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SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION OVERSIGHT: 

EXAMINING THE INTEGRITY OF THE DISABILITY DETERMINATION APPEALS PROCESS, 

PART II 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT 

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JUNE 11, 2014 

Serial No. 113–126 

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 11, 2014 ............................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

The Hon. Carolyn W. Colvin, Acting Commissioner, Social Security Administration 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 7 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 9 

APPENDIX 

Baltimore Sun article submitted by Rep. Cummings ........................................... 56 

Opening Statement by Rep. Cummings ................................................................. 59 

Response from SSA to questions from Reps. Lankford and Speier ..................... 61 

Answer from SSA to how much it costs to do a full medical review ................... 67 

June 27, 2013, Statement of ALJ Sullivan, submitted by Chairman Issa .......... 68 

Response to Rep Mica’s question regarding cooperative disability ..................... 91 

SSA response to Rep. Gosar regarding hearing decisions .................................... 92 

SSA response to Rep. Duncan regarding SSDI beneficiaries in current pay 

status ..................................................................................................................... 93 

SSA response to Chairman Issa regarding National ALJ allowance rates ........ 94 

SSA letter in response to Chairman Issa’s questions regarding ALJs ................ 95 

SSA response to Rep. Cummings regarding benefits ........................................... 96 

(1) 

SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION OVERSIGHT: EXAMINING THE INTEGRITY OF THE 

DISABILITY DETERMINATION APPEALS 

PROCESS, PART II 

Wednesday, June 11, 2014, 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, 

WASHINGTON, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:34 a.m., in Room 2154, 

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

the committee] presiding. 

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

Walberg, Lankford, Amash, Gosar, DesJarlais, Woodall, DeSantis, 

Cummings, Maloney, Tierney, Connolly, Speier, Cartwright, Lujan 

Grisham, and Kelly. 

Staff Present: Melissa Beaumont, Majority Assistant Clerk; 

Brian Blase, Majority Senior Professional Staff Member; Molly 

Boyl, Majority Deputy General Counsel and Parliamentarian; 

David Brewer, Majority Senior Counsel; Caitlin Carroll, Majority 

Press Secretary; Sharon Casey, Majority Senior Assistant Clerk; 

John Cuaderes, Majority Deputy Staff Director; Adam P. Fromm, 

Majority Director of Member Services and Committee Operations; 

Linda Good, Majority Chief Clerk; Mark D. Marin, Majority Deputy 

Staff Director for Oversight; Emily Martin, Majority Counsel; Jessica Seale, Majority Digital Director; Andrew Shult, Majority Deputy Digital Director; Sharon Meredith Utz, Majority Professional 

Staff Member; Rebecca Watkins, Majority Communications Director; Jaron Bourke, Minority Director of Administration; Jennifer 

Hoffman, Minority Communications Director; Julia Krieger, Minority New Media Press Secretary; Juan McCullum, Minority Clerk; 

Suzanne Owen, Minority Senior Policy Advisor; and Brian Quinn, 

Minority Counsel. 

Chairman ISSA. The committee will come to order. 

This second hearing on the Social Security Administration Oversight: Examining the Integrity of the Disability Determination Appeals Process, Part II, will come to order. 

The Oversight Committee mission statement is that we exist to 

secure two fundamental principles: first, Americans have a right to 

know that the money Washington takes from them is 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 Government accountable to taxpayers, because taxVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:57 Sep 09, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\89595.TXT APRIL
2 

payers have a right to know what they get from their 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. 

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

growth over the past decade. Through these programs, nearly 20 

million people receive approximately $200 billion in annual cash 

payments. 

Yesterday we heard testimony from four administrative law 

judges, normally called ALJs, who clearly rubber-stamped the cases 

brought before them. Rubber-stamping not because they agreed 

with the lower determinations to reject these claims, but rubberstamping the lawyers who said my client is disabled, even though 

competent administrators beneath had not once, but twice in many 

cases, said no. 

We heard from ALJs who created their own theories of disability; 

who awarded benefits to thousands of decisions without even holding hearings or considering the evidence; who failed to utilize medical or vocational experts during their hearings; who do not understand agency policy and repeatedly misapplied the rules of the Social Security Administration; and we heard about ALJs who fell 

asleep during hearings, who made inappropriate comments and 

gestures directed at female employees. 

Every case that comes before ALJs has already been denied at 

least once, and sometimes twice. Yet ALJs overturned a shocking 

number of these denials. Over the last decade, 191 ALJs reversed 

at 85 percent or higher these decisions. These 191 ALJs awarded 

lifetime benefits in excess of $150 billion tax dollars. 

While the ALJs that we featured yesterday do not represent the 

majority of judges, not by far, they do represent a sizeable number 

of ALJs, and even one incompetent ALJ can waste billions of taxpayers dollars over the course of his or her tenure by inappropriately placing individuals on disability for life. 

Many of the ALJs who have demonstrated gross incompetence 

and profound misjudgment should be fired, yet action is rarely 

taken either by the Social Security Administration or Justice Department to stop misconduct or even illegal activity. 

Today’s hearing will address the Social Security Administration’s 

role in this mess. For years the agency’s barometer for ALJ performance was a quantity of cases that ALJs decided each year. 

Prior to 2011, the agency never investigated whether judges were 

engaging in proper decision-making. At multiple hearings now, including yesterday, ALJs told us and the committee that they felt 

pressured to meet a quota of decisions each year. Judges testified 

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. 

Simply put, in the past, the agency’s emphasis on high volume 

decision-making directly contributed to ALJs likely awarding benefits to hundreds of thousands of people who simply were not disabled. Among its many responsibilities, the agency needs to deal 

with the ALJs who have lost, or should have lost, the public trust. 

3 

I think it is obvious that all four of the ALJs that appeared before us yesterday should no longer be trusted to spend your money 

in the Disability Trust Fund. 

Today I want to know whether Ms. Colvin is going to take an aggressive approach in removing incompetent ALJs. Thus far, she 

has refused to heed my recommendation to take stronger action 

with ALJ Bridges, Taylor, even though both received multiple reviews showing gross incompetence and negligence. 

In 2012, the agency did make a necessary reform and it did finally begin an assessment comparing all ALJs’ volume of decisions 

and the quality of those decisions. The results of the study are 

clear. From the study, there is a ‘‘strong relationship between production levels and decision quality on allowances as ALJ production increased. The general trend for decision quality is to go 

down.’’ Now, to say that less mangled, quantity reduces quality. 

While having a reasonable quantity level allows for at least those 

ALJs who want to do a better job to do that better job. 

I appreciate the commissioner being here today and appearing 

before the committee. Key questions before us are: What do we do 

about the people who were wrongly awarded benefits by ALJs? And 

how do we fix a system going forward? 

I trust the commissioner is, every day, thinking about this and 

is prepared to give us her thoughts today and to answer our questions. 

I want to close by reminding all of us on both sides of the dais 

this was not a problem of this Administration; this was a problem 

that took a decade to grow. ALJs are not political appointees, per 

se, but they are people who spend American taxpayer dollars at a 

higher rate than virtually everyone else in Government. 

So as we work to fix a problem not created by one administration, I want us all to show deference to the fact that the problem 

is here before us. The problem took a decade to grow and I look 

forward to working together to fix it. 

I now recognize the ranking member. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I want to thank the chairman. 

Let me thank the commissioner for being here. Commissioner 

Colvin, we know you have a very difficult job. You are the steward 

of the Disability Insurance Program, which is a critical lifeline for 

people who become disabled and can no longer work, and I don’t 

want us to lose focus of that. American workers contribute to this 

program out of their paychecks, hardworking Americans. They 

need and deserve to have the Disability Insurance Program that 

gives them fair and timely hearings based on medical evidence if 

they become disabled and unable to work. 

I know you are working hard to get it right. The majority of the 

Social Security Administration’s 60,000 employees, including 1500 

administrative law judges, are doing the same. Many of them are 

my constituents. And, by the way, the people who are serviced by 

Social Security are all of our constituents, and I don’t ever want 

us to lose sight of that. They tell me themselves how hard they are 

working to provide the services that Americans count on. They also 

tell me that there have been instances now where one person is 

now doing the job that three people used to do. And the fact is your 

efforts are working. 

4 

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 procedures, and enhanced efforts to combat 

fraud. And the chairman is right, if there are things that you think 

we need to do to help you address this issue, you need to let us 

know, because it is one thing for us to be up here criticizing the 

Administration when we don’t give you the resources you need and 

the backing that you need to accomplish what you have to accomplish. 

Yesterday we heard from a handful of administrative law judges 

who fail to meet agency standards for conduct and professional 

judgment. No doubt about it. These judges are outliers who do not 

reflect the good work of the majority of administrative law judges. 

We had four here yesterday. I understand there are about 1500 in 

the Nation. 

The evidence shows that the agency is committed to protecting 

the qualified decisional independence of the judge corps, and that 

is very, very significant. These judges act independently. We heard 

them yesterday talk about how much they guard their independence. So you are really walking a real thin line here. On the one 

hand you have to make sure they have independence, but like 

Chief Judge Rice said in a transcribed interview, you also, at the 

same time, have to make sure that you can’t tell them they have 

to have a certain percentage going in favor and a certain percentage going the other way. So it is kind of difficult to do. 

That commitment is fundamental to ensuring the integrity of the 

program and the rights of American citizens. We are talking about 

due process and equal protection under the law. But the evidence 

also shows that you are dealing with judges who go beyond judicial 

independence and ignore the policies established by the agencies. 

There is absolutely something wrong with that. In fact, you are 

now pursuing the removal of judges with the Merit Systems Protection Board, when such actions were unheard of a decade ago. 

It is in all of our interest to get this right. We have a responsibility not just to highlight problems, but to correct them when they 

are identified; and that is why the spotlight should also shine on 

this body, us. Our investigation shows that Congress has failed to 

adequately fund program integrity efforts that would curb abuses. 

Congress has failed to provide the resources needed by the inspector general. And we all have a lot of respect for our inspectors general to combat fraud. And Congress has failed to provide the resources needed to provide timely access to disability hearings. 

Mr. Chairman, I would like to enter into the record an article 

from the Baltimore Sun reporting that residents in my district are 

waiting for 17 months for hearings. 

Chairman ISSA. Without objection, so ordered. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. We heard testimony during our investigation 

that some people waited so long for their hearings that they died 

waiting. That they died waiting. That is an outrage and we are better than that. And that is one grave cost of austerity. 

Mr. Chairman, it is time to put our money where our mouth is. 

Is the Congress going to invest in the integrity of the Disability Insurance Program? Is Congress going to adequately fund anti-fraud 

5 

units in all 50 States? Is Congress going to appropriate sufficient 

resources to eliminate these backlogs? In my opinion, that is what 

we have to do and that is what we must do, and I look forward 

to your testimony. 

With that, I yield back. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

We now go to the gentlelady from California for a brief opening 

statement. 

Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

I would like to wholeheartedly endorse every word of my ranking 

member’s statement. I think he put it extremely well. 

I want to thank the chairman for holding this hearing today. It 

is the fifth oversight hearing that we have had on Social Security 

disability. The previous three were held in our Subcommittee on 

Energy Policy, Health Care and Entitlements, and again I would 

like to take note of the leadership of my colleague, Mr. Lankford, 

and his leadership on that committee. 

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

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. 

Yesterday’s hearing focused on four outlier judges that had unusually higher allowance rates. In many respects it was a dismal 

hearing. It was embarrassing, I think, for many of us to listen to. 

They process an extraordinary number of cases, some without even 

ever seeing the claimant. In fact, in one case, I think it was Judge 

Taylor, of the 8,000 cases that he had, 6,000 of them were done on 

the record without ever seeing the claimant. And some cases substituted their own personal beliefs for expert medical advice. 

I do not believe that the judges invited to testify yesterday were 

representative of the judge corps. Most of the ALJs are conscientious public servants and had an allowance rate of 57 percent last 

year. 

Today I look forward to the testimony from Social Security officials on the efforts to enhance its ability to oversee ALJs to ensure 

consistent and quality decisions. I hope they will address the concerns raised yesterday and describe the tools Social Security has 

put in place to train, discipline, and, when appropriate, remove 

ALJs that violate agency policies. 

Now, having said that, I think it is very, very difficult to remove 

someone, and we need to have a very candid conversation on what 

needs to be fixed in order to appropriately remove individuals who 

are just, frankly, not doing the job. 

