those two factors come into place, work 

ethic and motivation. Without those—those are the driving factors. 

And that was found by this Congress—not this Congress, but a previous Congress in their report. And this was what they said was 

the factors that are motivating the judges to do what they do. 

And I have been reviewed. And the APA gives the administrative 

law judge the independence, the independence to make those decisions. That’s why we see those disparity. But, evidently, the Congress decided when it passed the APA that we would have these 

disparities, that those disparities was not outweighed by the public 

good of providing good service to the public—to the public. 

Thank you, distinguished committee, for your time and my testimony. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Bridges. 

[Prepared statement of Judge Bridges follows:] 

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Krafsur. 

And by the way, I don’t know who still has that phone going off, 

but if we could identify it somewhere. 

Judge BRIDGES. I am the guilty party. I have done something 

about it. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. 

Mr. Krafsur. 

STATEMENT OF GERALD I. KRAFSUR 

Judge KRAFSUR. Good morning. I am here because of a friendly 

subpoena kindly issued by this committee. I am here also to report 

to this committee and the Congress of the United States that SSA, 

and in particular ODAR, has seriously interfered with my First 

and Fifth Amendment rights. The SSA has been harassing me with 

a series of Merit System Protection Board disciplinary complaints, 

the first of which has been recently dismissed. I will be filing a 

complaint with the Office of Special Counsel in this matter for retaliation and whistleblowing through my attorney, Charlton R. 

DeVault. 

My name is Gerald I. Krafsur. I am an administrative law judge 

assigned to the Social Security Administration position in Kingsport, Tennessee, ODAR office. 

I want to give you my adult background. I served in United 

States Army. Thereafter, I graduated from Babson Institute, now 

known as Babson College, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in June of 

1959, with a bachelor of science degree in business administration. 

In May 1962, I received my master’s degree in business administration from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, where 

I assisted faculty in Teaching Management Line and Staff. In 1962, 

I began my employment with the Ford Division Ford Motor Company, in its Product Planning Office and varied other company activities. 

In 1968, I was encouraged by Ford executives to apply for law 

school. In June 1971, I was awarded a doctorate degree in jurisprudence from Wayne State University. Shortly thereafter, I entered 

the practice of law, during which I was co-counsel on several major 

cases, among those Bass v. Spitz in the Wayne County Circuit 

Court, Detroit, Michigan, and Michael Baden v. Mayor Edward 

Koch, in the Eastern Federal District in New York. 

After 20 years of litigation in the private sector, I was awarded 

the opportunity to serve as an administrative law judge. On July 

18th, 1991, I was officially appointed administrative law judge, the 

Office of Appeals, Social Security Administration, Department of 

Health and Human Services, assigned to the OHA office in Detroit, 

Michigan. 

In the mid-1990s, the Social Security Administration Office of 

Hearings and Appeals, now known as ODAR, directly came under 

control of SSA. Thereafter, the functions of line and staff began to 

merge contrary to sound management practice. 

I will now describe what was and has always been since July 18, 

1991, my constitutional duties as administrative law judge. During 

ALJ training in July and August of 1991, we were taught what is 

commonly known as the three hats. 

37 

The first hat is my responsibility to perform my constitutional 

duties, uphold the Constitution of the United States, administer 

the Federal rules and regulations as they apply to SSA, and administer SSA rules and regulations together with Federal court decisions as they apply to SSA cases and conduct fair and impartial 

hearings. 

Second hat. This hat involves protection of claimants’ rights before, during, and after their application for disability benefits. This 

is performed in a nonadversary formal hearing by matching claimant testimony with medical and vocational testing records presented by representatives and/or individual claimants. 

Third hat. To represent the best interests of the Social Security 

Administration to protect the integrity of the Trust Fund. That hat 

is why I believe I was originally requested to appear before this 

committee. SSA has never provided me with evidence of disability 

that I could personally verify. I am restricted from deposing any 

and all individuals who generated the records provided me. ODAR 

hearings are the only forum where one side presents evidence and 

the other side, namely the SSA, fails to provide the same. 

In order to overcome the deficiency, I have requested SSA to perform a series of medical, psychological, and psychiatric tests on 

various claimants. I realize the cost of this may be expensive. If 

these functions cannot be completed as described, then SSA should 

enable me to depose any and all parties who generate any document which is presented to me in the formal hearing. SSA may believe written interrogatories are effective, but any litigator knows 

cross-examination under oath and live testimony are critical. I believe if I had the authority as outlined, my favorable decisions 

versus unfavorable as a percentage would be diminished. 

Now I would like Congress to investigate the mismanagement 

and misconduct of SSA officials in authorizing secret job evaluations in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act by conducting what is known as post-effectuation reviews of final decisions. SSA is using this secret process to listen to tapes and analyze decisions in violation of the Privacy Act and the APA. The SSA 

then uses the information to seek removal of ALJs from service. 

Before closing, I have three recommendations. First, ODAR be 

physically separated from SSA and function independently with a 

separate budget. Secondly, have all ALJs present and in the future 

attend the National Judicial College to be taught the three hats. 

The college would be required to seek input by SSA and other organizations necessary to undertake the task as mandated by Congress and watched over by an independent body. Thirdly, on record 

reviews by the Appeals Council of favorable decisions should be 

abolished and replaced by a direct appeal to the appropriate Federal district court prevent SSA from getting a second bite of the 

apple. 

Having heard thousands of disability cases, I have never had any 

case returned by the Appeals Council because the claimant was not 

disabled. 

In closing, I would like to thank each and every one of you for 

my kind invitation. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Krafsur. 

[Prepared statement of Judge Krafsur follows:] 

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41 

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Burke. 

STATEMENT OF JAMES A. BURKE 

Judge BURKE. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee,colleagues, first of all, I want to congratulate my colleagues 

for their excellent opening statements. I am Judge Jim Burke, from 

Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

First and foremost, I want to object to the fact that we are here 

following Senator Coburn excoriating a dishonest situation in Huntington, West Virginia. As Mr. Cummings mentioned, it’s not right 

to paint us with the same broad brush following a case like that. 

If I were in court representing a client behind a terrible case like 

that, I would get a continuance so it wouldn’t spill over on us. So 

I don’t want anybody in this committee putting us together with 

that situation in Huntington. 

My personal background is I was born on Welfare Island in New 

York City in 1943. My father was James Joseph Burke, he was the 

son of Irish immigrants. He was killed in action in March of 1945 

when my sister and I were babies. My mother, Madeleine Burke, 

raised us with her hard work, veterans’ benefits, and Social Security benefits. So we know how important those benefits are. 

I got to go to a municipal college in New York, Hunter College 

in the Bronx. After I graduated, I went into the Army. I served in 

the armored division in—the armored brigade in West Berlin. And 

when I got out, I applied to Hastings College of Law in 1968 and 

got my law degree in 1972. I graduated with honors, top 10 percent. I wrote a Law Review article about suing the United States 

Government by individual citizens. 

In my practice, I represented people in employment—working 

people—in employment litigation, workers’ compensation, insurance problems, personal injury, and Social Security disability. As 

part of that representation, I learned the close-up dynamics of the 

legal practice concerning injuries and disease, including scrutinizing medical records under the pressure of a busy and contentious plaintiffs’ practice. 

I also learned of the dynamics that illness and injury and mere 

unemployment have on individuals and their families. That’s a 

breadth of experience that many ALJs don’t have. I was appointed 

in July 2004—next month is my 10-year anniversary—during the 

Bush Administration. I served in Spokane and now in the Albuquerque office. But I am comfortable in the 10 years of my judgeship and in the 30 years of my practice in quickly and with particularity evaluating claimants’ testimony, witness statements, and 

medical records as my high pressure trial practice trained me for 

in New Mexico. 

Now, we have heard a lot about people getting benefits when 

they weren’t entitled to that. But we see a lot of benefits being denied below, and I am happy to make decisions reversing that process. One egregious case was a gentleman who lost his leg and an 

eye to a Viet Cong booby trap and was told that he was too fat and 

if he lost some weight he wouldn’t have to take off his artificial leg 

during the daytime. I was very, very honored to be involved in that 

case. And that is not fraud, but it certainly does speak to the other 

side of your concern about the integrity of the program. 

42 

I think the other gentlemen have done a very good job of informing you about the Social Security procedure. And I have got a couple of seconds left. I would like to introduce my daughter, Johanna 

Conroy. She is a 9/11 survivor, and she has been with the Office 

of Emergency Management and in that area since 9/12. And I am 

very happy to have her come down from New York to give us some 

support. 

Thank you. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. 

[Prepared statement of Judge Burke follows:] 

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Mr. LANKFORD. And thank you to all of you for being here. 

I will try to honor the 5-minute clock time for our questions, 

make sure that all of us have the opportunity to be able to ask 

questions today. And then we will have a second round if time permits as well to be able to go through that, and I will try take the 

lead on that. 

Judge Taylor, let me start with this. You did a good outline of 

the sequential evaluation process on this. I think that some of the 

questions that we have, because we interact with individuals that 

met the qualifications for disability, but when we interact with 

them don’t see the same sequential process to be there. Three years 

ago I had the opportunity to be able to interact with a gentleman 

at an event. He was very active, he was very involved. He was asking me questions about Social Security. I asked him if he was on 

Social Security disability. He told me yes. He was about 26 years 

old. He was very engaged in what was happening that day. And he 

told me he was on ADHD medication, so he was on Social Security 

disability for, I assume, for life on that. 

So as we interact with individuals like that, the question rises 

up immediately, how did they not meet the—all these severe impediment, the listings, the past relevant work, any other work that 

they can do in the economy becomes a challenge for many of us 

that interact with people as well as individuals that we interact 

with at home. So the challenge is, as you work through this vocational grid, how much pertinence do you put on this fifth one, they 

can’t do any other work in the economy? 

Judge TAYLOR. Every step in the process is important. Most of 

our cases are ended up being decided at step 5. At least I think 

back in West Virginia, back in the Fourth Circuit, I think most are. 

I remember when I was in private law practice, the first case, 

the first Social Security case that I ever—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. By the way, I hate to interrupt you, but keep 

your answers short because we are going to try to keep to this 5- 

minute clock. 