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

letter to Social Security that outlined several reforms and recommendations to improve the disability, adjudication, and review 

process to restore confidence in Federal disability programs. Earlier 

this week 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 had gathered with regard to the adVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:57 Sep 09, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\89595.TXT APRIL
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ministrative law judge and a claimant’s representative who allegedly colluded with fraudulent medical evidence to obtain disability 

benefit awards for thousands of individuals. 

The fact that Eric Kahn is still in a situation where he can represent claimants before Social Security in Huntington and in 

Charleston, and anywhere else, I guess, in the Country, because he 

has now opened offices in California, is a disgrace. It is an absolute 

disgrace. 

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 bene put on hold pending a possible criminal prosecution. While 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 out of the U.S. attorney in West Virginia. It is long past time to prosecute this case and, frankly, it is 

long past time for the administration within Social Security to take 

action against these people. One of them has retired; one of them 

is still processing claims. 

Social Security disability benefits are an important lifeline for 

millions of American taxpayers with disability. It is critical that 

this lifeline is preserved. Our investigation has 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. 

Our investigation has also shown that Congress has not provided 

the funding the agency needs to fulfill its mandate to effectively 

monitor program integrity and save taxpayer dollars. We know continuing disability reviews, CDRs, as we refer to them, yield a return of $9.00 for every dollar spent. Common sense suggests to all 

of us that some people who are disabled get better, and there 

should be an active use of CDRs to make sure that those who do 

get better are not continued on the rolls. 

Social Security and the OIG have also established the Cooperative Disability Investigations Program 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, we here in Congress have refused to 

fully fund the inspector general and the agency to carry out its program integrity. If we want accountability,—I am going to use the 

same words that the ranking member did—then let’s put our 

money where our mouths are and fully fund CDRs. 

I look forward to hearing the testimony on improving the disability appeals process and how Congress can support and enhance 

these efforts. Thank you. 

Mr. MICA. [Presiding.] I thank the gentlelady. 

Mr. Lankford? 

There are no further opening statements. Then we will go to recognizing our witness. 

Members may have seven days to submit opening statements for 

the record. Without objection, so ordered. 

Our sole witness today is the Honorable Carolyn Colvin. She is 

the Acting Commissioner for Social Security Administration. 

7 

Pursuant to the rules and procedures of our committee, Ms. 

Colvin, this is an investigative panel of Congress and we swear in 

all of our witnesses, so if you will stand and raise your right hand. 

Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are 

about to give before this committee of Congress is the whole truth 

and nothing but the truth? 

[Witness responds in the affirmative.] 

Mr. MICA. The witness has answered in the affirmative and I 

would like to welcome you. 

Since we only have one witness, we won’t hold exactly to the five 

minutes, but if you could try to summarize your opening statement 

and comments. And if you have additional information that you 

would like to be made part of the record, you can request through 

the chair. 

With that, you are welcomed and recognized. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CAROLYN W. COLVIN, 

ACTING COMMISSIONER, SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION 

Ms. COLVIN. Good morning, Chairman Issa, Ranking Member 

Cummings, members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me 

to discuss the role of administrative law judges, or ALJs, in our 

disability appeals process. My name is Carolyn Colvin and I am the 

Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration. 

We have nearly 75 years of experience in administering the hearings process. Since 1939, the law has required us to hold hearings 

to determine the rights of individuals to Social Security benefits. 

We currently employ just over 1400 full-and part-time ALJs who 

decide hundreds of thousands of disability claims each year. The 

vast majority of all ALJs are conscientious, hard-working, and take 

their responsibility seriously. 

Getting the right decision to every person who applies for disability benefits is important to the agency, the claimants, Congress, 

and the taxpayer. Those who have earned Social Security coverage 

deserve a decision that is accurate, timely, and policy-compliant, 

whether the decision is an allowance or a denial. Toward this end, 

we have taken steps to comprehensively improve our national hearings and appeals process. 

As our budget allowed, we made a large investment in modernizing the hearings process and utilized improvements in technology. We have developed new methods of capturing structured 

data which provides insight into policy compliance in hearing decisions. We have developed new tools that use the structured data 

to provide ALJs real-time access to their appeals council remand 

data and provide them individual feedback. 

We collect and then analyze data to identify recurring issues in 

decision-making by performing pre-effectuation reviews on a random sample of allowances and post-effectuation focus reviews that 

look at specific issues. By performing these reviews as allowed by 

our regulations, we provide ALJs timely guidance on recurring 

issues in decision-making, consider improvements in policies and 

procedures, and identify training opportunities for ALJs and other 

agency employees. Our ability to perform these reviews, though, 

depends on the funding we receive from Congress. 

8 

Our continued focus on quality review initiatives allow us to improve the policy compliance of ALJ decisions to ensure that individuals who qualify for benefits receive them, and that those who do 

not qualify do not receive benefits. 

Most ALJs who receive feedback welcome the opportunity to improve their skills. Let me emphasize that we do not have any set 

allowance or denial rates. We do not because our focus is always 

on producing quality policy-compliant decisions. 

For our hearing process to operate fairly, efficiently, and effectively, our ALJs must treat members of the public and staff with 

dignity and respect, adhere to ethical standards and agency policy, 

be proficient at working electronically, and be able to handle a high 

volume workload while maintaining quality and issuing policy-compliant decisions. The vast majority of our ALJs take seriously their 

duty to the American public and perform their duties accordingly, 

and I commend and thank them for their service. 

We manage our ALJ corps in accordance with the Administrative 

Procedures Act and we ensure the qualified decisional independence of our ALJs. The APA additionally provides that ALJs are exempt from performance appraisals and cannot receive awards 

based on performance. In compliance with the APA, we can and 

have taken steps to ensure that ALJs who refuse to do their jobs 

properly or who otherwise betray the public trust would be held accountable for their actions. Despite the good work of the vast majority of our ALJ corps, it has been necessary to seek removal or 

suspension of some ALJs. To do this, we have to complete a lengthy 

administrative process that lasts years and can consume significant 

amounts of taxpayer dollars. 

Unlike disciplinary actions for other civil servants, the law requires that ALJs receive their full salary and benefits until the 

case is finally decided by the full Merit Systems Protection Board, 

even when the ALJ’s conduct makes it impossible for the agency 

to allow the ALJ to continue deciding and hearing cases or to interact with the public. 

We welcome your support in advancing our goal of providing 

every person who comes before our agency a timely, quality, and 

policy-compliant decision. 

Again, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today, 

and I will answer any questions you have. 

[Prepared statement of Ms. Colvin follows:] 

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Mr. MICA. Thank you, Ms. Colvin. We will first recognize for the 

purpose of questioning Mr. Lankford. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Ms. Colvin, thanks for being here as well. Ranking Member Speier and I sent a letter to your office about a month 

ago or two months ago. It had 11 specific recommendations or ideas 

about how to reform this. It has been part of this ongoing conversation now, our fifth hearing dealing with this issue. We continue to 

collect what are the ideas that actually solve this problem. We are 

all very aware of the problem. How do we actually solve this? We 

listed 11 specific ideas. The letter that we received back from your 

office said this, ‘‘Some recommendations could benefit from further 

discussion of our current business processes, the relative advantages and disadvantages of pursuing the suggested changes and 

significant legal considerations. We have to discuss these recommendations with your staff.’’ 

What we want to know is how do we actually start applying 

some of these. I would ask you again, of the 11 recommendations 

that we put forward, I would like to receive a response back to Ms. 

Speier and I that says of the 11, here are those that we are already 

implementing, here are those that we don’t think is a good idea; 

rather than, hey, we will talk about this at some point if you want 

to be able to get together. I think it is a reasonable request. 

Ms. COLVIN. I certainly can respond to you about each of the individual recommendations that you set forth. However, I did believe that some further conversation would help to clarify some of 

the recommendations. If you feel that you would rather not do 

that—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. No, we are fine with that. We have had offline 

conversations. We don’t have to be in front of the cameras to be 

able to have this kind of conversation. What we want to see is how 

do we actually move these into solutions. What we have tried to 

clear up from the beginning in these hearings are what are statutory issues you need help with in the law. Where do we have a 

problem in the law that we need to fix? Where do you already have 

statutory authority that we just need to help provide a push and 

accountability to say how do we get this done? 

So we have no issue to be able to talk through what is our part, 

what is your part, but we want to see us make progress on this. 

Ms. COLVIN. We would be very happy to do that, Mr. Lankford. 

We appreciate the assistance of this committee and we look forward to working with you. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Okay. We look forward to getting a chance to be 

able to get together on that. 

Ms. COLVIN. All right. 

Mr. LANKFORD. There are several issues that have come up during these conversations. Yesterday’s hearing, as Ms. Speier mentioned before, was depressing in many ways. It is frustrating both 

to be able to see individuals that would claim judicial independence, but they are basically going to create their own way. For an 

ALJ to not have in the medical record in front of them that there 

is a back problem, but they ask someone in front of them do you 

have a limp and they said yes, and they give them disability when 

there is no medical evidence of that. Do you have a limp should not 

qualify for $300,000 of lifetime benefits to the taxpayer. And do you 

17 

have a limp does not also say to someone you are not eligible to 

work in any location in our economy, which is clearly within the 

vocational grid requirements. 

When those issues come up, and come up in a focused review, our 

frustration is they are rare, and thankfully that they are rare. We 

have 191 ALJs that have this very high overturn rate, and what 

we are trying to consider is what do you need to help in the process 

to be able to help fix this so that you can bring both training that 

works—because what we heard a lot yesterday was, yes, we have 

training, but it is really training on writing better; it is not training on writing and on policy and on how to make decisions. All four 

of the judges agreed the training that they received is on writing 

better opinions rather than actually making better decisions on it. 

So that is one aspect of it. 

The second one is when you find someone that needs to be removed, what do you need from Congress to be able to clarify the 

law. As you mentioned in your opening statement, the law doesn’t 

allow for removal or holding pay or such. 

Ms. COLVIN. Let me respond first by saying that we expect all 

of our judges to issue quality policy-compliant decisions. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Well, we do too. 

Ms. COLVIN. We respect their qualified judicial independence, but 

we also know that they are employees of the agency, and they are 

accountable to the agency and to the taxpayers. So when we identify that there is a problem through our focus reviews, we do in fact 

provide very timely real-time feedback; we provide additional training for those individuals; and then if they still do not comply with 

policy, we move forward with taking the appropriate action. 

Mr. LANKFORD. When you have a focused review, is there any 

sense of setting this person aside to say they are not going to hear 

cases while they are undergoing a focused review that you saw 

problems with, do the training, or are they still taking cases at the 

same time? 

Ms. COLVIN. We do not set them aside; we provide them with 

training and work with them to improve those decision-making—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. So they are still hearing cases though they are 

still going through training to say we saw problems in your focused 

review, but they are still adding more cases even during that time 

period? 

Ms. COLVIN. We are not able to just remove a judge from hearing 

cases because they need additional training. Our responsibility is 

to provide that training first, provide them with an opportunity to 

improve, and then if they still are not policy-compliant, we take appropriate action. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Does that appropriate action include not hearing 

cases at that point? 

Ms. COLVIN. It could be. It depends upon what the situation is. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Here is the ongoing problem that we have: you 

have someone that your group has identified to say there are some 

problems here in the way they are deciding cases; they don’t seem 

to be following the basic flow of those five elements that need to 

be there. If there is a problem that rises to the top on that, they 

don’t need to continue to hear more cases through that time period. 

We did not have them hear cases, make sure that they are trained 

18 

and ready to go so that the next time they start hearing cases 

again they are actually following proper procedure that has been 

outlined by the law and by regulations. 

Ms. COLVIN. It is not that simple, Mr. Lankford. There is a process that we must go through. We do that. We take the responsibility of providing correct decisions very seriously and we take 

steps immediately to try to—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. So how long is that process? 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, if you talk about the Merit Systems Review 

process, we make a referral because we believe that a judge has either improper conduct or is not policy-compliant, our experience 

has been it could be two, three years. It costs us a million dollars 

to remove just one judge. So the process is very lengthy and very 

costly. 

Mr. LANKFORD. So we have a three-year process for someone that 

there is a very clear problem with. 

Ms. COLVIN. It is not our process, Mr. Lankford. We have to follow—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. I understand. I am just asking the question how 

do we fix this? Because we have a three year process, someone is 

continuing to hear cases. Approximately $300,000 to the taxpayer 

of every single case that they hear if they choose to put them into 

the system. It continues to roll on the taxpayer and we still continue to have a judge that says do you have a limp? You qualify 

for Social Security disability. 

Now, I understand that is an extreme case, but if that rises up 

to that level, which you have a few judges that are at that level, 

how do we protect the taxpayer and the integrity of the system so 

that if someone is coming for disability and an ALJ, they are consistent across judges? I know there are subjective decisions here, 

but if you come before one judge, it is a 15 percent approval rating; 

if you come before another one, it is a 99 percent approval rating. 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, I think that you need to understand that we 

cannot look at one statistic, whether it is an allowance rate or a 

denial rate, to determine whether or not the decision was a right 

decision. There is much more—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. Yes, ma’am, I do understand that. 

I am over time, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for that, but let me 

just say if you are a small community bank, when the regulator 

comes in, he looks at every other community bank and how they 

do loans, and if you are an outlier, you get extra attention, because 

that is the way they are overseeing from the FDIC and the OCC. 

Any outlier number that sits out there, you don’t have a ‘‘quota,’’ 

but if your numbers are odd compared to everybody else around 

you, you are going to get extra inspections. All we are asking is 

would that occur with Social Security in the disability process, that 

if you have an outlier, whether they are on the low side or the high 

side, someone is looking at that, saying why is this number so odd. 

Ms. COLVIN. You are aware that we do focused reviews. We cannot single a judge out simply because of his allowance rate or his 

denial rate. But if we find that there are problematic policy decisions, we can work with that individual for further training and ultimately take action, if necessary. 

19 

Mr. LANKFORD. So is that the law, that you can’t single them out 

because of high allowance rates? 

Ms. COLVIN. That is the law. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Okay, then we need to fix that for you, because 

that is trapping it. That is the kind of stuff we are talking about. 

We all see the problem. We need to know what is our responsibility 

and what is yours so we can fix that. 

Ms. COLVIN. Mr. Lankford, I think it is important again to just 

emphasize that allowance rate or denial rate does not necessarily 

indicate that the decision that was made is an incorrect decision. 

Mr. LANKFORD. I understand. 

Ms. COLVIN. So there are other variables that we have to look 

at. 

Mr. LANKFORD. By the way, we should probably pass it on to the 

FDIC as well, because they do that same treatment for banks and 

they have the exact same response. 

With that, I yield back. 

Chairman ISSA. [Presiding.] I just want to clarify, then we will 

go to the ranking member. 

You are saying that it is the clear, four square of the law and 

you have no ability? You are not saying that it is your interpretation, etcetera? You are saying you have absolutely no authority 

under the law to do anything different, or these are rules and policies and interpretations of the Social Security Administration? 

Ms. COLVIN. When you say to do anything different, law has been 

very clear that we have to respect the judicial independence, that 

we cannot look at a judge’s allowance rate or denial rate as a factor 

in determining whether or not that judge is qualified to do the job 

that they are doing; that there are many other considerations. 

There is also a process involved if we determine that we are going 

to take action and that has to be—— 

Chairman ISSA. I appreciate that, but the subcommittee chairman has done a great job of reviewing this and the only thing he 

didn’t hold you responsible for is if you can’t consider the ALJ 

wrong and there is a 99 percent reversal, then are you looking at 

the people that were wrong 100 percent of the time in their—in 

other words, if there is a 99 percent reversal and there is a 57 percent average, then somebody is screwing up 30 percent below and 

you are not restricted from asking whether the previous rejecters 

1 or 2 were right or wrong, are you? 

Ms. COLVIN. If we do a focused review and we identify policy 

problems, we are able to determine whether or not that case needs 

to be placed in our CDR or moved ahead in our CDR workload. 

When we have the resources to do all of our CDRs, those cases will 

automatically be reviewed. But since we don’t, if we do a focused 

review and we see that there is a policy problem in that area, and 

that individual may, in fact, have been determined to be disabled 

when, in fact, he was not, it was an error, then we could, in fact, 

move that forward for a CDR. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

The ranking member is recognized. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Let me ask this. I tell you, Commissioner Colvin, 

I am going to ask you some questions about the judges, but there 

are people in my district who are denied the two times. They keep 

20 

the two times denial and then they say they are overturned. And 

in the process they go broke; they have nothing to live on. And I 

am concerned about these four outlier judges, but I am also concerned about people like the man that had stage 4 prostate cancer 

that died before he could get disability. And I see it over and over 

again. 

So I am going to ask you some questions about what happens in 

stage 1 and 2. In other words, you have two people, apparently, 

who make a judgment when a case first comes in, is that right? 

There are two stages, right? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And I also know that a lot of people in minority 

communities don’t have doctors; they don’t have lawyers. So they 

come in, and as I understand it, and this is just based on talking 

to constituents, they come in. So what happens then? They say I 

am disabled. We are getting the impression that these are golden 

decisions, these first two tiers, and I am just wondering what happens there. 

Ms. COLVIN. That is an erroneous assumption, and I am glad you 

raised that. When the decisions are made at the DDS level, they 

have not seen the individual. When they get to the ALJ level it is 

almost a new case. First of all, it is generally a year or longer before that ALJ hears that case. New evidence has developed; the 

person has the ability to testify about their condition, which does 

not happen at the first two stages; they have the ability to bring 

in expert witnesses to also substantiate their findings. In addition, 

you have additional deterioration. If the person has been waiting 

more than a year and has a disability, their medical condition is 

progressing during that time, so many times, by the time the case 

gets to the ALJ, there is new evidence and the person’s condition 

is such that it would now make them eligible for disability, where 

a year or two years earlier it may not have. Remember that for a 

very long time we have had cases that are well over a year old by 

the time they get to the hearing level. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And those are the people, again, who had nothing and who continue to suffer with nothing. I know of people who 

had to go and live with relatives, trying to make it off of zero. So 

let me ask you another thing. The chairman talked about this issue 

of over the years people asking, that is, people in authority at the 

commission, telling judges to move the cases faster. I didn’t hear 

this testimony, but I am sure he did, something about 20 minutes 

a case. I didn’t hear that yesterday. I think I was here the whole 

hearing, but I am sure that is accurate. Tell me about that. 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, I have no knowledge of that. That would not 

be sanctioned within this organization while I am here. We stress 

the fact that we expect a quality decision, that it has to be policycompliant. Yes, we want a timely decision because, just as you 

mentioned, we have thousands of people waiting for benefits to 

which they have paid into the system and earned. But we don’t 

want them to rush through making a decision and make the wrong 

decision. We do quality throughout our process. We do a number 

of reviews prior to pre-effectuation, prior to payment, which we had 

not done before. There has to be a sampling. And then, of course, 

21 

we can do the focused reviews that we talk about. So we are always 

focused on quality. 

I am not going to speak to what happened five or ten years ago, 

but I will tell you that that is unlikely occurring in this organization at this time. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Now, several of the committee hearings have discussed continuing disability reviews, called CDRs, which are periodic re-evaluations to determine if beneficiaries are still disabled or 

have returned to work and are no longer eligible for benefits. These 

are mandated by law, is that correct? 

Ms. COLVIN. That is correct. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. We have learned that CDRs are very cost-effective, estimated to save the Federal Government on the average of 

$9.00 per CDR. Yet, there is a backlog of 1.3 million CDRs. What 

is that about? 

Ms. COLVIN. It is about funding. Congress has been unwilling to 

fund the CDRs even though it has been demonstrated to be costeffective. When I was here on my first tour of duty in 1994, Congress worked with us and gave us seven years of funding that we 

knew would be sustained and adequate, and we were able to totally 

eliminate the backlog. So if we really want to ensure that people 

are not on the rolls who are not supposed to be on the rolls, we 

need to be able to do the CDRs. But we can only do the number 

that we are funded for. 

This year we are funded to do 510,000 and we will do those. Next 

year, in the President’s request, we are expecting to be able to do 

880,000. But, again, that doesn’t count now for the ones that are 

coming due this year, so we will still have a backlog. 

It has been demonstrated that when Congress funds us we deliver; we can tell you exactly what we can do for the dollars that 

you give us. But we have not been adequately funded for this program integrity work. 

The other concern I have is that even though we got an increase 

in our budget this year, the increase is primarily program integrity. 

There was no focus on the direct services and the people that are 

still waiting to get the benefits that they deserve, it was only a 

focus on getting people off the rolls who should no longer be there. 

We need to balance that. We need to get people off the rolls who 

are no longer disabled, but we also need to have resources that will 

allow us to expedite these applications that are pending, where 

people are waiting to be served who have earned the benefit and 

will die before they get that benefit because we don’t have the resources. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. On this subject, yesterday Senator Coburn, who 

I have a phenomenal amount of respect for, said a number of 

things about the CDR situation, and I agree with him. The committee invited him and the ranking member of the Committee on 

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs to provide testimony 

on the findings from his investigation into the Social Security Administration adjudication process and oversight of ALJs. Senator 

Coburn stated that he believed a lot of CDRs are just a postcard 

mailed to somebody that says are you still disabled. And Senator 

Coburn then suggested a reform, and I just want to know your reaction to this. 

22 

Ms. COLVIN. Again, I think—— 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Are you familiar with what he said? 

Ms. COLVIN. I am very familiar. I don’t agree with him. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Okay. 

Ms. COLVIN. We are not able to do medical reviews for every single individual and, therefore, we have used a process that determines which ones we can mail to, and they answer five specific 

questions, and based on that we are able to determine whether or 

not they need a full medical review. But we validate that every 

year. We take a statistically valid sample, about 60,000, and we do 

the full medical review, and in every instance so far, over the 

years, it has proven that the model that we use is correct. 

We have to use our resources wisely. It costs us $0.20 to do a 

mailer. I don’t know what it costs to do a full medical review, but 

it is costly. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. But let me just tell you what he said. He said 

what needs to happen—and I think you need to consider this—I believe is that people who we know are going to be permanently disabled and know that 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. 

Hear me now. And I agree with him on this. What we should do 

is re-categorize those who get disabilities; ones that should be a 

short-term, ones that have a chance, and then ones that have no 

chance, and then concentrate, but it needs to be a CDR. So, in 

other words, some—— 

Ms. COLVIN. I think our current model, though, is very similar 

to what Senator Coburn discussed, because we do diary them. Our 

regulations require that we do them every three years. But we look 

at the categories when we do our diary; those likely to improve, 

those not likely to improve. So we are certainly are focusing on 

those likely to improve, and the model is such that we are trying 

to look at those who are more likely to improve. And, as I said, normally, when we would be doing a CDR every three years if we had 

the resources anyway. We simply have to try to do those that are 

more likely to fall into the category where they are no longer disabled because we don’t have resources to do every single one. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Madam Secretary, I have run out of time, almost 

at the same time the previous speaker had, but I just want to say 

this. We want to get this right. 

Ms. COLVIN. We do too. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yesterday I said something that my mother told 

us years ago. She only had a second grade education, but she said 

you can have motion, commotion, and emotion, and no results. The 

people who suffer are the people who are the constituents I talked 

about a little bit earlier. So we need to get this right. These judges, 

if they are not doing the right thing, we want to work with you to 

get it done. If they don’t belong there, if they don’t want to follow 

procedures—I talked to the chairman yesterday. I said, when these 

people come in, they apparently come in and say they are going to 

obey certain procedures. And if they are not going to do that, I 

think we have to address that. And, by the way, judges, with regard to Social Security, they are not the only bad judges. By the 

23 

way, we see them in State courts and other places, too. But, again, 

we are talking about the outliers. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. 

Chairman ISSA. Most welcome. 

I now ask unanimous consent the statement of Judge J.E. Sullivan, U.S. Administrative Law Judge, from June 27, 2013, be 

placed in the record. Without objection, so ordered. 

Chairman ISSA. Administrator, this judge is the one who gave us 

the testimony under oath that, in fact, an egg timer was part of 

his training. I presume that you believe that what he said under 

oath is true. Her. I am sorry, that she said is true. 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t have any reason to question it. I am just saying that that is not something that we would sanction. 

Chairman ISSA. But you did sanction it. The judge was trained 

in and testified under oath. So I hope you will take back the assumption that, unless she lied, the testimony you should review 

and find out how it was sanctioned. 

Ms. COLVIN. Did she indicate when that occurred? 

Chairman ISSA. You will have a copy of the testimony. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Chairman, in fairness, I think she—how long 

have you been there? 

Chairman ISSA. She has been there for decades. 

Ms. COLVIN. I have been acting for 14 months. 

Chairman ISSA. Ma’am, how long have you been part of Social 

Security? 

Ms. COLVIN. I have been the acting commissioner for 14 months. 

Chairman ISSA. How long have you been before that? 

Ms. COLVIN. I was there under Mike Astrue for two years. But, 

remember, he was the commissioner and he determined—— 

Chairman ISSA. That is the entire time that you have been with 

Social Security? 