Judge TAYLOR. Okay. We try to analyze the evidence as best we 

can. I use my background in medical terminology to try to determine what the doctors are saying. But if you have a claimant who 

is a young man like you mentioned, he might have diabetes. And 

if he has diabetes, he might have diabetic retinopathy. If he has 

diabetic retinopathy, he might be going to Johns Hopkins clinic to 

get laser treatments for his eyes. If he’s getting laser treatments 

for his eyes, he might be under a 5-pound weight-lifting restriction. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Okay. I understand all that, except for my aunt, 

who has been in a wheelchair for 35 years, who lost her right leg 

to cancer, who is a diabetic, who is also blind in one eye, has 

worked as a receptionist for 35 years. She just retired at 69 last 

year. Excuse me for saying a lady’s age out loud. That makes sense 

in that sense except for the transition to work. The requirement is 

any other work in the economy. And that is the grand challenge 

that a lot of us face. And there’s a lot of individuals that have capability, they have skills, they have assets to be able to give much 

to their family and the economy, they seem to be slipping through 

this. 

47 

Mr. Taylor, have you received some awards of excellence over the 

past couple of years? You have submitted to our staff some of those 

awards. 

Judge TAYLOR. Sir, I did include those. The agency has got to be 

very careful in doing that. Judges are not supposed to accept 

awards. We are not supposed to be allowed to work overtime. We 

are not allowed a lot of things. But on those particular occasions, 

yes, I got a few letters. 

Mr. LANKFORD. It seemed that the letters and awards seemed to 

be about either processing time or disposition of cases or the number of cases. That seems to be what the agency was affirming, was 

the number of cases. Was that consistent for you as well? 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes, sir. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Bridges, can I ask you a question as well? 

I went through some of the focused review on some of your cases. 

As I walked through them, a couple of them popped out to me. This 

one in particular. This one said, the bench decision check list stated—I’m going to leave the names out on this—filled out an employability assessment form September 2011 advising the claimant was 

temporarily disabled due to degeneration of his lumbar. However, 

no such medical opinion evidence or employability assessment form 

was actually in the record. Neither the ALJ nor the representative 

asked the claimant any questions regarding his impairments. Rather, the ALJ asked the representative whether the claimant had a 

gait and had difficulty walking, which the representative answered 

in the affirmative, and then was actually, that person was found 

there. 

Have you had moments that you have not seen medical evidence 

in the file, but you have interacted with someone and made a judgment call in medical history, though there was not a medical record 

in the file? 

Judge BRIDGES. Well, it’s sometimes difficult to match up, that 

you may not see it at that particular time, but that evidence constantly flows back and forth. What I think needs to be done is that 

there needs to be a better system of matching up evidence, the flow 

of evidence to the file, because many times evidence, particularly 

with the new electronic age, evidence is not coming till after proceedings or you don’t get it before or other times, but sometimes 

you do get it, you get it in—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. So let me just ask this because we are about to 

run out of time. So you don’t have all the evidence at the time of 

the decision-making time, or the time of the actual hearing. How 

do we actually compel that? Because you don’t need to make a decision until you actually have all the evidence to be able to gather 

that. Or you’re making a judgement call on something you don’t 

have medical evidence in front of you. 

Judge BRIDGES. Well, sometimes you are—in order to expedite 

cases, you are—you know that the evidence is there. The attorney 

cite to the evidence or he will try to get the evidence or I will get 

the evidence to you. 

But what we do many times, it’s very difficult because of the fast 

flowing of information. There needs to be better cutoff times, times 

set for the receipt of evidence, and that comes into the file. 

48 

I can’t state specifically as to this case what happened. But the 

thing is that evidence should be there when I look at it. If it is a 

bench decision, bench decisions were approved by the Social Security Administration as a way of cutting down the backlog for judicial economy and efficiency and that is done at a hearing. A bench 

decision means bench. It is a decision that is done over the bench, 

which you conduct a trial and all the legal requirements are there 

when you make the decision. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Bridges. 

Judge BRIDGES. I am saying it must have been there or I can’t 

recall every specific case. But we do look for that particular evidence. And sometimes the reviewing group make mistakes as well. 

Mr. LANKFORD. I understand. I understand. I didn’t mean to cut 

you off because I want to pass this on. Just the concern is, is that 

the people that were before you have made a decision on this. 

When it came to you at times it seems like some of the medical evidence wasn’t there, whatever it may be that was coming is not in 

a file, and you have a 93 to 95 percent overturn rate. And that is 

the concern. 

Let me pass this on to Mr. Cummings. Recognize Mr. Cummings. 

Judge BRIDGES. Well, can I say, I can’t say specifically to every 

case because we hear a lot of cases. But what I am saying is that 

we do—I do look at the evidence. And I go through—I work very 

hard and I view the evidence when I do it. 

Now, as I said before, the Administrative Procedures Act, each 

individual case is peculiar to that person. And what we do is we 

make a very diligent and careful effort to make sure that that person gets due process. We don’t put everybody into one category and 

say that everybody—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. I understand. 

Judge BRIDGES. As I said before, that could be a quota. But we 

decide that, well, only 30 percent of the people should get disability. Each and every individual is entitled to his own disposition 

of his case. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Sir, I’m going to interrupt you for just a moment 

because I want to continue to pass this on. We understand that 

very well. We’re just trying to find out today how we are following 

the process that is stated by SSA. 

Judge BRIDGES. Well, I just want—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. Sir, sir, sir, hold on. You will have plenty of moments to be able to respond. I want to be able to make sure I honor 

everyone’s time on the dais. 

Mr. Cummings is recognized. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Burke, I listened to all the testimony very 

carefully. And we face a problem here, and I think—I’m asking you 

because I could—I think I need to ask you this because you came 

at the end. Do you agree that, I mean, that at some point—we got 

a problem. We want judges to have independence, which they 

should have. 

But do you agree that at some point questions should arise if 

procedures are not being properly followed by those judges? Because we want equal protection under the law, we want due process for all people. I mean, are you there? 

Judge BURKE. Mr. Cummings? 

49 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes. 

Judge BURKE. Yes. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. If you can make your answer as brief as you can. 

I know it’s a tough question. 

Judge BURKE. Procedures, as a matter of law and procedures, 

they can be reviewed by the agency. But the principle of judicial 

independence which we have under the Administrative Procedure 

Act and of which I was assured when I left my practice to come 

to this job is very important. 

There are countries south of our border where the society has 

lost faith in their judges because they are seen to be under the 

thumb of the government. Now, you might get some bad choices 

when you hire an ALJ and want to regret it. But it is the best system that we can devise, just like democracy in general. It doesn’t 

always work, but there is nothing better. 

If you—— 

Mr. CUMMINGS. But would you that agree that you have got to 

have some procedures and those procedures should be followed? I 

mean, I just was listening to Mr. Bridges and I was just—it sounded like he was saying that there is evidence that may come in later 

after the hearing that you then might consider. I mean, is that—— 

Judge BURKE. Sure, yes. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. So that happens? 

Judge BURKE. Yes. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. All right. 

Judge Krafsur, I want to thank you for being here. I think you 

know that you were invited today because you have a record of 

awarding disability benefits over 90 percent of the time. Have you 

ever been told by the Social Security Administration the way you 

make disability determination decisions does not comply with agency policy? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Yes. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And what did you—what did they tell you? 

Judge KRAFSUR. They just arbitrarily said that. Didn’t explain 

why they disagree with it. They just don’t agree with it. And if you 

see this form here, this is the form that I fill out and review every 

case before me. It’s right here. It has 186 different ailments on it. 

I have—and you see marked in yellow just—— 

Mr. CUMMINGS. What is that form? 

Judge KRAFSUR. This is a form that I use when I—— 

Mr. CUMMINGS. This is your personal form? 

Judge KRAFSUR. This is a personal form. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Okay. This is not something that was put out by 

the Social Security Administration? 

Judge KRAFSUR. That is correct. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. All right. Well, let me go on. 

Now, at the present time, you are subject to disciplinary action, 

are you not? 

Judge KRAFSUR. That’s correct. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And, Judge, we have an agency’s complaint 

against you, which says this: ‘‘Respondent conducts hearings and 

makes decisions in accordance with his own theories rather than 

the process required by the agency.’’ Is that true? And do you have 

your own theories for awarding benefits? 

50 

Judge KRAFSUR. No, sir, I don’t have that at all. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. All right. 

Judge KRAFSUR. I use—there is something called diagnosis produces this illness. I use what is known—same thing. I call it cause 

and effect. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Okay. So you’re saying you do follow procedure. 

Judge KRAFSUR. Exactly. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Okay. And if you followed the agency—let me 

ask you this. Let me read again from the complaint. It says that 

during a hearing in 2011 you said this: ‘‘Every certifying nurse assistant I ever had had the same thing you have. They are all female. They are all fibromyalgia, or what I call post-traumatic 

stress syndrome, 100 percent of them because of what happened as 

a child.’’ 

Did you say that? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Well, what basically happens, these people are 

nervous when they appear before me. So to make them more relaxed, I told them that. - that’s my evidence. I have 5,000 or 6,000 

women, some of them are CNAs who are before me, every one, 

fibromyalgia, has been caused by some post-traumatic stress syndrome. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. So you went on to say—let me make sure we get 

the whole picture in here—at another hearing, you said this: ‘‘One 

hundred percent of certified nurse assistants have been abused. 

Anyone that is a CNA has automatically been abused.’’ 

Judge KRAFSUR. No. They took it out of context. And that’s the 

people that appear before me, not everyone in the United States. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. But 100 percent of the—you were saying that 

100 percent of the certified nurse assistants that have appeared before you—— 

Judge KRAFSUR. That’s correct. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. —were abused. 

Judge KRAFSUR. That’s correct. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. You said that. 

Judge KRAFSUR. That’s correct, because I have evidence to show 

it. I have testimony in every case I have had when CNAs were 

there to show what I just got through saying, what you just got 

through addressing. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Okay. I understand that the agency conducted 

what is called a focused review of some of your decisions. This was 

followed by a consultation with you and additional training. Were 

you instructed to stop using your own theory for determining medical impairments? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Not in those exact words. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yeah. Yeah. Did they tell you to do it differently? 

Judge KRAFSUR. No. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. They didn’t say you could continue to do what 

you were doing, did they? 

Judge KRAFSUR. No, but they—— 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Then what did they tell you? 

Judge KRAFSUR. They basically told me at the time that I 

couldn’t use cause and effect. And I tried to explain to them it 

wasn’t cause and effect, just my terminology to make it simple was 

diagnosis resulting in ailments. That’s all it is. Same thing. 

51 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Did you stop applying your theory for determining medical impairment? 

Judge KRAFSUR. I never had a theory. It’s not my theory. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And—okay. 

Judge Burke. 

Judge BURKE. Yes, sir? 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And then I am finished, Mr. Chairman. 