Ms. COLVIN. Oh, I was there at Social Security back in 1994 to 

2001. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. So you have been there during decades, 

and there was a relatively small—— 

Ms. COLVIN. Not decades. I was there six years prior—— 

Chairman ISSA. Six years, two years, and 14 months. 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay, so for these 20 years from 1994 that are 

shown here, from 1994—if you put it up on the board—from 1995 

or 1996 fiscal year, where the Congress provided $4 billion in funding, until let’s say 2010, when they provided over $10 billion. You 

keep talking about resources. These are decisions Social Security 

made in disabilities. These CDRs, when Congress stopped giving 

you specific mandates and set-aside money, but the total amount 

of money was still going up, and, by the way, this was during the 

Bush Administration, in 2002, with approximately $5.5 billion, if I 

am reading the numbers right, there were 900,000 CDRs. As the 

amount rose in the coming years, this blue line there is, in fact, 

the money going up and the red is the CDRs going down. That is 

a choice. That is a choice. We did not restrict your ability. We did 

not deny you the ability to do CDRs. 

So during the period of time in which you were there the first 

time, your CDRs were going up like crazy. You had earmarked 

24 

money, an order to do it. The money kept going up. When the earmark disappeared, it went down. And, by the way, I want to note 

that this was during the Clinton Administration that a great job 

was done. During the Bush Administration a crummy job appears 

to be done when it came to reviews. 

Ms. COLVIN. I wasn’t there. 

Chairman ISSA. And during the Obama Administration it has 

been going back up. 

The point, though, is that the money is going up. The resources 

are going up at times when it is going up and when it is going 

down. That is a chart that shows no correlation between money 

and your decision to do CDRs, wouldn’t you agree? 

Ms. COLVIN. No, I would not agree. First of all, I have not seen 

your data, and I would like my actuary to look at it. 

Chairman ISSA. It is not my data, it is yours. 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, I would like my actuary to look at it and see 

if his interpretation is the same. But, secondly, our CDRs and the 

numbers that we are allowed to do are clearly indicated in our 

budget each year. So when you say we have the flexibility to do 

how many we want, that is not accurate. We have identified very 

specifically how many we are expected to do. 

Second—— 

Chairman ISSA. Okay, well, let’s go through—— 

Ms. COLVIN.—you gave—— 

Chairman ISSA. Ma’am, this is not the Senate; you can’t filibuster. 

Ms. COLVIN. All right. 

Chairman ISSA. The fact is that you are talking about hard it is 

to fire a judge, but what you are missing is a judge that rubberstamps 100 percent of the time, when good faith belief is that anything above about 57 percent is probably above average and above 

85 percent should give you a caution, you can save money by putting them on administrative leave and paying them to do nothing 

versus the false positives they are giving. 

Having said that, I am going to ask you just a couple quick questions, because I, like the ranking member, see a problem and see 

somebody telling me just give me more money. And I don’t think 

you doubt that that blue line is more money that is coming in every 

year under Republicans and Democrats. Consistently that line goes 

up. 

So the real question here is why were you giving awards to some 

of those four people that were in front of us today, awards for volume, and, in fact, not checking in any way, shape, or form whether 

or not they were out of the norm in the amount of approvals they 

were giving for disability? 

Ms. COLVIN. We do not give awards to judges. I think the—— 

Chairman ISSA. Letters that effectively are awards. 

Ms. COLVIN. They are letters that go to offices, but not to individual judges. Again, that is something that happened in the past; 

that is not something happening today. In fact, letters are going 

out to offices commending them for their quality decisions, not for 

the number of decisions that they make, so a lot has changed, and 

even Senator Coburn recognized that there have been many 

changes. 

25 

Chairman ISSA. Exactly. Once Senator Coburn and 60 Minutes 

made it clear that you were providing benefits to people that did 

not deserve it in large amounts, including, in some cases, people 

who were colluding with the lawyers bringing the cases, miraculously, your ALJs are now reversing, aren’t they? They are, in fact, 

lowering the amount of claims they give. Are they denying people 

benefits that are entitled to them or are they, in fact, more accurate today than they were before light was shed on this problem? 

Ms. COLVIN. I think it could be a combination of both. I am not 

going to—— 

Chairman ISSA. Ma’am, you were the commissioner. You have 

been the acting commissioner for 14 months. You have an obligation to give me a decision. Are we, in fact, denying claims that 

should be granted in great numbers as a result of this reduction? 

Ms. COLVIN. I do not believe that we are denying claims in great 

numbers. 

Chairman ISSA. Then, by definition, the reduction is a reduction 

to a truer number, and we were falsely giving people benefits that 

were not entitled to them, wouldn’t you agree? 

Ms. COLVIN. I would not agree. 

Chairman ISSA. Ma’am, you know, it is amazing that you want 

to come in here with a problem that up and down the dais we all 

agree is a problem, that there are too many people who are getting 

claims too slowly. But one of the reasons that the people who deserve these things are getting them slowly is we are clogged with 

a lot of people who should not get them who know that the lottery 

will give them to them in high numbers. 

Ms. COLVIN. I do not agree with that statement or that assumption at all. 

Chairman ISSA. You know what is amazing? You don’t agree with 

it, but you are running an organization that is costing us billions 

of dollars in benefits given to individuals who do not deserve it. 

You tell me you can’t fire the ALJs; you tell me you can’t do it; you 

tell me the law won’t change it—— 

Ms. COLVIN. I never told you we couldn’t fire ALJs. 

Chairman ISSA. You said—— 

Ms. COLVIN. In fact, you know that we have taken action against 

a number of judges. We have had over 15 judges—— 

Chairman ISSA. We had four yesterday who said things like they 

could see pain. 

Ms. COLVIN. You know that there are a lot of actions being taken 

right now. I am not going to discuss actions here that will jeopardize a case or litigation that might be occurring, but you know 

that there are a lot of actions right now—— 

Chairman ISSA. Okay, let me ask you just one last question. 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes. 

Chairman ISSA. And I appreciate the indulgence of the ranking 

member. 

Do you believe that Congress needs to give greater authority, not 

greater money, greater authority, to fire, to reform, to review if you 

are, in fact, going to represent the American people’s best interest 

of their tax dollars? 

Ms. COLVIN. I am not prepared to answer that question. I think 

that I would have to look at what the Merit Systems Review Board 

26 

challenges are. I think that perhaps there could be some improvements there. 

Chairman ISSA. Mine was a much broader question; it was actually a soft ball right over the plate. For example, do you believe 

that we should give you the ability to do de novo review of judges 

whose decisions are, in fact, above the norm? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t believe that an allowance rate or a denial 

rate is sufficient to make a decision in that respect. 

Chairman ISSA. So, in other words, if somebody is giving 100 percent approval, you don’t think it is reasonable to give you the authority to review the review? 

Ms. COLVIN. We have the authority to do a review. 

Chairman ISSA. You didn’t do it. 

Ms. COLVIN. We cannot single out a judge, a specific judge—— 

Chairman ISSA. Well, only one judge gets 100 percent. Why 

wouldn’t you do it? 

Ms. COLVIN. Mr. Issa, we are doing focused reviews on those 

cases where we have identified problems. 

Chairman ISSA. I asked you about judges. I asked you about authority, and you won’t give me an answer. 

Ms. COLVIN. We don’t have the authority to do that. 

Chairman ISSA. You cannot think of one piece of authority that 

Congress could give you, one change that Congress could give you 

that would empower you to protect the taxpayer better? 

Ms. COLVIN. I think that we need to respect the fact that there 

has to be qualified judicial independence, but we also have to identify ways to—— 

Chairman ISSA. Ma’am, I asked you a question and I just want 

the answer to the question. You cannot, here today, if I hear you 

correctly, identify one area of authority or flexibility—not money; 

authority or flexibility—that would enhance your ability to protect 

the American people’s taxpayer dollars? 

Ms. COLVIN. I would be very happy to give you a thoughtful response at a later time on that. 

Chairman ISSA. Ma’am, I will look forward, I will keep the record 

open for days or weeks to get your thoughtful response on congressional action that would give you greater flexibility or authority 

that would help protect the American taxpayer. 

Ms. COLVIN. I would be very happy to look at that, Mr. Issa. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentlelady. 

We next go to Mr. Cartwright. 

Mr. CARTWRIGHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I thank you, Acting Commissioner Colvin. Thank you for coming 

today and I certainly thank you for service in this hugely important work done by the Social Security Administration. 

And I am concerned. I am concerned certainly about outliers and 

judges who act badly. I share the ranking member’s statement that 

there are bad judges everywhere and in every court that we ought 

to worry about. 

But I am mostly concerned this morning about making policy decisions based on statistics that may be skewed and perceptions that 

may be incorrectly made on anecdotes. I think it is a mistake to 

make policy decisions based on these things. Certainly, we heard 

from four judges who may very well fit in the category of bad ALJs. 

27 

We heard Mr. Lankford, who unfortunately is not here right now, 

talk about 191 ALJs out of 1,400 who are way above average in allowing claims. 

And one thing I wanted to touch on there was, and you said this, 

that current law prohibits you from reviewing judges based on 

their allowance rates or their denial rates alone. That may make 

sense. But one thing I wonder is, what about the judges who are 

denying claims way too much? I hear this. I know lawyers that are 

advocates and non-lawyers who are advocates for Social Security 

disability claimants who say they are denying more than ever these 

days. People who with legitimate injuries, disabilities, are not getting their claims allowed. 

And so there is anecdotal evidence on both sides of the ledger 

here. I wanted to ask you about that. First of all, do you agree that 

there are 191 ALJs out of 1,400 that are granting too many, allowing too many claims? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t have the exact number of the outliers, but 

I will acknowledge that we have had outliers. But if you notice, we 

have had a tremendous decrease in the number of outlier judges 

over the last several years. 

Mr. CARTWRIGHT. So let’s touch on the outliers that are granting 

too few appeals, who are denying claims. First of all, I think it is 

something we could all agree on, that in a universe of 1,400 ALJs 

and all of the thousands and thousands of disability claims that 

come in, that there are some legitimate disability claims that get 

denied. And those appeals are denied. Would I be correct in that? 

Ms. COLVIN. You are correct. In SSA we really focus on the right 

decision, a quality decision. I don’t focus much on whether it is a 

denial or an allowance, but is it the right decision. And certainly, 

if we have someone who we believe that their number of denials 

is too high, then that is going to be a situation that we are going 

to be as concerned about as if we thought that they were out of the 

norm for the number of allowances that were made. Because people 

have a right to know that they are going to get a decision that is 

a quality decision and that is policy-compliant and also timely. 

Mr. CARTWRIGHT. So we know that there are going to be some 

judges out there that are just not being fair and are just not allowing claims that should be allowed, where we have legitimate claims 

where people have no money coming in because they can’t work, 

they are disabled, and still they lose their case. And my question 

is, as much as we talk about trying to figure out ways to get rid 

of bad judges who grant too many claims, don’t we also want to 

look at ways to get rid of judges who deny too many claims? Would 

that be a fair statement? 

Ms. COLVIN. Sir, I think what you are saying is exactly what I 

said. We want to make sure we get it right, that we get the right 

decision. We have increased our data collection and our data analysis so that we can look at decisions to see where there are problematic policy decisions and we can provide timely feedback to the 

judges. 

Mr. CARTWRIGHT. Commissioner Colvin, let me ask you this. You 

have been paying attention this week. How about those bad judges 

that have been denying too many claims? Were any of them invited 

28 

to testify in front of Congress this week? Who were denying people 

legitimate claims? 

Ms. COLVIN. An interesting question, sir, no, they were not. 

Mr. CARTWRIGHT. They were not invited? 

Ms. COLVIN. They were not invited. 

Mr. CARTWRIGHT. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. If the gentleman would take note, there was no 

minority witness. I certainly hope you considered inviting the administrative law judges, the one who was below 15 percent allowance. I guess not. 

With that, we go to the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Mica. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ms. Colvin. 

So you have 1,400 of these administrative law judges. And you 

have 191, I guess, that fell into one of these categories. Pretty high 

overturn ratings. Then you have some that the other side has spoken to, I guess were a few that have gone the other way. 

How many of these judges have been put on administrative leave 

since you have been there? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t have that exact number. 

Mr. MICA. Two? Five? Ten? Twenty? 

Ms. COLVIN. Are you saying in the last year? 

Mr. MICA. Just the total, yes, the 13 months that you have been 

there. 

Ms. COLVIN. I will give that to you shortly. 

Mr. MICA. Will somebody from the back provide that information? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes. I will be able to give that to you before we 

leave here today. 

But I will say that since I have been the Acting Commissioner, 

we have some 25 percent decrease, we had outliers that were 25 

percent, we are down now to less than 3 percent. 

Mr. MICA. I want to know how many we have put on administrative leave in the 13 months. The 13 months you have been acting 

kind of disturbs me, because it is a pretty important position. You 

have pretty important responsibilities. It is one of the biggest agencies in government. And certainly with the discretion in cases like 

this to grant disability claims. 

What is the problem with your getting confirmed. Are you before 

the Senate, are you approved by the Senate? 

Ms. COLVIN. No, sir. 

Mr. MICA. Have you been submitted by the President to the Senate? 

Ms. COLVIN. No. 

Mr. MICA. So you are just sort of acting in limbo? 

Ms. COLVIN. I am running the agency, sir. 

Mr. MICA. That concerns me, because I have been in Congress a 

while. It is difficult enough when you have somebody who is confirmed, let alone someone who is in an acting position, to get things 

done. And that is to your detriment to administer one of the most 

important agencies in government. 

These administrative law judges are appointed by whom? 

Ms. COLVIN. They are selected through the civil service process. 

So the Deputy Commissioner, Glenn Sklar, who is over the ALJ operation, would be the selecting officer. 

29 

Mr. MICA. Does OMB participate? 

Ms. COLVIN. No. 

Mr. MICA. They do not. 

Ms. COLVIN. No. 

Mr. MICA. And then they are given lifetime tenure? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes that is not an SSA decision. 

Mr. MICA. And that is set by law? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes. 

Mr. MICA. I think that is something else we need to change. 

I chaired the Civil Service for four years under this committee. 

Ms. COLVIN. Mr. Mica, you had asked me about the number. 

Mr. MICA. Yes, put on administrative leave. 

Ms. COLVIN. We have had one removal and two suspensions in 

2014. In this year, 2014, we have had one removal and two suspensions. We have had a total of 15 removals since 2007. 

Mr. MICA. It is very difficult to get rid of someone. 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes. It is very complex. 

Mr. MICA. And as I started to say, I chaired Civil Service for four 

years. I found it is almost impossible to get rid of anyone. But they 

can be removed by you and put on administrative leave, is that correct? 

Ms. COLVIN. And we have many actions pending. 

Mr. MICA. How many actions pending do you have? Can you let 

the committee know on that? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes, I am going to do that. 

Mr. MICA. Do you have a fraud division? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes, we have, well, not a fraud division, our Office 

of Inspector General is responsible for fraud investigations. Our 

front line employees, most of our referrals, last year we made over 

20,000. 

Mr. MICA. How many referrals? 

Ms. COLVIN. Last year we made over 22,000 disability fraud referrals. 

Mr. MICA. How many of those were pursued to a conviction or 

to denying disability? 

Ms. COLVIN. I think there were only 500. That is one of our challenges. 

Mr. MICA. So 500 out of 20,000 referrals? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes. 

Mr. MICA. Doesn’t sound like a very good batting average. 

Do you need more resources? 

Ms. COLVIN. Now, the Office of Inspector General is responsible 

for the fraud investigations. And of course, resources are always 

helpful. This year we increased. 

Mr. MICA. How many people are in the Inspector General’s office? 

Ms. COLVIN. That is not under my authority, sir. 

Mr. MICA. Could somebody answer that? Maybe we can get that 

in the record, too. We want to make certain that you have the resources to go after people. Twenty thousand and 500 successes 

doesn’t sound like a good batting average to me. 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, one of the things I would like to see increase 

would be the number of continuing disability investigation units 

that we have. 

30 

Mr. MICA. How many do you have now? 

Ms. COLVIN. We have 25. I am increasing the number this year 

to 32. But again, it is based on funding. 

Mr. MICA. After this hearing, do you think you could show leadership an attempt to end the factory-like appeals process that has 

been demonstrated here the last couple of days? 

Ms. COLVIN. I think we have already ended it, Mr. Mica. I think 

that is something that was occurring, but I think if you look at the 

fact that we have reduced the number of cases that a judge can 

hear during the year, we have capped that. We have the reviews 

in place. We have the tool of how am I doing. 

Mr. MICA. How about suspending agency production goals until 

the agency—— 

Ms. COLVIN. We don’t have agency production goals. 

Mr. MICA. Well, it appears that again, that system, even though 

you may not have a formal system, is in place. 

Ms. COLVIN. Sir, we are a production agency, so yes, we look at 

our budget and we determine what we think we can do based on 

the budget. 

Mr. MICA. Yes, you have target goals. 

Ms. COLVIN. We have target goals in every aspect of what we do, 

yes. 

Mr. MICA. Finally, who made the decision to allow, yesterday we 

had some of the judges, you don’t have to be on the planet too long 

to know that what’s his name, Judge Krasfur, shouldn’t really be 

practicing. But you did a focused review in 2011, he was put on administrative leave and then put back on the job, is that correct? 

Are you familiar with that? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t know the details of his case. 

Mr. MICA. Can you get us for the record who, again, overrode the 

decision on the administrative leave? Then he came back, now he 

is on administrative leave. Because somebody needs to be held accountable for allowing someone like that to continue to serve in an 

important position like administrative law judge. 

Thank you. I yield back. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. The gentlelady from Illinois is recognized. 

Ms. KELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

The Social Security Disability program has long been a safety net 

for Americans whose disability prevents them from maintaining 

their employment. The program is an earned benefit in that workers must meet eligibility requirements for both insured status and 

for impairment. 

Would you explain what is required to attain insured status? 

Ms. COLVIN. What is required? 

Ms. KELLY. Yes. 

Ms. COLVIN. Sufficient earnings for sufficient quarters to be able 

to apply to be eligible for the benefit. And so generally, if a person 

has, I think, what is the number, is it 10? Yes, 10 years of work, 

depending upon age, then they would be eligible for disability. It 

would be, as I said, 10 years of work experience, and then SSI is 

a means-tested program. So they also would have to meet the income requirements. 

31 

Ms. KELLY. If the applicant meets these standards, he or she 

must also provide evidence that a severe impairment prevents him 

from performing substantial work. Can you elaborate on the criteria for meeting this standard? 

Ms. COLVIN. The process is very complex. It means that the individual is severely disabled, unable to perform prior work or any 

work within the job market. And so there are different variables 

that would go into that. I would be happy to have staff brief you 

on the details, because I think you need a little bit more information than I can give you right here. 

Ms. KELLY. Okay. Our aim is to provide benefits to those in their 

period of need, with the ultimate goal of returning Americans to 

employment when and if circumstances allow. How does the agency 

evaluate the readiness of one to return to work and are there programs that encourage re-entry into the workforce? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes, we do the CDRs every three years, which are 

mandated. At that time, we determined whether or not the person 

has improved to the point that they now are able to return to work. 

We also have had a number of demonstration programs to identify 

what types of interventions might be necessary to help people to 

get back to work. You may recall that we have the Ticket to Work, 

which helps individuals to find work and provides some of the support services that they need in order to get back into the job market. 

I will tell you, however, that by the time someone comes onto our 

rolls, the majority of them are severely disabled and they are not 

going to return to work, although we do have a small percentage 

that return to work. 

Ms. KELLY. Yesterday our committee held a hearing with the 

four judges, as you know, who have approved thousands of benefits, 

thousands of benefits costing millions of dollars. And it makes me 

uncomfortable that we are not talking about people, instead, the 

decision is all about allowances and denials like they are widgets. 

Are these widgets, or are these people with unique stories, facts 

and circumstances that judges have to understand and apply to the 

law? 

Ms. COLVIN. I will tell you that for me, every number is a real 

person, and that is the one thing I emphasize to staff. So I am as 

interested in a person who is denied who should not have been as 

I am in someone who was allowed who should not have been. So 

for me it is quality, quality, quality. I am always focused on, are 

we making the right decision. And I say that we will not sacrifice 

quality for quantity. So you will see that in many instances, our 

numbers are going up, our waiting times are going up, because we 

are giving the attention to the cases that I believe needs to be 

given. 

Ms. KELLY. How many more judges would you feel you need so 

that the waiting time is better? 

Ms. COLVIN. I just authorized ODAR to hire 200 new judges this 

year. I don’t have a figure on how many I would need to do all the 

backlog. But only a judge can hear a case, so if I don’t have judges, 

I can’t hear a case. I would be happy to try to provide information 

relative to what the ultimate quorum would need to be. But we are 

32 

trying to keep it around 1,500. Our attrition rate is high, because 

we have senior staff. 

Ms. KELLY. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I wish the Chairman was still here. He had said 

something about while you were at Social Security, that you promoted certain policy. I don’t think you had the chance to answer 

that. 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, I think he was in the wrong. He was inaccurate. I have never promoted the policy that we would just ramp 

out cases. Even when I was here before, we were very focused on 

the quality. The agency has made tremendous progress in being 

able to hold judges accountable. Because at one time they said we 

couldn’t hold a judge accountable for even coming to work or on the 

number of cases that they were doing or the quality. So there has 

been tremendous progress made. 

But when I was here, I was primarily involved in operations, 

which is our field office operations, from 1998 to 2001. Since I have 

returned, we have been focusing on quality throughout the agency, 

particularly with the disability cases. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you. 

Mr. GOSAR. [Presiding] I am going to recognize myself now for 

questions. 

Could you identify your staff that is here with you today? Raise 

your hands. 

Ms. COLVIN. Do you want them to introduce themselves? 

Mr. GOSAR. No, I just want to see who is all here, I want to see 

them nice and high. Can I see them, please? 

[Show of hands.] 

Mr. GOSAR. Ms. Colvin, did you watch yesterday? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes, I did, some of it, but your streaming was not 

good. 

Mr. GOSAR. How about staff? Did you watch that? Were you disturbed? 

Ms. COLVIN. Absolutely. 

Mr. GOSAR. I am from western Arizona. The people back home 

were seriously disturbed. 

Ms. COLVIN. So were we. 

Mr. GOSAR. So when we were talking about quality and you 

talked about outliers, do we have a problem? I need to hear you 

say that we have a problem. 

Ms. COLVIN. We have had a problem. It is getting better. As I 

mentioned, we have had a 20 percent reduction in the number of 

outliers. We are now down to 3 percent of our judges who are 

outliers. 

Mr. GOSAR. So I am going to interrupt you, I need to see something more. 

Ms. COLVIN. What do you want? 

Mr. GOSAR. What kind of time table are we dealing with? Are we 

talking to infinity and beyond, or do we have a two-year problem, 

looking at enough money to fulfill what we are looking at? 

Ms. COLVIN. I am sorry, your question is not clear. 

Mr. GOSAR. Trust fund, when does it run out. 

Ms. COLVIN. In 2016, the trust fund will be depleted. 

Mr. GOSAR. Mayday, mayday, right? 

33 

Ms. COLVIN. The reserves will have been depleted. We will still 

have funds coming in that will allow us to provide 75 percent of 

the benefit. 

Mr. GOSAR. But 75 percent doesn’t cut it for folks that actually 

need it. 

Ms. COLVIN. Absolutely. 

Mr. GOSAR. So to me it seems like a CEO is going to be talking 

about metrics, about timetables. I want to look at quality, too. I am 

a dentist impersonating a politician, so a lot of this means a lot to 

me in regards to that. 

Talking about yesterday, we have to get back to building blocks 

before we can reconstruct stuff. So when I was listening yesterday, 

I was mortified that I actually saw judges claiming that they were 

doing bench reviews. You said that it is almost like a new case 

study by the time they get there. 

So it would remand that there would be very few bench decisions. Would you agree with that? 

Ms. COLVIN. And in fact, if you look at our data, you will see that 

there are very few being done any more. I can provide you with a 

chart. 

Mr. GOSAR. I saw four right there that, boy, I tell you what, 

there needs to be a clean sweep right there. I saw four judges here 

that although they didn’t have a medical license, they weren’t 

using expert testimony. 

Ms. COLVIN. There should still be some situations where you 

have on the case review, I mean, reviews without a hearing or decisions without a hearing, on the record reviews. But I am saying, 

the number that occur has significantly decreased. 

Mr. GOSAR. I would like to see those numbers. 

Ms. COLVIN. All right, we would be happy to provide them. 

Mr. GOSAR. I like validation. 

Ms. COLVIN. We have it, we will be happy to provide it. 

Mr. GOSAR. I would love to see that validation. 

Do you need more information from seeing those four judges yesterday to take action? 

Ms. COLVIN. No, because most of what you presented yesterday 

were our documents that we provided to you. So what they provided is not a surprise. 

Mr. GOSAR. So why aren’t they all on suspension? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t know what their individual situations are. 