When you have a situation where a person has taken a lot of 

cases—it sounds like Coburn, Senator Coburn talked about the 

former head of Social Security kind of pushing cases in, we got to 

get these cases done—do you think that has an impact on—I mean, 

what impact did that have? 

Mr. Bridges seemed like he thought that it has some type of impact on getting judges to move cases along. And what impact does 

it have on the decisions, though, and the percentage of decisions? 

The thing I am also worried about is the chilling effect that these 

hearings will have on people who have legitimate problems. 

Judge BURKE. Yes. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Go ahead. 

Judge BURKE. You are absolutely right, Mr. Cummings. Until 

2008, 2009, we were told that there was a backlog of 600,000 people for whom—who had been waiting longer than the tolerant waiting measures of Social Security. We were told to try to address that 

600,000 people. 

Since 2011 or 2012, Chief Judge Bice advised us that we could 

only do 800 cases a year. What happened to those 600,000? They 

are still there. They are still waiting inexcusably long periods of 

time. In Albuquerque, 3 years between application and hearing is 

not unusual. And that’s not right. 

I know you have to try to save the government money, but you 

should also look to the fact that hiring new—more ALJs with more 

support staff is one good way of not only addressing that problem, 

but also helping to support more uniformity in the ALJ corps. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Issa. Sorry. Mr. Mica. 

Mr. MICA. He has a bigger nose. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Yes. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. 

First of all, let me ask a couple of questions in general. I guess 

you all get the same salary. How much are you earning? 

Mr. Taylor? 

Judge TAYLOR. I am not sure. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Microphone. 

Mr. MICA. What’s your annual salary? 

Judge TAYLOR. I’m sorry. I am not sure what that is right now. 

Mr. MICA. Do you know, Mr. Bridges, what your salary is? Annual salary. 

Judge BRIDGES. One sixty-five. 

Mr. MICA. One sixty-five. About the same—Mr. Krafsur, do you 

get more because you have been on the bench longer? All the same? 

Judge KRAFSUR. All the same. 

Mr. MICA. Is it a lifetime appointment? 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes. 

Mr. MICA. Lifetime appointment. 

52 

Judge KRAFSUR. Yes, it is. Until the MSPB reviews our cases and 

may remove us. 

Mr. MICA. Now, you are on suspension, Mr. Krafsur. 

Judge KRAFSUR. No, administrative leave. 

Mr. MICA. Administrative leave. You getting paid while you’re on 

administrative leave? 

Judge KRAFSUR. That’s correct. 

Mr. MICA. Okay. You’re reviewed from time to time. How often? 

Is everyone reviewed the same? When was your last review, Mr. 

Taylor, your performance? 

Judge TAYLOR. I’m thinking within the last—— 

Mr. MICA. Focused review. When was that done? 

Judge TAYLOR. I’m thinking within the last 2 years, sir. 

Mr. MICA. Mr. Bridges? 

Judge BRIDGES. What are you talking about? 

Mr. MICA. Your focused review. 

Judge BRIDGES. Focused review. 

Mr. MICA. Yes. When they write you up. I’ve got some of the copies of—— 

Judge BRIDGES. Okay. I did receive a focused review in February 

that is a matter of litigation. 

Mr. MICA. Okay. But that was your last one. Yours was about 

a year and a half, 2 years ago? You get a copy of those when they 

are issued, right? 

Mr. Taylor, did you get one? Do you get to see them? 

Judge TAYLOR. I did not. 

Mr. MICA. Did you get to see yours, Mr. Bridges? 

Judge BRIDGES. I saw it, but I felt it didn’t follow due process. 

Mr. MICA. And you have challenged that. 

Judge BRIDGES. Yes, I did, because I think I violated the Administrative Procedures Act. 

Mr. MICA. Mr. Krafsur, when did you have your last review? 

Judge KRAFSUR. I never had a review. 

Mr. MICA. What? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Never had a review. 

Mr. MICA. You have never had a focused review? 

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Krafsur, I’m sorry. Can you turn your microphone on? 

Judge KRAFSUR. I never had a review because it’s against the 

Administrative Procedures Act, right, I have a code right here. 

We’re exempt from these reviews. 

Mr. MICA. The other two just said they had a review. 

Have you had one, Mr. Burke? 

Judge BURKE. I had a focused review offered. I did not accept or 

reject the criticisms. I know the law better than the staff people 

who did the focused review back in Falls Church. 

Mr. MICA. That really would be the only basis for somebody reviewing your performance, would that be correct? I don’t know that 

much about the procedure. 

Is that right, Mr. Taylor? 

Judge TAYLOR. I think that would be right. 

Mr. MICA. And, Mr. Bridges, you agree? 

Judge BRIDGES. I disagree. I think that that is illegal act—— 

53 

Mr. MICA. My question wasn’t an evaluation of what kind of an 

act it was. It would be that is the only review that’s conducted of 

your performance, right? You are not subject to election, you are 

not—— 

Judge BRIDGES. We’re not—— 

Mr. MICA. How could you be removed? Impeached? 

Judge BRIDGES. We’re not subject to review. 

Mr. MICA. How can you be removed? Does anyone—— 

Judge BRIDGES. Through the Administrative Procedures Act. But 

we’re not subject to those kind of reviews. 

Mr. MICA. That’s what they’re going through with Mr. Krafsur. 

Judge KRAFSUR. Let me answer this. I can answer this. They 

have—they accused me, they filed a complaint with the MSPB. 

They actually have filed three complaints. Two have been dismissed. We are now on the third. We have a chance to answer. We 

have asked for discovery. 

Mr. MICA. But you just told me you didn’t have any. 

Judge KRAFSUR. I’m talking—if you’re talking about the background of my office doing that, no. But if it crossed the secret—the 

secret one—they do a secret one. 

Mr. MICA. Okay. Well, I have copies here of two reviews, your 

latest, March 7, 2014. Have you seen that? 

Judge KRAFSUR. No. 

Mr. MICA. Here’s another one, November 22, 2011. So you have 

had these done? 

Judge KRAFSUR. I never saw those. 

Mr. MICA. And you’ve never seen these? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Correct. 

Mr. MICA. Well, again, we’re here because it appears that you all 

have an extraordinary amount of approval of some of these disabilities claims that have previously, either one or two times, been rejected. You have a 99 percent approval rate; is that right, Judge 

Krafsur? 

Judge KRAFSUR. That’s correct, and none of them have ever been 

reversed by the Appeals Council. 

Mr. MICA. And, Mr. Bridges, a part of the process, I think, is also 

you reviewing all the documentation, et cetera. Mr. Bridges, you 

had an overall allowance rate exceeding 95 percent, and you 

awarded benefits in cases without holding a hearing 9,000 times— 

or 7,000 times between 2005 and 2013. Did you want to comment 

on, again, your 95 percent approval rating overturning these 

awards? 

Judge BRIDGES. My comment is, I don’t think that—there are too 

many variables for that to be acceptable. I would have to know a 

breakdown of what was considered and what it constitutes. As I 

said in the congressional—— 

Mr. MICA. But you didn’t hold a hearing 7,000 times—— 

Judge BRIDGES. I’m not aware of that. And I certainly wasn’t 

counting. What I do is I focus on specifically on the case that I deal 

with and make it the right decision. 

Mr. MICA. But we did, and we have questions about 7,000 times 

overturning these without holding a hearing. 

Judge BRIDGES. I—I—— 

Mr. MICA. It appears to be—— 

54 

Judge BRIDGES. I’m not aware of that. 

Mr. MICA. Well, that’s what this hearing is doing is making the 

committee and public aware of your performance. 

Judge BRIDGES. Well, I’m not—that—I dispute that because I’m 

not aware of—I was not counting times that we’re holding hearings. I was concentrating on the person who I was making a determination of. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. LANKFORD. [Presiding.] Ms. Speier. 

Ms. SPEIER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing today. 

Mr. Taylor, let me ask you a few questions. Is it true that on 

February 20, 2009, while you were presiding over a hearing, you 

fell asleep? 

Judge TAYLOR. No, ma’am. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Microphone, please. 

Judge TAYLOR. No, ma’am. 

Ms. SPEIER. No. 

It appears that you were reprimanded by the Chief Administrative Law Judge, Jasper Bede, for sleeping while on duty. Is that 

true? 

Judge TAYLOR. That’s been several years ago. 

Ms. SPEIER. Well, you were reprimanded? 

Judge TAYLOR. Not for that, no, ma’am. 

Ms. SPEIER. So I have the hearing transcript here. ‘‘Hearing begins at 10:06. At 10:23, attorney is questioning the claimant. During claimant’s testimony, snoring is heard in the background.’’ 

Judge TAYLOR. Uh-huh. 

Ms. SPEIER. ‘‘Attorney: I just want to put on the record’’—this is 

at 10:24—‘‘that it appears as though the administrative law judge 

is sleeping at the moment.’’ 

Judge TAYLOR. Uh-huh. 

Ms. SPEIER. ‘‘No response. The ALJ apparently continues sleeping. Attorney: I think—do you have anything else you need to say 

because I’d like to call the other witness at this time? Claimant 

says he has nothing else to say. Attorney then directs claimant to 

move to another seat and says, I will call Mr. Temple. Approximately 40 to 45 seconds of silence as attorney leaves the room to 

get witness. ALJ does not speak and is apparently sleeping. No 

sound is heard until attorney brings witness into the room. 10:25 

some banging is heard and sound of someone breathing or sighing. 

10:25, Judge, I think we need to swear in a new witness.’’ 

Judge TAYLOR. Uh-huh. 

Ms. SPEIER. All of that transpired, correct? 

Judge TAYLOR. Ma’am, I don’t recall the specifics of that hearing. 

Ms. SPEIER. All right. You know, it’s one on which you’ve been 

reprimanded, and there’s an action right now to suspend you because of that, and you don’t remember it? 

Judge TAYLOR. I don’t remember that specific date. 

Ms. SPEIER. Well, all right. Okay. Let’s forget the date. 

Judge TAYLOR. Uh-huh. 

Ms. SPEIER. Have you ever slept on the job? 

Judge TAYLOR. Some years ago with my medication, yes. 

Ms. SPEIER. All right. And what kind of medication were you on? 

55 

Judge TAYLOR. I was on some—the effects of some medication 

that I was using to make sure that I got enough sleep at night, and 

it was keeping me drowsy in the morning. 