But as I have said to you, I am not going to interfere with any 

cases, whether it is a criminal action or whether it is an action that 

could then be affected because of my speaking out publicly. But we 

would be very happy to come to you and talk to you privately or 

the committee about all the things that we are doing in this area. 

Mr. GOSAR. I think America needs to hear it. They don’t need to 

hear it from just behind closed doors. I think they need to hear 

about it all the way across the board. 

Ms. COLVIN. There are privacy issues, and we also do not want 

to jeopardize criminal investigations by giving information out in 

public. These are not going to be cases that are not going to be litigated. 

Mr. GOSAR. Well, I think a good step is to admonish them by not 

allowing them to hear any cases. If you are talking, you talked earVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:57 Sep 09, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\89595.TXT APRIL
34 

lier about quality. Right there is a good faith exercise in making 

sure that we have quality instead of quantity, wouldn’t you say? 

Putting them on administrative leave and do you not have that 

ability to do that? 

Ms. COLVIN. I would be happy to talk to you later about individual cases. 

Mr. GOSAR. Let me ask you a question. Do you not have the authority to put those individuals that we saw yesterday on immediate administrative leave? Yes or no? 

Ms. COLVIN. I have the authority to put individuals on administrative leave, yes. 

Mr. GOSAR. Have you put those four on administrative leave? 

Ms. COLVIN. No, I have not. 

Mr. GOSAR. Why not? 

Ms. COLVIN. I think there has to be considerable thought and 

there are actions pending. 

Mr. GOSAR. Oh, my goodness gracious. You didn’t see that yesterday with those four individuals? We had a guy that was interpreting his own interpretation of what disability was. We had a 

gentleman that over here has a conflict of interest. We had gentlemen saying they knew more about medicine than a medical doctor. 

Come on, now. 

Ms. COLVIN. You don’t want to hear my responses, because you 

are not listening. Some of them are already out; those individuals 

that spoke action has already been taken. 

Mr. GOSAR. So why not all of them? I mean, I think across the 

dais, we are all mortified by the four gentlemen who sat here yesterday. 

Ms. COLVIN. We were too. 

Mr. GOSAR. Then why aren’t they all on administrative leave? 

Ms. COLVIN. I have given you the answer I can give you, sir. 

Mr. GOSAR. You said a few. 

Ms. COLVIN. I have said that we—— 

Mr. GOSAR. You actually have the jurisdiction, you as the CEO 

for the Administration, the Social Security Administration, witnessed what we saw as despicable responses from four judges. And 

you have the ability, which is what you just told me, that you could 

put them on administrative leave. And yet all four of them are not 

on administrative leave? 

Ms. COLVIN. My answer is the same. I am not going to discuss 

personnel actions here in this forum. 

Mr. GOSAR. That is the problem we have here right now, is accountability and actually having a line item, a direction, a path of 

holding people accountable. That is what is wrong. 

Ms. COLVIN. I would be happy to talk to you privately. I am not 

going to have that discussion here. 

Mr. GOSAR. Well, if you can’t tell America, that is a disgrace, especially after what they saw from those four judges yesterday. 

Ms. COLVIN. I am not going to jeopardize the actions because you 

feel I have not handled things appropriately. That is your opinion. 

Mr. GOSAR. I think America’s gut opinion, what they saw yesterday from four judges was disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful. There 

is no reason one of those gentleman should be able to hear one 

case, whatsoever. And putting them on administrative leave does 

35 

not deter any judicial proceedings at all. That is the problem we 

have here. 

We have less than two years, less than two years. 

You had five minutes over time. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I had five minutes because the gentleman who 

spoke first—— 

Mr. GOSAR. So now everybody is taking five. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. No, no, no, that is not true. 

Mr. GOSAR. I have been sitting down there watching it. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. The first questioner on your side had 10 minutes. 

Mr. GOSAR. The gentleman is out of order. Reclaiming my time. 

I would love to see what you are looking at, as far as an orchestrated plan to make sure this is solvent. Not only with the ALJs, 

but also I want to make sure we are reviewing the people who are 

on the first and second level aspects. Because those are coordinated 

aspects there. 

I have one last question for you. Is there any reason why somebody wouldn’t have the ability to work? I mean, when you look at 

a claim, for perpetuity, there would be very few cases, would you 

not agree, that somebody could actually benefit from doing an alternative job? 

Ms. COLVIN. I have no idea what your question is designed to get 

at. 

Mr. GOSAR. I am talking about permanent disability. Isn’t there 

an opportunity or a job that somebody with a disability can actually do? 

Ms. COLVIN. I am not a physician, but we apply the policy and 

it states very clearly that if the individual is not able to perform 

prior work or any work in the job market, then they are disabled. 

Mr. GOSAR. Partially or full? 

Ms. COLVIN. Full. 

Mr. GOSAR. So it doesn’t matter if you had a back injury and you 

are out chopping wood? 

Ms. COLVIN. You have the law, you can take a look at it. 

Mr. GOSAR. The Chairman actually asked, were there opportunities, I think Mr. Mica also said, are there opportunities that we can 

change in the law to make this more solvent and better for you to 

orchestrate a solvent plan. 

So with that, who is the next person? Ms. Speier? 

Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, let me just say for the record that it is very important for us to not jeopardize the disciplinary actions—he is not 

listening to me—the disciplinary actions that are ongoing within 

the Social Security Administration. And the Social Security Administration should not be in a situation where they are tipping their 

hand as to what strategy they are using relative to pursuing the 

actions against those judges. So I think that is very important, for 

us not to thwart their efforts in getting a just decision in the end. 

That may be why Ms. Colvin has not been willing to respond to 

your questions. 

But having said that, I think that there are lots of areas that 

need to be fixed. And I don’t think this will be a first visit here, 

36 

Ms. Colvin, or your last. I know it is maybe your first, but it won’t 

be your last. 

Let me ask a couple of questions as it relates to Huntington. I 

had a whistleblower in my office yesterday who described continued retaliation at the Huntington, West Virginia office. So my 

question to you is, what is the status of the managers who retaliated against whistleblowers by hiring private investigators? 

Ms. COLVIN. You are aware that Huntington is an open case, but 

we removed the ALJ, Andrus I think his name was. 

Ms. SPEIER. I know all about that. But there was also an investigator that was hired to watch one of your staff that was working 

one day at home, and trying to bring some action against this particular individual, because this individual had been a whistleblower. 

Ms. COLVIN. May I get back to you? 

Ms. SPEIER. You certainly can. I would appreciate that. 

Ms. COLVIN. Okay. 

Ms. SPEIER. So in Huntington, you have a claims representative 

who is clearly implicated in his relationship with Judge Daugherty 

and bank statements and documents are very persuasive. Now, the 

fact that the U.S. Attorney has not taken action yet does not preclude you from taking administrative action. Is that correct? 

Ms. COLVIN. I am not sure of that, Ms. Speier, I would need to 

check that. 

Ms. SPEIER. Well, that is pretty fundamental. 

Ms. COLVIN. Normally when my General Counsel gets involved 

and it is a criminal investigation, I sort of take a back seat until 

we determine exactly what is going to happen there, so that we 

don’t do anything that is going to interfere with that criminal investigation. So I wouldn’t be prepared to tell you that now, but I 

would be very happy to come back and talk to you and bring the 

General Counsel. 

Ms. SPEIER. All right. I think it is important, where you have a 

U.S. Attorney who appears not to be taking action, you have powers to take administrative action and administrative action should 

be taken. 

Ms. COLVIN. We have not given up on expecting that we are 

going to get some criminal prosecutions there. 

Mr. SPEIER. I want you to go back with your staff and determine 

whether or not, while there is still something pending, whether or 

not you can take administrative action. Eric Kahn should not be allowed to continue to represent claimants. And as I understand now, 

he has opened an office in California as well. 

Ms. COLVIN. I hear you. I will take a look at that and I will get 

back to you on that, Ms. Speiers. 

Ms. SPEIERS. All right. The issue of a lifetime term is one that 

I think really needs to be addressed. We have a workers compensation system in California, it has a very similar function to the Social Security disability process on the Federal level. These terms 

are not for life. And I don’t know the history for giving these judges 

terms for life, but I think we have to look into it. I for one believe 

that we should look at giving them set terms. I think you are going 

to see greater accountability over a period of time. 

37 

My time is almost up, but I would like to just ask you one other 

question, if I could. Is there anything else that the agency can do 

about Eric Kahn separate from the criminal prosecution? 

Ms. COLVIN. I would have to get back to you on that. Because 

as I said, I have been deferring any action that I would think necessary until such time as I know what is happening with the criminal action. I understand that we have begun to move forward with 

the administrative process. 

Ms. SPEIER. All right, so you can act independently. 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes. 

Ms. SPEIER. This has been going on for how many years? 

Ms. COLVIN. A while. I don’t have the exact number of years, I 

am sorry. 

Ms. SPEIER. It has been at least five years, correct? 

Ms. COLVIN. I understand it has been three. 

Ms. SPEIER. Three years. 

Ms. COLVIN. Still, three years too long. 

Ms. SPEIER. And he is still representing claimants. All right, my 

time is expired. 

Mr. GOSAR. The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Duncan, is recognized. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Commissioner, on 60 Minutes last year the Vice President of the 

Association of Administrative Law Judges said this: ‘‘If the American public knew what was going on in our system, half would be 

outraged and the other half would apply for benefits.’’ What is your 

response to that? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t know what they were referencing. We know 

that we have many well-deserving individuals who are on our rolls, 

that we take every effort to make sure that people who are not eligible did not get on the rolls. I am not sure what they were referencing, and they have never shared their thinking with me. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Let me ask you this. What percentage, I know the 

rate of approvals has gone down in the last few years, since more 

attention is being called to this, but what percentage of cases are 

being decided without a hearing? Do you have that? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes, I can give you that number, not this second, 

but I can give that to you because I have a chart here. 

Mr. DUNCAN. One of these judges yesterday had approved almost 

7,000 without a hearing. I just wondered. And without asking you 

any specific names, have you referred any judges or lawyers to the 

Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution? 

Ms. COLVIN. There are personnel actions that are being undertaken in some instances. As I said, I think it might be desirable 

to try to give this committee or those who are interested a private 

discussion of all the things we are doing, so you can see that we 

are trying to address this comprehensively. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I know you are trying to do some things in the Social Security Administration. But are you also working with the 

Justice Department on this? 

Ms. COLVIN. Absolutely. 

Mr. DUNCAN. All right. And let me ask you this. You are reviewing and have reviewed the judges to determine the number of 

outliers. I remember several years ago seeing another report on 60 

38 

Minutes that told about a region or a section in Arkansas where 

children were being told that it was easy to get what they called 

crazy money from the Social Security Administration, and were 

being taught to fake mental illness and so forth. 

Are you also looking at particular offices or regions that are having higher approval rates than other regions? Do you look at that 

also? 

Ms. COLVIN. As we look at judges, we would have to look at offices. So yes, we know where the high approval rates are occurring. 

Mr. DUNCAN. And are there any particular offices or regions that 

have extremely high approval ratings or disapproval ratings at this 

time? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t think that there is any office that is unique, 

where it is much greater than elsewhere. As I mentioned before, 

the number of outlier judges is now down by 20 percent to 3 percent of the entire ALJ corps. So we are still addressing that, still 

working on that. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Where it says 19.4 million people are drawing benefits from your two major programs right now, is that correct? 

Ms. COLVIN. You mean the current number of recipients? 

Mr. DUNCAN. Right. 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, we have 16 million beneficiaries. I don’t know 

how many for disabled. 

Mr. DUNCAN. This is in our committee information, it says 19.4 

million. 

Ms. COLVIN. It is 16 million. 

Mr. DUNCAN. And it says that 3.4 million were approved between 

2005 and 2013. 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t have that data with me. I can certainly take 

a look at that. I don’t have the data by year. 

Mr. DUNCAN. What do you think, is there anything that you feel 

needs to be done that you don’t feel you have the authority to do 

at this point that Congress can help you with? 

Ms. COLVIN. I am taking a look at that now, Mr. Duncan. I have 

the letter that came from the committee with recommendations. I 

agreed to go back and look at that more thoroughly. I wanted to 

have further discussion with staff, and get some clarification. But 

I think we will go ahead and just respond, and then if we need 

more clarification later, we will do that. 

But we do want to work with the committee. We want to try to 

identify the kinds of things that we think might be helpful to us. 

The biggest challenge is the fact that with the qualified judicial 

independence, we have to be respectful of that. We cannot single 

judges out because of their allowance rate. So we have to try to get 

to those from another angle. And then the ability to remove a judge 

is very difficult and very complex. We have to work with the Merit 

Systems Review Board. 