Ms. SPEIER. Now, on September 13 of 2010, you made a statement to a Charleston head office employee, Richard Triplett, regarding another employee within the Charleston office, Christine 

Boone, and to the effect you said, Isn’t she a looker? Is that correct? 

Judge TAYLOR. No, ma’am, I did not. 

Ms. SPEIER. You didn’t say that? You’re under oath. You appreciate that? 

Judge TAYLOR. I understand, ma’am, and I do know that. 

Ms. SPEIER. On September 13, you made a statement again to 

employee Richard Triplett about Christine Boone to the effect, 

Don’t worry, she will keep her hands to herself, she’s married. You 

don’t recall that either? 

Judge TAYLOR. Ma’am, not only do I not recall it, I didn’t make 

it. 

Ms. SPEIER. And then on that same date you said again to Mr. 

Triplett, She’s a hot one. And you have no recollection of that either? 

Judge TAYLOR. Not only do I have no recollection, I didn’t say it. 

Ms. SPEIER. And you never made a nonverbal gesture of thumbs 

up to Mr. Triplett regarding Ms. Boone? 

Judge TAYLOR. No, ma’am. 

Ms. SPEIER. And you’ve never used your hands to make a 

clawing, catlike gesture towards Ms. Boone? 

Judge TAYLOR. No, ma’am. 

Ms. SPEIER. So everyone is writing falsehoods about you, it appears. 

All right. Let’s move on. Between 2005 and 2013, you completed 

more than 8,000 decisions with an average award rate of 93.8 percent. Almost 6,000 of these decisions were on-the-record decisions—— 

Judge TAYLOR. Uh-huh. 

Ms. SPEIER. —decisions in which the judge decides not to hold a 

hearing. Can you explain the high number on-the-record decisions 

you’ve completed? I mean, that’s virtually three-quarters of the 

cases. You don’t need to have a hearing? 

Judge TAYLOR. Ma’am, in the year 2002—— 

Ms. SPEIER. I’m not asking about 2002. I’m asking about 2005 to 

2013. And let’s restrict ourselves to a discussion of those 8,000 decisions and the fact that 6,000 of them were made on the record. 

Judge TAYLOR. The first two hearing office chief judges during 

that period of time approached me about whether I would be willing to take some cases off the docket, look at those cases to determine whether they could be done on the record in order to meet 

our office productivity goals. I indicated that I would do that. 

From that period of time up until last year, I would receive lists 

of cases from our hearing office staff indicating a particular claimant, indicating a particular Social Security number. I would then 

review the case to determine whether it could be done on the 

record. 

Ms. SPEIER. But three-quarters of the cases you handled between 

those dates, three-quarters of them were on the record. You never 

56 

had a hearing. I mean, I can’t imagine that in three-quarters of the 

cases coming before you, you don’t find compelling evidence or 

questions that would require a hearing. Because the reason why 

many ALJs say their relevance is so important is because the first 

two hearings are done without the benefit of spending any eyeballto-eyeball time with the claimant, but in three-quarters of your 

cases, you never sat down with the claimant. You never had a 

hearing. 

Judge TAYLOR. If that’s what the statistics show. It’s going to depend upon the case—upon the specifics of each case to determine 

whether it could be done on the record. 

Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Chairman, I know my time has expired, but if 

I could just ask one more question. 

On average, how many pages are there in a file for a claimant? 

Judge TAYLOR. There are some of them that are quite lengthy; 

there are some of them that don’t have very many pages at all. 

Ms. SPEIER. Well, but by the time they get to an ALJ, they’ve got 

lots more paper than they had when they were first reviewed by 

the first Social Security official and then the second Social Security 

official. 

Judge TAYLOR. It’s possible. 

Ms. SPEIER. It’s possible. It’s more than possible. It has to be because there’s going to be more documentation, correct? 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes. 

Ms. SPEIER. So give me—are we talking about 300 pages of documents? 

Judge TAYLOR. Probably not that many. 

Ms. SPEIER. Two hundred? 

Judge TAYLOR. Could be. 

Ms. SPEIER. So on average, if you’re looking through 4 cases a 

day, that means you’re looking through 800 pages a day and doing 

it in a timely and thorough fashion? 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. SPEIER. All right. I yield back. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Gowdy. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Judge Krafsur, I’m going to read you a quote, and you tell me 

whether or not you know who said this, okay? 

‘‘A hundred percent of the women at call centers have been 

abused. It’s an atmosphere of abuse. Any time we see a call center 

person, female, all have been abused.’’ Do you know who said that, 

Judge? 

Judge KRAFSUR. I did, but it was taken out of context. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Sir, your microphone. Can you repeat that, sir? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Yes. 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, you said that was taken out of context. Well, 

let’s put that in context, Judge. Did somebody testify to that at a 

lower level? Was that in the record? 

Judge KRAFSUR. No, sir. That was my experience. 

Mr. GOWDY. Did you rely on a learned treatise? You made a 

point of saying in your opening statement how much respect you 

pay to the Federal Rules and the Constitution. Was that a learned 

treatise you relied upon, Judge? 

Judge KRAFSUR. That was my experience over 20 years. 

57 

Mr. GOWDY. So you made yourself a witness even though the 

Federal Rules are very clear that judges are not witnesses; is that 

what your testimony is, Judge? 

Judge KRAFSUR. That was my opinion, not—— 

Mr. GOWDY. ‘‘A hundred percent of female employees at call centers have been abused.’’ 

Judge KRAFSUR. I didn’t say that. A hundred percent of the people that came before me have been abused. 

Mr. GOWDY. And you relied on no learned treatise, no testimony 

at a lower level, just your innate sense of medicine? 

Judge KRAFSUR. No. That’s been my experience having hearings 

over 20 years. 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, let me ask you about another one of your experiences, Judge. I want to read you another quote and ask you 

whether or not you recognize who said this, okay? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Uh-huh. 

Mr. GOWDY. ‘‘How did your family discipline you? Did they hit 

you on the butt? I’m starting to do some analysis. It’s starting to 

be when women are hit at an early age, they start developing problems in their twenties, late teens and twenties. My ex-wife told me 

about this. There’s something in a girl that’s a sexual thing. It 

arouses certain things.’’ Did you say that, Judge? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Yes, I did, based upon—— 

Mr. GOWDY. Did you rely upon a learned treatise in reaching 

that determination? 

Judge KRAFSUR. No, I relied on—— 

Mr. GOWDY. Did you rely on something at a lower level? A hearing? A witness testified to that? 

Judge KRAFSUR. No, I relied on my experience hearing cases over 

20 years. 

Mr. GOWDY. Judge, I hasten to add, because you made a point 

of saying in your opening statement that your first responsibility 

is to the Constitution and the Federal Rules of Evidence, are you 

aware that judges can’t be witnesses? Are you familiar with that, 

Judge? 

Judge KRAFSUR. I don’t consider myself a witness. 

Mr. GOWDY. You just testified to your own personal experience. 

If that’s not a witness, what is it? 

Judge KRAFSUR. That’s a personal opinion. 

Mr. GOWDY. Judges can’t express personal opinions either. That’s 

why we have something called experts. 

Judge KRAFSUR. That’s why—— 

Mr. GOWDY. Did an expert testify to that, Judge? 

Judge KRAFSUR. That’s called a First Amendment right. 

Mr. GOWDY. You’re considered—so you have a First Amendment 

right to say whatever the hell you want in a hearing; is that what 

you’re saying? 

Judge KRAFSUR. No, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. And you can rely upon that when you’re spending 

taxpayer money? 

Judge KRAFSUR. No, sir. But that’s an isolated case. You—— 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, it can’t be an isolated case. I just cited two, 

and my colleagues cited others. 

58 

Judge KRAFSUR. Yeah. Yeah, but you’re taking isolated cases. 

I’ve had—— 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, let’s go a little broader than that, Judge. What 

is your reversal rate of the hearing officer? Is it in excess of 90 percent? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Yes, it’s based upon testimony given—— 

Mr. GOWDY. All right. And it has to be adjudicated twice before 

it gets to you, right? 

Judge KRAFSUR. That’s correct. 

Mr. GOWDY. And only if it’s denied does it get to you. So 90 percent of the time the people under you are wrong. 

Judge KRAFSUR. No. I want to be able to cross examine them—— 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, it has to be or you wouldn’t be reversing them. 

They’ve denied benefits, Judge, and you’ve reversed their denial. 

That means that you’re hiring some really dumb people to be hearing officers because they’re wrong 90 percent of the time. 

Judge KRAFSUR. No, sir. I want to be able to cross examine the 

people from Social Security—— 

Mr. GOWDY. I’m glad you mentioned cross examination. I can’t 

tell you how glad I am. 

Judge KRAFSUR. Yeah. 

Mr. GOWDY. Because in every other court proceeding, there is 

someone cross examining the witnesses, but it’s not a judge. It’s an 

attorney. And that’s true in misdemeanor crimes; that’s true in felony crimes; that’s true in civil cases. So what I think you need, 

Judge, is I think you need an advocate and an attorney for the taxpayer in the hearing room, because I don’t want you cross examining witnesses. 

If you really think that paddling a child leads to sexual issues, 

I don’t want you doing the cross examination. And if you really 

think that 100 percent of CNAs have been abused and 100 percent 

of females in call centers have been abused, I don’t want you doing 

the cross examination, Judge. 

Judge KRAFSUR. Sir, we wear three hats. One hat is a Social Security hat; the other hat is the claimant’s hat; the other hat is 

my—is the Social Security hat. 

Mr. GOWDY. Where’s the expert witness hat? You just said you 

were an expert witness. 

Judge KRAFSUR. We have an adversary system, and I have the 

right—— 

Mr. GOWDY. It’s not an adversary system. There’s no advocate for 

the taxpayer that’s in the courtroom. 

Judge KRAFSUR. We have a nonadversary system, sir. It’s a nonadversary system, and I have to wear three hats. 

Mr. GOWDY. It can’t be too adversarial, or you would not reverse 

the hearing officer 90 percent of the time. And some of your colleagues, 99 percent of the time they reverse a hearing officer. And 

we mistakenly, Judge, thought it was because you were eyeballing 

the witnesses so you could assess credibility, but we learn from 

your colleague Mr. Taylor that that’s not even true. You don’t even 

have a hearing. You just do it on the paper. 

Judge KRAFSUR. Sir, it’s not eyeballing the witness. I take testimony. I’ve had here this sheet—— 

Mr. GOWDY. And who does the cross examination? 

59 

Judge KRAFSUR. It has 186 analysts on it. 

Mr. GOWDY. And who does—well, that’s your document. Mr. 

Cummings just exposed that that’s your document. 

Judge KRAFSUR. No, no. I’m—the attorney also provides one for 

me. 

Mr. GOWDY. The attorney for whom? 

Judge KRAFSUR. For the claimant. 

Mr. GOWDY. That’s my point. There is no attorney for the taxpayer. 

We’re going broke—Mr. Chairman, I know I’m out of time, but 

I’m going to tell you a story from Spartanburg real quick. I had a 

judge call me—he’s apolitical—and he said, I just sentenced someone for crawling under people’s houses and stealing their copper. 

And he said, what really struck me as being unusual, Trey, is he 

is 100 percent disabled in the back. 

I want you to think about that, Judge, and I want you to think 

about one other thing, too. I went on a tour of something called a 

workability center where people with special needs value work 

enough that they go to work every single day. And there was one 

man who was confined to a wheelchair, had no use of his hands 

or legs, but his job was to encourage his fellow employees. 

There is inherent value in work, and one reason your backlog 

may be so big is because it’s so damn easy to get benefits. 

Judge KRAFSUR. Not for me. Not for me. I hear every case. I see 

every person that’s ever appeared before me. Every one. 

Mr. GOWDY. You reversed the hearing officer over 90 percent of 

the time, Judge. Ninety percent of the time, the person at the first 

level is wrong in your judgment, and you are citing your own 

version of medicine, 100 percent of the people are abused, that if 

you paddle a little girl she’s going to wind up with sexual issues, 

despite the fact it’s not in the record, Judge. 

Judge KRAFSUR. Well—— 

Mr. GOWDY. You may be a judge, but you’re not God. 

Judge KRAFSUR. Let me explain to you, if I had this person in 

front of me that was down below, I could examine him on behalf 

of Social Security, and that would allow the claimant’s—— 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, then why don’t your colleagues have hearings? 

Why don’t they do it on the paper? If it’s that important to eyeball 

the witness and assess credibility and cross examine, why are you 

doing it on the paper? 

Judge KRAFSUR. That’s what I said in my remarks here. We 

need—we need the ability to be able to have the witnesses who 

give any comment down below should be up here before me so I 

can examine them, and they can be cross examined by the—— 

Mr. GOWDY. I want them being cross examined by an advocate 

for the taxpayer, Your Honor, with all due respect, not a judge. 

Judge KRAFSUR. Well, then you need an adversary system, which 

we don’t have today. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Horsford. 

Mr. HORSFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to first 

start by saying that I know you and other members of this full 

committee, we serve on the subcommittee where we’ve had repeated hearings on this same issue. And while today’s hearing is 

about getting some facts out, I think we need to be careful not to 

60 

use the panel that’s here before us today as the full representation 

of the administrative law judges in general, because to do so, I 

think, would be going against the publications that we have received in prior hearings. The Social Security Administration’s publication, the national hearings decisional allowance and denial 

rates through fiscal year 2013 don’t support or align with some of 

the testimony that we’re hearing from a select group of panelists 

that appears the majority may have intended to only give one perspective of how the system is not working efficiently. 

And, Mr. Chairman, as I think I’ve indicated to you before, one 

of the reasons I asked to be on this committee is because I think 

we should be finding ways to reform government and to make it 

work more efficiently, but for some reason, this committee only focuses on the oversight function, and it never gets to the reform 

side. Where is the legislation? Where are the proposals to enact the 

change that’s necessary so that we can improve the delivery of 

services to our constituents? I think ultimately, when I hear from 

my folks back home in Nevada, that’s what they want. 

We can sit here and argue back and forth among ourselves. It 

doesn’t fix anything. I think the Veterans Administration is a very 

clear indication of that. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Horsford, would you yield? We can hold your 

time. 

Sometime when we’re offline on that, Ms. Speier and I can get 

a chance to lay out a whole series of things. We met with Social 

Security Administration ALJs and others to be able to develop the 

long list of how we actually reform the system. We’ve done some 

of that in hearings and the gathering of our fourth hearing and a 

lot of it offline as well, and we’d be glad to be able to share that 

with you, because you’re exactly correct; it’s not just a matter of exposing the problem, it’s about solving it. 

I yield back. 

Mr. HORSFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I respect that, 

and, again, I know, having served on the subcommittee with you 

and Ms. Speier as well as the ranking member on other topics, that 

we all together are concerned with certain aspects. But fundamentally for me, the Social Security Administration is about providing 

a vital mission to our constituents, and that’s not being discussed 

here today. 

What I hear is a perspective by some of my colleagues on the 

other side who say that every person regardless of disability should 

be working. Well, that’s just not the case, and we need to have a 

balanced perspective of what this process should really be about. 

So I want to ask each of the panel if you would tell me about 

the training that you receive and whether the training that has 

been offered by the SSA to address some of the compliance areas, 

the issues that have been identified, whether that has improved 

the management flow and focused an area for review based on the 

training that has been offered. Have each of you gone through 

training through the SSA, yes or no? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Yes. 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes. 

Mr. HORSFORD. And has that training addressed policy compliance issues? 

61 

Judge KRAFSUR. No. 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes. 

Mr. HORSFORD. You say no? 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Could the witnesses turn the microphones on to 

respond? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Excuse me, the answer is no. It just trained me 

to be a writer. To be a writer. I’m an ALJ. I had 6 weeks of training in 2013, and it had to do with how to write a decision, and it 

wasn’t addressed about an ALJ—it wasn’t addressed from ALJ, it 

was how to write a decision—— 

Mr. HORSFORD. Okay. 

Judge KRAFSUR. —to use the FIT program. 

Mr. HORSFORD. The rest of you, did each of you attend the required training? 

Judge BRIDGES. We attended a required training, but it looks like 

the regulations need to be updated and modernized. There are too 

many loopholes and too many—what you have is variable interpretations, and these interpretations are because the regulations are 

too loose and not focused. We as judges do what we do as judges. 

We don’t make policy, but we have to respond to the policy that’s 

there. For instance, the transferability of skills should have been 

changed 20 years ago, should have been updated, has not been updated. 

I don’t think that the solution is the beating up upon judges. If 

the Social Security wants a different result, then you have to define 

clearly what it is that you want, and then we can respond to that. 

We will apply the laws. But the way the laws and regulations are 

now, they haven’t been updated, they’re subject to interpretations, 

and then you have all kinds of repercussions because those rules 

are not followed. What we—— 

Mr. HORSFORD. And we’ve heard that before, that there’s too 

much ambiguity. 

Judge BRIDGES. Well, I think that’s true. If you’ve heard that 

then—— 

Mr. HORSFORD. Let me ask the last judge at the end if he would 

respond. 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes. I think every year—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Taylor, I’m sorry, can you turn your microphone on? 

Judge TAYLOR. I’m sorry about that. I apologize. 

Every year the ODAR takes about a third to a fourth of us and 

gets us all together for about a week of refresher training to try 

to bring us up to date with regard to new things that are going on, 

some recent court decisions, and they usually have some people 

there to talk to us about issues like paying the mental disorders 

and so forth. 

Mr. HORSFORD. Okay. So I’ll close, Mr. Chairman, because I 

know my time has expired. Again, I look forward to us getting to 

the point where we’re actually debating policy and bills to reform 

what’s broken, not bringing a select few of cherry-picked judges to 

make some type of a political statement about what’s broken. We 

know things are broken, but it’s time for us to fix it. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Dr. Gosar. 

62 

Mr. GOSAR. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Bridges, I have to compliment you on your tie. I think we 

have the same vision of today. 

Judge BRIDGES. I think I’m part Irish. 

Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Burke, I enjoyed your introductory statements. 

Would you say that it gives you a bias? 

Judge BURKE. No, sir. 

Mr. GOSAR. Why not? 

Judge BURKE. Because I apply the facts to the law in an unbiased situation. I do have life experience, just like any other person 

that—— 

Mr. GOSAR. So you would have to be very careful; would you not? 

Judge BURKE. Yes, sir. 

Mr. GOSAR. Okay. Mr. Taylor, do you have a medical degree? 

Judge TAYLOR. No, sir. 

Mr. GOSAR. Can you push the button, please? You’re constantly 

missing that. 

Judge TAYLOR. Sorry, sir. 

No, I do not have a medical degree. 

Mr. GOSAR. So when you go through this, as you said, sequential 

evaluation—— 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes, sir. 

Mr. GOSAR. —you said always has to happen, right? 

Judge TAYLOR. It’s mandated by our regulations, yes, sir. 

Mr. GOSAR. So all these five steps you take with every single 

complainant? 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes, sir. 

Mr. GOSAR. So the majority of people that you see, they’ve gone 

through a rigorous background, because most the people that have 

done visual at the State level, the majority of them are actually included in disability from what the people at the State level see, 

right? So you’re getting the hard of the hard cases. 

Judge TAYLOR. That’s correct. 

Mr. GOSAR. Okay. That’s great. 

Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you, I’m a dentist. 

Do you understand about diagnosis? 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes, sir. 

Mr. GOSAR. How do you perform a diagnosis? 

Judge TAYLOR. It’s where a doctor examines an individual, performs tests on the individual, does some kind of interview. 

Mr. GOSAR. Oh, I want to stop you right there. I’m glad you said 

that, because you said that you’re making decisions, and your 

bench cases, over half of them are that way, that you didn’t really 

look at the medical benefits because, in your opinion, you’re making those decisions. So what gave you that right to the degree of 

medical? I mean, you told me you didn’t get a medical degree, did 

you? 

Judge TAYLOR. No, sir, I didn’t get a medical degree. 

Mr. GOSAR. So, how do you make that assertation without going 

to an expert witness? I mean, my colleague Mr. Gowdy actually 

brought this forward with another one of the bench witnesses. 

Judge TAYLOR. Uh-huh. 

63 

Mr. GOSAR. So why wouldn’t you rely on a face-to-face empirically, and number two is ask for expert witness? Because you didn’t 

do that. 

Judge TAYLOR. In some cases, that’s correct. I didn’t. 

Mr. GOSAR. How did that—I mean, that’s a violation by your own 

standards here, the five steps of constant evaluation that have to 

be followed through. You violated right now in your own terms, you 

violated that rule. 

Judge TAYLOR. No, sir. 

Mr. GOSAR. Oh, please, share it with us. Please, share us with 

your diagnosis. 