So as we work with those things, if we think there is anything 

where Congress might be helpful, we will come back and talk with 

you. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, one last comment I will make is, I was a 

judge for seven and a half years before I came to Congress. The 

lifetime terms that Ms. Speier just mentioned, she didn’t know 

what was behind that, those were started many years ago when 

39 

there were far fewer lawyers. And the judges were lower paid than 

they are now. What you have now, you have really too many lawyers and you have lawyers jumping at a chance to become administrative law judges or federal judges of any type. You just really 

don’t need these lifetime terms any more. We should work on that 

and end the lifetime terms for all the judges we possibly can. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. GOSAR. I thank the gentleman. 

The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Walberg, is recognized. 

Mr. WALBERG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am pleased to yield my time to the Chairman. 

Mr. GOSAR. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Colvin, do hearing offices have productivity goals? 

Ms. COLVIN. I am not aware that we have specific productivity 

goals. We have overall national goals. 

Mr. GOSAR. What are they based on? 

Ms. COLVIN. Our budget and the number of cases we believe we 

can do with the budget that we are going to be allocated. And that 

is why we were able to hire, or had funding for the 200 judges that 

we are going to be hiring this year. 

Mr. GOSAR. Are you aware that the law requires ALJs to consider the claimant’s entire case record prior to rendering a decision? 

Ms. COLVIN. Absolutely. 

Mr. GOSAR. Isn’t that an access point for determining that they 

can be put on administrative leave? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t believe so. I don’t think that one thing would 

be the basis. 

Mr. GOSAR. The requirement for law. Are you aware that until 

2011, the requirement that ALJs consider the entire case record before reaching a decision was essentially meaningless before the 

agency did not even monitor, much less ensure that the decisions 

were policy compliant? 

Ms. COLVIN. I can’t speak to that. I am not aware of that statement. 

Mr. GOSAR. Frank Cristaudo was the Chief ALJ from 2006 to 

2010. During this time period, hundreds of ALJs were approving 

nearly all claimants of benefits. When asked in his transcribed 

interview whether he was ever concerned that one of his judges 

was allowing too many people onto the program, he said no. Given 

the data that the committee has presented, do you find that stunning? 

Ms. COLVIN. Do I find what stunning? 

Mr. GOSAR. That almost everybody was placed on the rolls. 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t know how to answer that. Do I find it stunning that almost everybody was placed on the rolls? 

Mr. GOSAR. Yes. 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t know that I have any data to support that 

statement from—who was that, Judge Cristaudo? 

Mr. GOSAR. Do you know who Judge Cristaudo was? 

Ms. COLVIN. Of course I do, yes. I would have to see the data. 

Mr. GOSAR. Are you stunned that he wasn’t aware of any judges 

that weren’t giving overwhelming approval ratings? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other on it. 

40 

Mr. GOSAR. If we gave you that data, could we get an answer? 

Ms. COLVIN. I am sorry? 

Mr. GOSAR. If we gave you that data, could we get an answer? 

Ms. COLVIN. Get an answer to am I stunned? 

Mr. GOSAR. Yes. Okay. Mr. Cristaudo testified that he was often 

very concerned about particular ALJs or hearing offices that were 

not processing cases quickly enough. Isn’t that lack of a balance a 

major concern to you? 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, I would think if he was the chief judge and 

he was concerned, he should have taken some action. 

Mr. GOSAR. Okay. Knowing what we know now, was it a mistake 

for the agency to have no quality metrics to evaluate ALJ decisions 

as the agency encouraged ALJs to decide more cases? 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, again, I am not going to focus on the past. But 

I certainly believe that you have to have quality metrics. I am very 

much into data and using that data for informed decisions. That 

is why we focus so much on quality. 

Mr. GOSAR. So quality metrics is a determining factor that we 

would have to look at? 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, quality is probably the sole factor that we 

should be looking at in determining whether or not, in fact, the decision is a quality decision, a legally, defensible decision, a policy 

compliant decision. We certainly want timeliness in the processing 

of cases. But we don’t want timeliness to replace quality. 

Mr. GOSAR. But if we don’t look at the past, we are doomed to 

repeat it in the future, right? 

Ms. COLVIN. Certainly. That is why we have made lots of improvements because we knew that the past was not where we 

wanted to be. 

Mr. GOSAR. Since 2011, the agency conducted 30 focused reviews 

of all ALJs with allowance rates in excess of 75 percent. Every one 

of these reviews found significant problems with the way these 

ALJs consider evidence. Are you concerned by this? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t understand the focus of your question. All of 

the changes that we are making are designed to improve what we 

are doing. So your question about am I concerned about what we 

did five or ten years ago, I am not sure I understand the relevancy 

of it. 

Mr. GOSAR. Well, all the judges that you are reviewing have 

these types of problems, would you agree? 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, that is why we are doing focused reviews, that 

is why we are doing pre-effectuation reviews. I’m just not certain 

I understand what you are trying to get to. 

Mr. GOSAR. Will you provide the committee with all the agency’s 

actions taken as a result of the agency’s focused reviews of ALJs? 

Ms. COLVIN. Can we provide you with? 

Mr. GOSAR. All the agency’s actions taken as a result of the agency’s focused reviews of ALJs? 

Ms. COLVIN. We have your questions, we will take a look at what 

it is that we have available. 

Mr. GOSAR. Starting in 2007, when Frank Cristaudo was chief 

ALJ, ALJs were instructed to issue between 500 and 700 decisions 

per year, correct? 

Ms. COLVIN. That is my understanding. 

41 

Mr. GOSAR. Are you aware there are no underlying studies to justify the production targets? 

Ms. COLVIN. That is what I am told. 

Mr. GOSAR. Are you also aware that neither current chief ALJ 

Deborah Bice nor former chief ALJ Frank Cristaudo had no idea 

how long it takes an ALJ to decide a case when they are properly 

reviewing the evidence? 

Ms. COLVIN. I am surprised to hear that, since they are both 

judges, that they would not know how long it takes. 

Mr. GOSAR. You made the comment that each individual is an individual record, did you not? 

Ms. COLVIN. Is an individual record? 

Mr. GOSAR. Yes, it is exactly, very personal, I mean, the chart 

could be huge, the chart could be small. 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, I haven’t addressed that, you never asked me. 

Mr. GOSAR. That it takes more time, I mean, the complexity of 

it, if it’s a mental health issue, whether it is a complex medical 

issue. Wouldn’t that kind of make it a personalized type of format? 

Ms. COLVIN. I am certainly not a judge and I don’t review cases, 

but I assume that there would be a variant, yes. 

Mr. GOSAR. Do you think it is irresponsible to create a production 

goal without any analysis to back it up? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t have a production goal, so I can’t respond to 

that. 

Ms. GOSAR. I would acknowledge the gentleman from Virginia, 

Mr. Connolly. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I thank the Chair. Welcome, Ms. Colvin. 

I think it is really important to note this is part two of this set 

of hearings. And clearly, there is a narrative my friends on the 

other side of the aisle want to try to establish. But they are doing 

it by, I think, cherry-picking witnesses who distort the reality. So 

we get several administrative law judges with high allowance 

rates, in some cases exceeding 90 percent, even though the national 

average allowance rate is nowhere near that, it is in fact, 57 percent, as of last year, the lowest rate since Jimmy Carter was in the 

White House in 1979. 

So let’s not distort facts here. Let’s not try to manufacturer a 

narrative that, in fact, is misleading if not false. 

Commissioner Colvin, is it true that the disability insurance 

trust fund is forecast to become insolvent in 2016? 

Ms. COLVIN. Not insolvent. In 2016, the reserves will be depleted. 

Income, or the resources that will be coming in will allow us to pay 

75 percent of the benefit, yes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Is that a serious thing? Could people be hurt? 

Ms. COLVIN. Absolutely. People will be hurt. Congress has acted 

before to address that problem. It is not the first time that we have 

come to the situation where the reserves were depleted. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Right. Now again, the insidious nature of the undertone here in these two days of hearings is to allow the implication that, I am going to use the word insolvency, that the possibility of insolvency, impending insolvency, is because of mismanagement by the agency and administrative law judges running 

amok. Is it not true, however, that the trust fund was forecast to 

42 

be possibly insolvent 20 years ago by the chief actuary of the Social 

Security Administration? 

Ms. COLVIN. Absolutely, and the trustees. So we have known and 

Congress has known for a very long time that we would have this 

problem in 2016. And the trustees reports reflect that. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. In fact, we had Ms. LaCanfora, the Acting Deputy Commissioner of the Office of Retirement and Disability, before 

this committee in April, or the subcommittee. She stated, the policy 

and the process and the management of the agency is not the cause 

of the reserve depletion. The cause of the reserve depletion is demographics. Baby boomers aging, women entering the workforce. 

Do you care to comment on that, Ms. Colvin? 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, it has all been predicted. It is in our trustees 

reports, we have known that we would have the aging of the baby 

boomers and that they would be reaching the disability prone 

years, we knew more women were entering the workforce and they 

would have earnings on their own record. We knew that the poverty rate is going down, so we would have more children coming 

on to SSI rolls. I don’t know why Congress expresses surprise. It 

is in writing in our trustees reports. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Yes. And well of course, if we really were determined to avoid a problem or do nothing about it creatively, we 

might try to pick on some tertiary issue that is really quite tangential to the heart and soul of what we are dealing with here, the reserve depletion. 

Ms. COLVIN. I need to emphasize that our allowance rate is 44 

percent. It is the lowest it has ever been in the last 40 years. In 

fact, I have many stakeholders who think it is too low. Of course, 

Congress thinks it is too high. But there has been a lot of effort 

to make sure that people who are on the rolls are people who deserve to be on the rolls. That is why we have the CDRs, because 

the CDRs will identify people who have improved and will go off 

the rolls. 

So I don’t see any valid data to tell me that we have huge numbers of people on the rolls who are not disabled. In fact, we have 

a lot of people waiting who should be on the rolls. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. And even if there were too many people, that is 

hardly the solution to the issue of the depletion of the reserve, isn’t 

that right? 

Ms. COLVIN. Absolutely. Also, when Congress changed the retirement age, that meant that more people are going to be on disability 

until they reach the retirement age. So that also added to the number of people being on the rolls. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. So actually, Congress has something to do with 

the nature of the depletion? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. It isn’t just a handful of administrative law 

judges who may have excessive allowances, is that correct? 

Ms. COLVIN. I haven’t seen the data, but I cannot believe that 

that number that is quoted about the number of dollars that would 

result from the allowance rates, I just have not seen it. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. In the past, has Congress intervened when we 

have seen us get to a certain level in terms of the depletion? 

Ms. COLVIN. Several times. 

43 

Mr. CONNOLLY. In fact, Congress has reallocated payroll taxes 

between Social Security programs at least six times in the past, is 

that not correct? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. And a similar rebalancing would, in fact, extend 

the life of the trust fund, allowing for full payment of benefits 

through 2033, is that not correct? 

Ms. COLVIN. That is correct. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. So maybe we could spend our time more creatively here in Congress talking about trying to find a solution to 

your problem rather than trying to finger blame in a tangential 

way that really begs the question. I yield back. 

Mr. GOSAR. Would the gentleman like to input why the minority 

didn’t bring their own witness to this hearing the last two days? 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I don’t speak for the minority, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. GOSAR. But you are a very articulate member. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Well, I thank the chair. 

Mr. GOSAR. And they had the opportunity to do so. And it is acknowledged no minority witness was chosen. 

I would like to invite Ms. Lujan Grisham for her time at the dais. 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate 

that, and appreciate that we are having what I consider sort of two 

bites at the apple to start to look at disability cases and the system 

that Social Security has in place to review those cases. 

I would ask, Mr. Chairman, I have a statement that I would love 

to introduce into the record from an attorney in New Mexico who 

specializes in these cases and has been an effective advocate. He 

uses in his statement about some of the staffing shortages, information that comes right from the Social Security office’s website. 

Chairman ISSA. [Presiding] Without objection, that will be placed 

in the record. 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

There are 164 ODAR offices around the Country. How does the 

Social Security Administration determine the number of ALJs, decision writers and other support staff in each office? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t think I can give you that. I would have to 

get back with you, I need to consult with the deputy for ODAR on 

that. 

Mr. LUJAN GRISHAM. But, no sense that it is based off the number of cases that each office receives. 

Ms. COLVIN. We anticipate that a judge can only carry certain 

workloads. Of course, we don’t know how many individuals are 

going to come into an office who need our services. But that is why, 

with electronic services, we can move 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. I would disagree. I think you do know. In 

fact, the Albuquerque office currently has the fourth highest number of cases per administrative law judge in the country. In fact, 

I have raised that point in writing, and in communications with 

the social Security Administration and have yet to get what I think 

is a satisfactory response, and we will get there, to what we might 

do about that. 