Judge TAYLOR. No, sir, it wasn’t my diagnosis. One of the things 

that we have to work with in the fourth circuit is a so-called treating physician room, and that came forth in a case by the Fourth 

Circuit Court of Appeals several years ago. I don’t have the date 

for you. But the Commissioner issued an acquiescence ruling, I believe, and the rule says that unless rebutted by credible evidence 

of record—— 

Mr. GOSAR. Well, I’ve got to stop you there because you’re getting 

the hardest of hard cases, and you’re rebutting it on your jurisdiction, not with an expert witness. So the people actually on the 

State level have been doing a visual and have actually seen an eyeto-eye, and you’re defying that without an expert witness because 

you don’t have a medical degree. 

Mr. Bridges, the review stated that you only consider the opinions of medical experts in 4 percent of your cases. Do you have a 

medical degree? 

Judge BRIDGES. No, and I dispute that. 

Mr. GOSAR. You don’t like being asked questions, do any of you? 

Mr. Taylor, you don’t like being cross examined, do you? I mean, 

I see a hostility all the way across here. 

How about you, Mr. Bridges? You don’t like answering questions 

either? 

Judge BRIDGES. Yes, I do, but I honestly said I dispute that. 

Mr. GOSAR. Okay. Mr. Krafsur, you don’t like being cross examined either? 

Judge KRAFSUR. It depends where the questions are being—— 

Mr. GOSAR. Oh, come on, now. I’m a dentist. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Can you turn your microphone on, as well, sir? 

Judge KRAFSUR. I want to be cross examined providing the questions are fair and impartial. 

Mr. GOSAR. How about you, Mr. Burke? 

Judge BURKE. I’m happy to answer any questions by members of 

this committee. 

Mr. GOSAR. Do you believe you periodically ought to have calibration? 

Judge BURKE. Say again? 

Mr. GOSAR. Do you believe that you should have periodic calibration, a kind of renewal to kind of get you back to square one? 

Judge BURKE. I think that’s reasonable management, too. 

Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Krafsur, do you believe that, calibration? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Yes. Yes. 

Mr. GOSAR. How about you, Mr. Bridges? 

Judge BRIDGES. Would you ask the question again? 

64 

Mr. GOSAR. Yeah. Do you believe in recalibration; you know, getting together kind of recalibrating? 

Judge BRIDGES. I think it’s reasonable. 

Mr. GOSAR. We’re human, right? 

Judge BRIDGES. Right. I think that’s a reasonable thing to do. 

Mr. GOSAR. How about you, Mr. Taylor? 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes, I do. 

Mr. GOSAR. Do you understand why we’re having such a problem 

here is that the methodical aspects of these cases have gone to the 

State level, where they actually visually looked at this individual, 

they compiled the data, and they’ve rejected it twice looking them 

in the eye. And yet you, in many cases, and your colleagues don’t 

even look at them and make a bench decision without even making 

an assertation of the merits. And that’s why I was asking about diagnosis, because if you can’t look at the patient, you can’t see a 

medical doctor, you can’t make a decision. You cannot make a decision. 

Judge TAYLOR. Uh-huh. 

Mr. GOSAR. And the hearsay that I’m seeing from down the list 

here is absurd to me. This is problematic. Wouldn’t you agree 

based upon what I’ve just talked to you about, Mr. Taylor? 

Judge TAYLOR. Sir, with all due respect, could I mention something? 

Mr. GOSAR. Sure. Keep it brief. 

Judge TAYLOR. Certainly. The first two steps in our process are 

done by something called the State agency. Their regulations are 

far different from ours. They have different regulations. 

Mr. GOSAR. Wait a minute, stop right there, because the majority 

of these cases of people actually getting on disability actually happen there in the first two steps, because they actually look at the 

client, they looked at the claimant and saw them personally. Half 

the time we don’t even see that from you, do we? 

Judge TAYLOR. Usually in the first two cases, they have reviewed 

some documentation. 

Mr. GOSAR. And they look the person in the eye, right? 

Judge TAYLOR. In the case of a consultative—— 

Mr. GOSAR. So let me ask you a question. So you can actually 

make a diagnosis without seeing the complainant? 

Judge TAYLOR. No, no, I couldn’t do that. 

Mr. GOSAR. That’s my whole point is you’re making these decision without even seeing the patient and actually having a credible, 

medical testimony. I mean, you said—I mean, the gentleman over 

here, I didn’t see you do anything but nod, was in agreement. You 

hold three hats. Well, part of it is justice. A blindfolded lady—my 

good friend Mr. Gowdy makes a perfect comment. A blindfolded 

lady, she doesn’t see who she’s giving justice to; she’s weighing information presented to her. That’s the most important thing is justice. 

Judge TAYLOR. Uh-huh. 

Mr. GOSAR. Okay. Weighing the information. You’re not credible 

as a medical technologist or a physician. You need to have that expert testimony, and not having it is a dereliction of duty. 

Number two is not seeing a person and making a claim is despicable about the process particularly of those people down below 

65 

at the State level who have actually done service. This is rightful 

that we are actually exposing this. 

I disagree with my colleague Mr. Horsford, because you have to 

show the problem in order to fix the problem, and this is what exactly is shown. I hope America’s watching because it’s sad. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Ms. Lujan Grisham. 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I agree that this is a critical hearing, and, in fact, we’re 

going to have another hearing this week talking about the staffing 

shortages. So if we’re really going to talk about getting these issues 

addressed, and we’re going to have physicians who are already difficult to see to do the diagnosis, to provide the information, the expert testimony that they’re required to have on the initial applications, and have them always be available for in-person hearings on 

the appeal level, then we better be prepared as a body to put the 

right resources into the Social Security Administration. 

And like every Member here, I certainly want a system that’s objective and fair. We want the judges to meet the highest level of 

professional standards. And as I’m listening to some of the issues 

that have been identified and to some of the—my colleague Mr. 

Horsford talk about training, I know there’s some peer review here. 

There probably needs to be much more peer review at the ALJ 

level as diagnoses and disability issues actually change, given a 

newer technology and better tools for diagnosis. 

So I want to make sure that we’re even, too. I want accountability in a system. I want accountability not only from the claimant level, from everybody who’s making decisions in the Social Security system, but I also recognize that many of these systems were 

actually created in reverse, which means that the practice is to 

deny the benefits up front, and then you hope that the claimants 

don’t have the wherewithal, the ability, the stamina to continue the 

process. 

And State programs, then, are left with significant behavior 

health issues, homelessness, a whole host of domestic issues that 

we are trying to figure out how to fund. I can tell you that New 

Mexico, and given that Mr. Burke, you’re from Albuquerque, my 

district, I know that you’re aware that we have one of the most significant disability and behavioral health problems in the country 

per capita. 

Now, I’m not suggesting that every person that applies for Social 

Security benefits is actually eligible, and that some of those people—maybe we could make it simple and put it in two categories. 

Some of them mean to defraud the government. Some of them do 

not mean to defraud the government, but believe their disability is 

tantamount to an award under Social Security. 

But I have plenty of practice with that situation where you are 

trained to deny up front, because that is one way to manage resources, no question. So I hope at this hearing that we figure out 

exactly that, accountability in a system for both the individuals 

working to use Social Security inappropriately; making sure we 

have accountability in the administration by the judges at all levels; making sure that we have appropriate training, but be very 

clear about what resources we’re going to need, when I think, Mr. 

66 

Burke, you testified it takes currently 2 years for someone to be 

able to get through the process for a potential award. 

Is that still your—2 years, did I get that right? 

Judge BURKE. Representative, that’s about the case in Albuquerque. In northern New Mexico, which is the most depressed 

part of the State, people wait 3 years on a regular basis. 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. All right. And Mr. Burke and anyone else 

in the panel, given my opening statements—and, again, I’m not 

trying to diminish any of the accountability issues here—but do 

you believe that in your experience as a lawyer or judge that the 

problems with underfunding and understaffing, does that deter legitimate claimants from appealing their cases and receiving benefits? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. Anybody else agree with that statement? 

Judge BURKE. Representative, I agree with that statement, but 

you’re talking about training, and your neighbor Representative 

Mr.—— 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. Horsford. 

Judge BURKE. —and Mr. Lankford mentioned before, and Senator Coburn, trying to get people back to work who have suffered 

an impairment or a disability. Now, the disability unit that makes 

these decisions before they get to us is a part of the New Mexico 

Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. In three States where 

I’ve practiced or been a judge, State of Washington, State of Tennessee and New Mexico, I see very, very little activity on the part 

of the Departments of Vocational Rehabilitation in getting disabled 

people back to work, and I think it’s definitely a question of funding and resources. I do suggest that this committee look toward the 

question of getting vocational rehabilitation—— 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. And, Your Honor, I really appreciate that 

very much, that statement, and I’m running out of time. And I 

don’t mean to be so rude as to interrupt you, but I want to make 

sure that we focus on and I want to end with a statement on the 

record about the balances here. 

I agree that anybody who wants to work should have the opportunity to work, and given my 30-plus years experience with the disability population, I think most individuals, irrespective of a disability, desire to work. But supportive employment and training 

programs, and employment access, and those tools and resources 

are not but almost completely gone; not just diminished, they don’t 

exist in so many States and programs, that includes DVR. 

But what I would like to suggest, given the testimony that we’ve 

heard today, that we need strong oversight mechanisms. We need 

to ensure that benefits are not incorrectly approved and not incorrectly denied, and that we have to create a criteria where both 

those things are achieved. Congress needs to fully invest in reducing the backlog, because right now this program is failing to provide timely service, support and due process to individuals who 

desperately need it, and I am looking forward to that focus in these 

hearings as well. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Chairman ISSA. [Presiding.] Thank you. 

We now go to Mr. DeSantis for 5 minutes. 

67 

Mr. DESANTIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Krafsur, you, in 2011, when the agency reviewed your decisions, your decisions were found to have consistently failed to provide a substantive evaluation of medical evidence or rationale to 

support their findings in that when you would evaluate cases— 

when they evaluated your cases, that the theories that you were 

using were not in compliance with Social Security Administration 

regulations. 

Now, between 2005 and 2013, while you’re rendering decisions 

which this review said failed to provide a substantive evaluation of 

medical evidence or rationale to support the findings, nevertheless, 

during that whole time, your allowance rate was 99 percent. And 

so that would mean that claimants who come before you, they’ve 

been denied twice by and large at the State level, and then almost 

all of them, 99 percent, you’re overruling that without providing 

substantive justifications. 

And so my question to you is if you’re overruling the State 99 

percent of the time, you’re not really evaluating the evidence or 

providing the justifications, is it just obvious that all these cases 

are wrong? How is it that 99 percent of the cases at the State level 

on those two reviews are incorrect? 

Judge KRAFSUR. First of all, I’m reviewing all the medical 

records, not the ones just the DDS happens, because I’ve seen 

many times DDS people don’t even agree with each other. So I 

have to take and consider all the records, the ones put in by the 

representative or the claimant, and take everything as a fact that’s 

put before me. So I review every piece of paper that’s medically in 

front of me. 

So I would show—— 

Mr. DESANTIS. That doesn’t mean just because, you know, you 

read it, they’re saying your decisions are not justified in a substantive way. It seems like you’re intent to find one way. And I do 

take a little bit of issue, because I think it was a little misleading 

when you were in a colloquy with Mr. Gowdy and you said that 99 

percent of your decisions have never been reversed on appeal. But 

isn’t it the case that if you award a claimant, if you find for the 

claimant, then there is no appeal, correct? 

Judge KRAFSUR. That is why—— 

Mr. DESANTIS. Is that correct? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Right now, yes. 

Mr. DESANTIS. That is correct. So to say that 99 percent of your 

cases that you haven’t been reversed, yeah, because it’s a factual 

impossibility for you to have been reversed. And so I don’t understand how you could posit that as some type of justification for 

your decisionmakings. I mean, it may fool somebody who’s not familiar with the system, but those cases are done. As Gowdy said, 

there’s not a taxpayer advocate who then will appeal beyond that. 

Now, let me—you mentioned when you were talking with Gowdy, 

when he asked you about some of the theories that you had been 

injecting into these cases, you essentially are making yourself a 

witness, and he called you on that, and your response was that you 

have a First Amendment right to speak in those cases. And to me 

that just is a fundamental misunderstanding of the First Amendment. No one is saying that you’re going to be prosecuted for sayVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:53 Sep 08, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00071 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\89597.TXT APRIL
68 

ing; the question is is that the correct role of someone in your position to be injecting their own theories? 

And I know you have this cause-and-effect theory, and I just 

want to read this quick snippet. ‘‘Claimant said, I worked in a 

slaughter house wrapping meat. You said, exposed to blood, right? 

Claimant says, yes. And then you say, I call this the effect, and 

what we try to do is find the cause. We found the cause today. 

Once you find a cause, it’s easy to pay a case. It’s impossible to pay 

a case if you can’t find the cause. My job is to just get enough information to do what I have to do.’’ 

So my question to you is is the cause and effect in the reviews 

that have been done, or other folks, has that been determined to 

be consistent with Social Security Administration guidelines for adjudicating these cases, or is that a test that you developed yourself? 

Judge KRAFSUR. No, that is developed by Social Security. And if 

you notice my presentation, I said on-the-record reviews by the Appeals Council, a favorable decision should be abolished and replaced by direct appeal to the appropriate Federal court to prevent 

the SSA from getting the second bite. So if the State should be allowed to take—if they think my case is incorrect, should be sent 

to Federal court for their review, and if the Federal court deems 

it incorrect, send it back for another hearing. But SSA gets a second bite from the Appeals Council. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Look, Mr. Krafsur, I think we’re concerned here. 

I agree with Dr. Coburn. People are disabled. We want to make 

sure, we even err on the side of paying too much. But when you 

see figures like this and taxpayer dollars going out the door without substantive reviews, billions and billions of dollars, it’s a tremendous cause for concern. 

And I yield back to the chairman. 

Judge KRAFSUR. May I interrupt, please, Mr. Chairman? 

Chairman ISSA. Yes, please. You can finish your response. 

Judge KRAFSUR. I see every one of those people that appear before me. Everyone who appears before me I’ve seen physically. I’ve 

seen their ailments. I’ve seen their pain, I’ve seen everything. I 

don’t give on-record decisions. I actually see these people. And I see 

their pain right in front of me. I can visually see the pain. That— 

maybe the panel doesn’t understand that, but I see the pain. I’m 

looking at them very carefully to make sure that I see something 

in their system that’s a pain. 

I review every case I’ve ever had, except for the ones that may 

be on record because they can’t appear because of another disability. But I’ve seen every case since 1991. I’ve never, never had 

a case that I gave an on-record decision to. 

Chairman ISSA. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. DESANTIS. Yes. 

Chairman ISSA. So you’re saying that you award because you see 

their pain? 

Judge KRAFSUR. No, no. It’s matched—it’s matched with the 

record. It’s matched with the record of the disability that I see from 

the physicians or from down below. Everyone is matched. It’s 

matched through the attorneys, who give—who take my sheet that 

lists all the evidence. They give me exhibit numbers, and I match 

69 

every one very carefully to make sure that they match what the 

claimant is testifying to during the hearing. 

Chairman ISSA. I’ll use my own time in a minute, but it is interesting, and I hope you’ll be prepared to answer, why the people beneath you who initially say no are nearly 100 percent wrong, in 

your opinion. So be prepared to answer that when it comes on my 

time. 

We now go to the gentlelady from Illinois Ms. Duckworth. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I just wanted to say that the topic of today’s hearing is critically 

important for every American worker. Social Security disability 

programs provide a modest benefit, $1,140 a month for the average 

SSDI recipient, and just $537 a month for the average SSI recipient. But these modest payments make all the difference when 

Americans face a life-changing disability or illness. It’s often the 

difference between making ends meet and facing deep poverty and 

potential homelessness. It’s vital that we make sure this program 

that workers are paying into each month continues to be there for 

them when the worst thing happens: They get hurt. 

Now, given how important this program is, there’s absolutely no 

excuse for those who seek to defraud or take advantage of it. We 

can and must redouble our efforts to combat waste, fraud and 

abuse in the system and make sure that Social Security has the resources it needs to maintain the program integrity. 

In reviewing all four of today’s witnesses, I notice you all have 

something in common with each other that makes you different 

from the typical judge in the Social Security Administration. The 

typical judge has an allowance rate of 57 percent. We touched on 

this—my colleagues touched on this a little bit earlier, and I’d like 

to explore this further. 

That’s a national average rate with which judges award disability benefits in the cases that they hear. The large majority of 

the ALJ corps is close to the national rate of 57 percent, but the 

judges here today have an average rate between 33 and 99 percent. 

For each of you, why do you think that all the other judges with 

allowance rates nearer to 57 percent have such a vastly different 

performance from you? And remember that, you know, Judge 

Krafsur, what you said about you see their pain and every one of 

their pain, that can’t be the reason, because you and Judge Taylor 

have very different approaches. If you see everyone, but he does 

not see most of his folks, you still have the same allowance rate. 

So could each of the four panelists discuss why do you think that 

your rates are so much higher than the others, and what is it that 

the other judges are doing that they only have an allowance rate 

of 57 compared to your 99 percent—93 to 99 percent? Thank you. 

Mr. Burke, do you want to start, and we’ll just go down the row. 

Judge BURKE. I think one factor in that, I think a factor that I 

think the four of us share, is that we have some experience in personal injury representation, representing injured people, and litigating cases, and being able to, as I say, read medical records, take 

depositions of medical personnel, and use the fact-finding process 

that we’ve learned in adversary situations. 

I think many and most of the ALJs coming now have been— 

worked for government agencies in a relatively—and military—in 

70 

a relatively sterile environment that doesn’t have that human connection and awareness of the various forces and interest in the various medical people and that sort of thing that we have learned as 

trial lawyers. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. So you’re saying that because you have a history of representing folks, that makes you more apt to give awards 

more generously? 

Judge BURKE. I think—I think it helps your perception, yes. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Okay. I find that somewhat troublesome, because I think that’s a bias that should not be there as a judge. 

But, Mr. Krafsur? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Yes, ma’am. I—I once—I asked the DDS to provide me with medical, psychological and psychiatric tests, which 

they refuse to do. And they won’t provide it. So I have to—so what 

I’m asking for to be able to do is bring the DDS people who have 

made these recommendations down below to appear before me so 

I can examine them and have them be cross examined by the 

claimant rep. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Okay. I only have a minute left, so I’m going 

to have to cut you off. I apologize. Are you saying that you’re the 

only one—that these other judges that are 57 percent have access 

to these people, and that’s why they’re giving less, and you’re giving more because you don’t? I mean, you’re the only judge—or 

these four judges are the only four that don’t have access? Is that 

what you’re saying? Because that doesn’t make sense. 

Mr. Bridges? 

Judge BRIDGES. I can’t speak for any other judge but myself. 

When I’ve applied all my knowledge, my training to the case in 

front of me, this is what I get. So I’m satisfied that I’ve done the 

best I can with all the facts of that particular case that’s unique 

to that person. I can’t address what any other judge has done, but 

to do what I can do to the cases that I have. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. Chairman, could we allow Mr. Taylor to do 

the final? 

Chairman ISSA. Please. Take such time as you need. Go ahead. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Taylor? 

Judge TAYLOR. If I understand your question correctly, there are 

obviously some cases that I’ve done, as I mentioned, and in some 

of those cases it’s obvious that sometimes the judge’s hands are 

tied. If they’re of a certain age, they have a certain RFC, a certain 

work background, a certain goodwill kicks in, there’s really nothing 

you can do about it. 

If the committee will note, beginning last year, the agency began 

an initiative to limit each judge to 80 cases a month, and this is 

all that judges are given now. There’s no on-the-records, or at least 

very few that are being issued at the present time. I know that I 

can’t think of any that I’ve issued since about this time last year, 

because we really can’t. There’s 80 cases being assigned to each 

judge. We are supposed to make our 5- to 700, but based upon that, 

as well as make an effort to reach our productivity goals. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. But the judges here average more than 1,000 

decisions in a given year, and one of you actually completed more 

than 2,000 decisions in multiple years, and yet the average is 500 

71 

to 700 for those who get the 57 percent. So maybe the common denominator here is that you’re just pushing these through and not 

really reviewing them. I don’t know. 

Mr. Chairman, I’m out of time. Thank you. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

Mr. Taylor, I’ve been told it’s 70 a month, 840 a year. Do you get 

a different number? 

Judge TAYLOR. Your Honor—excuse me, Mr. Chairman, I’ve been 

told 5- to 700. Now, maybe I’m wrong. If I’m wrong, I will admit 

it. I haven’t seen that number. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, for all of you, if you’re reversing the lower 

decisions by 90-some percent, in your opinion does that mean that, 

in fact, the denials are inherently overzealous, wrong; that the people beneath you that are saying no are by definition almost always 

wrong? 

Judge BRIDGES. I’m not—I wouldn’t say that, but I would say 

that they are not legally trained. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, but you’re reversing them 90-some percent, 

right? 

Judge BRIDGES. All I can say is that they are not legally trained. 

Chairman ISSA. No, no. 

Judge BRIDGES. And that is—and we are also seeing—— 

Chairman ISSA. Well, but, Mr. Bridges, we’re kind of funny about 

our questions here. We’re fairly nuanced. Are you reversing them 

90-some percent? 

Judge BRIDGES. I really don’t know, because I don’t pay attention 

to those figures. All I do is concentrate on each case, one at a time. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. So you don’t know that you’ve been awarding as a reversal of earlier claims over 90 percent of the time? 

Judge BRIDGES. I don’t look at those figures because it may influence me. 

Chairman ISSA. Mr. Bridges, you mean that you don’t notice—— 

Judge BRIDGES. No. 

Chairman ISSA. —that you’re essentially saying approved, approved, approved almost all the time? 

Judge BRIDGES. I don’t notice because I don’t want to be influenced. Each individual is due his just and accurate decision, so I 

don’t want to be influenced by that, so I take each case at a time. 

Chairman ISSA. That is the most astounding thing I’ve ever 

heard in this here. That’s sort of like saying that you don’t look at 

the speed limits signs because you don’t want to be influenced by 

what speed is safe on the highway. 

Mr. Taylor, you’ve been distinguished by multiple awards for 

your work; isn’t that true? 

Judge TAYLOR. Some, yes, sir. 

Chairman ISSA. And were those awards based on volume? 

Judge TAYLOR. Yes, sir. 

Chairman ISSA. So all four of you were brought here—three of 

you, not you, Mr. Taylor—but three of you under subpoena, involuntarily, if you will. And we want to be fair to you, but we’re obviously disappointed in the performance overall of this disability 

claim system. But I just want to make sure I make for the record 

very clear: You’re awarding almost all the time a reversal granting 

this roughly 300,000 per person in benefits for disability, reversing 

72 

the lower decision, but you’re being given awards because the only 

thing your bosses care about, at least in those awards, is volume; 

is that correct? 

Judge TAYLOR. I don’t think that’s the only thing that they care 

about. That’s not the reaction that I get. The thing that we have 

to meet is these goals that we’ve had over the years, and the goals 

have changed a little bit since I came in, but they’ve always gone 

up. And, of course, last year the goals were taken off, and they are 

no more. I don’t think that’s the most important thing. But we do 

have a set of goals that we’re supposed to meet, a set of productivity goals. 

Chairman ISSA. Mr. Bridges, Mr. Krafsur and Mr. Burke, have 

you, any of you, received similar quality awards—quantity awards? 

Have you received any awards for the work and the volume that 

you’re pumping through your—— 

Judge BRIDGES. No, it would be illegal for us to receive awards. 

Chairman ISSA. So Mr. Taylor illegally receives an award? 

Judge BRIDGES. ALJs should not receive awards for—— 

Chairman ISSA. Mr. Taylor, you’re shaking your head yes. Do you 

think your award was illegal? 

Judge TAYLOR. It was just a letter, sir. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. Any of the rest of you receive letters saying good things about your work based on quantity? 

Judge KRAFSUR. Just the whole office, not just the individual 

judge. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. So there was an ‘‘attaboy’’ based on volume. 

Mr. Burke? 

Judge BURKE. No, sir. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. 

Mr. Burke, I’m concerned, in one case you decided in October 

2012, you found an established offset date of 2002, even though in 

the filing the earliest treatment records were 2009. Do you remember that case? 

Judge BURKE. No, sir, I don’t. 

Chairman ISSA. It was in your focus review. Your reviewer reviewed it, and I guess the question is, isn’t it true that people are 

only entitled to retroactive disability payments to the point at 

which they can substantiate the onset of whatever made them unable to work? 

Judge BURKE. Correct. 

Chairman ISSA. So it’s extremely important to get that date 

right, because if it’s 7 years earlier, that’s a lot of money, isn’t it? 

Judge BURKE. No, sir. You can only be paid a year prior to your 

Title 2, your Social Security application. So if you apply, say, in 

2008, with an onset date of 2002, you’re still not going to get paid 

prior to 2007. 

Chairman ISSA. Have you discussed the focus review with anyone? 

Judge BURKE. No, sir. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. Now, we are the Committee on Oversight 

and Government Reform, and people often don’t see the reform, so 

let’s go through the numbers a little bit. I asked Mr. Bridges; he 

doesn’t keep track of them. I’ll go to you, Mr. Taylor. 

73 

If you’re reversing 100 percent, then doesn’t that inherently 

mean that either you’re wrong, or the people beneath you are saying no when they should be saying yes a lot of times? Because, I 

mean, you’re the first to say that you’re handling too many cases, 

but if cases are coming to you at almost 100 percent you’re reversing them, then wouldn’t that inherently mean that these cases 

should not come to you because they should be approved at a lower 

level, in your opinion? 

Judge TAYLOR. That’s a hard question to answer, sir. I can only 

talk about some of the cases I’ve received. I know very little about 

the general overall picture as to what other judges are getting. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, let me ask you a question. I know Mr. 

Bridges said he doesn’t even look at the number, but those are your 

numbers up on the screen. So let’s just take, you know—I don’t 

know, we’ll take the first date, 2005, 95.2 percent. 

Judge TAYLOR. Uh-huh. 

Chairman ISSA. In each of those years in which you ran in the 

’90s until 2013, which is, I believe, when sort of we started changing, 2011, 2012, 2013, those numbers are coming down for you 

down to 74 percent now. 

Judge TAYLOR. Uh-huh. 

Chairman ISSA. During that time, did you ever write any letters 

or do anything to try to ask, why am I getting 90 percent 

misdecisions that I have to reverse? 

Judge TAYLOR. No, sir. 

Chairman ISSA. Why not? 

Judge TAYLOR. I never really thought that at the time I was getting the cases, which I got to look at from the standpoint of on the 

records, I never really thought that those were given to me in an 

extraneous manner. Looking at them, I could tell why a senior 

staffer might have referred that case to me to look at. But of course 

I didn’t grant everything that was on the list of recommendations. 

I might have found earnings after onset, I might have found subsequent reports that went in the record after the staffer reviewed it. 

Chairman ISSA. Now, you particularly made a lot of decisions 

without ever having hearings. How do you justify that I need a 

judge to do that rather than simply another bureaucratic review? 

Judge TAYLOR. It’s interesting you should mention that. We 

have, at least we used to have at our office, three senior attorneys 

who—well, one of their jobs was to review cases to determine 

whether they could be done on the record. For one reason or another, now we only have one there now, at least one full-time. And 

that is part of their job, to look at these cases from the standpoint 

of whether they can be done on the record and perhaps to refer it 

to a judge to determine whether it can be. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, those lawyers that were pumping through 

those for those determinations, weren’t those just part of the productivity, part of getting more volume out? 

Judge TAYLOR. They are part of ODAR, yes, sir. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. Well, that may be why they have less of 

them, is that they weren’t achieving better decisions, just more volume. 

Now, I share with Ms. Duckworth the concern about the backlog, 

and that is still an area that I am very, very concerned about. But 

74 

let me ask you a question. The ranking member and I authored a 

bill called the DATA Act that now has been signed into law. Part 

of the intent was to organize data to make it more useful. The nature of many of the points that are part of your decision, aren’t 

those, in fact, data points that are codified in law, they’re not discretionary? In other words, what Mr. Burke said about how far 

back you can award based on when the application was, when the 

document onset is, and so on, aren’t those points that should be essentially loaded into computers and absolutely determined away 

from the judge’s decision? Because they are decisions of fact, that 

in fact you don’t need to take human error into account, you need 

to make sure that the law is complied with? Would you agree with 

that? 

Judge TAYLOR. That would be very helpful, sir, very helpful. 

Chairman ISSA. The rest of you? Would that be helpful, if all the 

data points of fact and law would already be put in so that you 

wouldn’t be, in a sense, trying to make a judgment call about those 

kinds of things and having to remember, like Mr. Burke, what the 

details of how far back you go or what the effect would be? 

Mr. Cummings, do you have additional questions? 

The gentleman is recognized. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Let me ask you this. Senator Coburn talked 

about—Mr. Burke—Judge Burke—you referred to this. Senator 

Coburn talked extensively about this judge in Oklahoma, administrative law judge, who was able to get people back to work. I think 

that’s what he said. And, you know, I think when you talk about 

no other job—a person not being able to do another job, I’m just 

trying figure out, do you think—and then you said that there is 

so—there is not sufficient resources and support systems to even 

accomplish those things. 

So how is that done normally? I mean, how would it be—that 

this fellow be able to do it in Oklahoma and then some people probably, that if they—maybe if they were a truck driver and maybe 

they had an injury and maybe they would be in a position to do 

something else. And I’m just curious. Talk about that for a minute. 

Judge BURKE. In the best of all possible worlds, the continuum 

between employment and total disability should go from employment to unemployment to partial disability to full disability and 

then to vocational rehabilitation to put the person back to work. 

They should dovetail. But in my experience in those three States 

I have practiced in, the vocational rehabilitation part of it is forgotten. It is funded by the Social Security Act or regulated by the Social Security Act, but apparently the appropriations are—it doesn’t 

get the attention that it should. 

Another factor about going back to work for disabled people is 

the level of skill that they had when they were injured or became 

sick. A skilled individual is much more likely to be able to be retrained or to have a skill level that they can exercise at a more sedentary level. 

In northern New Mexico, where I am from, there’s a high degree 

of lack of skill, manual labor jobs. There is no industry in northern 

New Mexico to speak of. So in that situation you get a lot of 

straight total disability cases. 

75 

Mr. CUMMINGS. So if you have an area where you have got a lot 

of people doing laboring type work, then you are more likely to see 

higher rates of approved disability claims? Is that—— 

Judge BURKE. Yes, sir. And the Social Security regulations, for 

instance that grid, talks about whether or not a person is skilled 

or semi-skilled or has transferrable skills that can be used at a 

light or sedentary level. That is what the vocational experts advise 

us on. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. So basically some of these people have no skills. 

Judge BURKE. Yes, that’s quite correct. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. So there’s nothing to really fall back on. 

Mr. BURKE. Exactly. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Interesting. 

All right. Thank you. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

We are going to stand in recess. And I would expect that if there 

are no votes by 1:30, if we don’t come back, that we will have you 

dismissed. 

So what I’d say is we will be in recess for at least 20, 25 minutes, 

if you want to get a bite to eat. And then if you will come back 

here, we will give you a final determination. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 12:38 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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