In fact, there are 822 cases per ALJ in the Albuquerque office. 

In the 16 other offices in the region, the average number of cases 

per ALJ is only 500. Does that sound correct to you? 

44 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t know that figure. But one of the things that 

we do is, we do move work around to help with understaffing. We 

are going to be hiring 200 new judges. 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. But certainly none in my region, which has 

the highest consistent cases, and identifying staff in other places, 

which I appreciate, given that we have 8,700 people in New Mexico 

who are currently waiting for a hearing on their case, which creates, as you noted earlier, and I really appreciate that very much, 

that you noted there are significant other policy issues that are affected by not getting these cases adjudicated timely and by the fact 

that Congress has made policy changes that create more of a demand for Social Security disability. 

But when you outsource these cases, it is like putting a band-aid 

on a broken leg. If this is where you know you have significant 

issues, why aren’t we making investments where we have the 

greatest backlogs? 

Ms. COLVIN. Well, because we have them everywhere. We have 

the second longest waiting period in my own county of Baltimore, 

17 months, before a case is actually heard. So I am trying to, with 

these new judges, look at how we redistribute cases but we just 

haven’t had the resources. 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. And I understand that you do have that, 

and you have some offices around the Country with similar issues. 

But the Albuquerque office is an outlier among outliers, given the 

stats, the high disability cases, the 8,700 people waiting three 

years before we get anything adjudicated. 

Do you think this severe, and let me just repeat that, the severe 

understaffing issues, like in Albuquerque, do you think they are acceptable? 

Ms. COLVIN. No, I do not. Let me take a look at what is happening in Albuquerque, because it hasn’t come to my direct attention. 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. I really appreciate that, and I know that 

these are tough issues and that they are going to take probably a 

range of options. But I do want to alert you that I have had very 

unsatisfactory, in terms of not getting the answer that I desire, but 

getting any suggestions or any answers about what do about this 

particular problem, in spite of reaching out locally, regionally, and 

nationally. 

Given that, when do you think you might be able to reevaluate 

Albuquerque’s staffing issues? 

Ms. COLVIN. As I mentioned, we have just authorized hiring. It 

is going to take us time to recruit and to train, et cetera. So I don’t 

want to give you a date that I can’t meet. Let me talk to my staff 

and get back to you. 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. One last question in the limited remaining 

time. I mean no disrespect, but this is critical. 

Ms. COLVIN. I understand. 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. I have not received satisfactory, timely, 

timely responses. I need you to get back to me. 

Ms. COLVIN. I will commit to that. 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. Two weeks? A month? 

45 

Ms. COLVIN. Two weeks. I may not have a complete answer for 

you, but at least I will be able to get back to you and let you know 

what we are looking at. 

Ms. LUJAN GRISHAM. I am very grateful and thank you for your 

attention to this particular problem. Thank you, and with that, Mr. 

Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

Administrator, in 2011, some of the judges that were here yesterday got adverse reviews. Yet they are still on the bench and no action was taken. 

Ms. COLVIN. When you say adverse reviews, what do you mean? 

Chairman ISSA. They got negative focus reviews. The ranking 

member and I saw those judges, and we are not going to claim that 

we are medical experts. But it was pretty clear these four judges 

were not doing their job properly. Their incredibly high numbers 

are the result of their failure to do their job consistent with the 

norm of other judges. They are still on the bench. 

Ms. COLVIN. Your question? 

Chairman ISSA. Yes. Why are they still on the bench? Why have 

you not taken action against them that led to their dismissal in 

these three years? 

Ms. COLVIN. I would need to look at their specific case and see 

what action is being taken. 

Chairman ISSA. You came, you watched this hearing yesterday, 

you were brought here to answer our questions. 

Ms. COLVIN. I didn’t think you were going to ask personnel questions, so I didn’t come prepared to answer them. 

Chairman ISSA. We subpoenaed four bad judges, compelled three 

out of the four to come when they refused to come in any voluntary 

way. 

Ms. COLVIN. I didn’t know that. 

Chairman ISSA. No one on your staff knew that? 

Ms. COLVIN. I didn’t ask. If they knew, I didn’t see a reason 

to—— 

Chairman ISSA. Do you not take testimony before Congress seriously? 

Ms. COLVIN. Absolutely I do. 

Chairman ISSA. Then why didn’t you prepare for today? 

Ms. COLVIN. I think I am prepared. 

Chairman ISSA. You haven’t even been able to give me one answer to a question of what authority or flexibility would allow you 

to do your job better. And I appreciate that you want to give me 

a thoughtful response, but I have a near zero thoughtful response 

after people leave this hearing until the next time they come back. 

So although I hope for this not to be the case, it doesn’t appear as 

though you prepared particularly well. 

Ms. COLVIN. You gave me two days. You knew I was out of the 

country. You would not negotiate with my staff. I came in and immediately got ready for this hearing, so to suggest that I don’t take 

it seriously; I had a death in the family, but because of the fact 

that you wanted this hearing today, I didn’t even attend the funeral. So I am really annoyed that you would suggest that I don’t 

take this seriously. 

46 

Chairman ISSA. Well, you didn’t seem to come prepared to know 

about the judges we had yesterday. Are any of the people behind 

you able to answer that question? 

Ms. COLVIN. No, they are not. 

Chairman ISSA. Couldn’t you turn around and look and see? 

Ms. COLVIN. I am not going to have them discuss personnel 

issues here, Mr. Issa. I would be very happy after this meeting to 

stay here and answer them, or to give you a private meeting. But 

I am not going to discuss personnel actions here in open forum. 

Chairman ISSA. I just asked why they were still on the job. 

Ms. COLVIN. And I am saying, I don’t know what the specific actions are that may or may not have been taken against these four 

judges. I would need to have a discussion—— 

Chairman ISSA. Okay, you said that there were no quotas, no 

performance. And yet, I am asking that this be placed in the 

record, because it cites specific quotes from Burke, Taylor, Beady 

and Cristaudo. These are judges who all testified there were. And 

they gave numbers. 

But let me just, and hopefully that review will help your people 

understand that your judges think there are performance numbers. 

And you said that you didn’t see a correlation. But isn’t it true 

that since the cap went down to 600 that, in fact, the approval 

rate, or the rubber stamp, as we like to call it from this side of the 

dais, has gone down, that, in fact, you are approving less? 

Ms. COLVIN. Our approval rate today is 44 percent. 

Chairman ISSA. That is the total approval rate. Your ALJs are 

not 44 percent, are they? 

Ms. COLVIN. That is our overall. 

Chairman ISSA. The ALJs overall reversal rate, I guess, technically, is 44 percent, you are saying today? 

Ms. COLVIN. No, the average approval rate, the average national 

approval rate once you take out dismissals, is 44 percent. 

Chairman ISSA. That is people who apply and find out they are 

not disabled under any definition and then abandon it, right? That 

is not at the point of, we are dealing with the administrative law 

judges. Are you saying it is 44 percent with administrative law 

judges? 

Ms. COLVIN. No, that would be our overall rate. I would have to 

see what the specific number is. But I thought it was 44 percent. 

But I may be wrong, so I would need to confirm that. 

Chairman ISSA. Let me ask you a question, you probably will 

have to give me a thoughtful answer over time. But you mentioned, 

and in our investigation, and in Senator Coburn’s investigation, 

and quite frankly, in 60 Minutes’ investigation in what was made 

very public, there was a practice that seemed to go like this. In 

that last few days or weeks before the ALJ looks at a case, the lawyers who specialize in getting approvals for their clients come in 

with new medical information, slip it into the file and get it in 

front of the judge, so the most recent information is usually something new to be considered. Are you aware of that? 

Ms. COLVIN. No, I am not. 

Chairman ISSA. Did do watch the 60 Minutes? 

Ms. COLVIN. No, I did not. 

47 

Chairman ISSA. Did you look at anything that Senator Coburn 

put out over the last 14 months? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes, I have. 

Chairman ISSA. He talks about that in his report, do you remember that? 

Ms. COLVIN. I saw he did. 

Chairman ISSA. So one question I have for you, and it is a very 

straight question, do you have the authority, if there is new information added, to seize a record, not have it go to the ALJ and 

throw it back through the process of review again at a lower level 

so that it not be presented to a judge when, in fact, it is not the 

same package that was previously rejected? 

Ms. COLVIN. We are in the process of 

Chairman ISSA. No, ma’am, I just asked if you had the authority. 

Ms. COLVIN. Do I have the authority to? 

Chairman ISSA. Do you have the authority to do that. Every time 

a lawyer at the last minute puts in additional information about 

his client, do you have the authority to have it go back through the 

review process and not go to the judge? 

Ms. COLVIN. No. 

Chairman ISSA. Would you like that authority? 

Ms. COLVIN. No. 

Chairman ISSA. Why not? 

Ms. COLVIN. We have a pending regulation that will require all 

evidence be submitted in a timely way. If that moves forward, that 

will resolve our issue. 

Chairman ISSA. So what you are saying is that no new information should go into the file even if, in fact, the patient is getting 

sicker during that last three, four, five months waiting for the 

ALJ? 

Ms. COLVIN. I don’t agree with that at all. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, I am just asking you. You are the one that 

is talking about a proposed regulation. 

Ms. COLVIN. No. No. My answer is no. 

Chairman ISSA. No, what? No, you don’t think—— 

Ms. COLVIN. I do not believe that if a person is getting sicker and 

new evidence is available that it should be precluded. 

Chairman ISSA. So if it should be included, and you are telling 

me you are going to produce a regulation that says it has to be produced in a timely fashion, what you are saying is that you are still 

going to allow it and it is still going to go to the ALJ. Is that right? 

What does your regulating change? 

Ms. COLVIN. We haven’t developed that yet. We are just beginning to. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay, so 14 months on the job, years into this 

process, 60 Minutes already made it clear that there was widespread fraud leading to taxpayers losing billions. 

Ms. COLVIN. Do you believe everything that is on 60 Minutes? 

Chairman ISSA. Ma’am, you are not going to gain anything from 

this side of the dais by telling there isn’t widespread fraud that is 

the reason that there is a Congressional hearing that you have 

been asked to be at. 

So making the assumption that there is widespread fraud, that 

your ALJs have overly approved in vast amounts, and it has cost 

48 

the taxpayers billions of dollars they will never get back, I would 

ask you a simple procedural question. That change is outside the 

jurisdiction of this committee, but we are a reform committee. I ask 

you if any kind of flexibility or changes in law would help you. You 

said you would get back to me. I now ask you about one specific 

one, which is, did you have the authority, when new evidence 

comes in, to send it back to a lower administrator and not to an 

ALJ, have it reviewed and then only have it go to the ALJ if it is, 

in fact, rejected again, that they can look at this information, so 

the information coming to an ALJ is exactly the information that 

has previously been rejected, rather than ALJs constantly looking 

at new information at the last minute. 

I asked you if, in fact, you had that authority and you told me 

about a regulation that doesn’t seem to have yet been finished. 

Ms. COLVIN. I said no, we didn’t have the authority. 

Chairman ISSA. Would you like the authority? 

Ms. COLVIN. No. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, this committee recently gave the District 

of Columbia additional authority to change the height of buildings. 

But a little bit like the disappointment I had when I discovered 

that unanimously, the city council did not want the authority to 

make their buildings higher under any conditions, that they were 

afraid of having that authority, I am hearing here today that you 

can’t come up with one piece of authority that would help you stop 

the widespread fraud that this committee, Mr. Cummings, Ms. 

Speier and others believe is part of it. 

And by the way, I want to note for the record that at least one 

ALJ had an allowance record of 15 percent, meaning there was 

somebody, at least one on the other extreme, and there are others 

that are low. So I am just as concerned about too low as too high, 

and trying to help you have the tools to do a better job. And I am 

very disappointed you weren’t ready here today. I suspect we will 

be having another hearing and we will invite you back, perhaps 

with more advance time. 

Mr. Cummings, do you have closing remarks? The gentleman is 

recognized. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. First of all, I want to express my sympathy for 

your loss. 

Ms. COLVIN. Thank you. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I am sorry you were not able to make the funeral. 

I want to make sure I understand what happens here. When 

there is, and Ms. Lujan Grisham a little earlier, I don’t know if you 

heard the questions I asked, but I got them from you, in talking 

to you. You have a situation in those first two exchanges where you 

have people who make a decision. In many instances, people don’t 

have lawyers, in some instances they depend on where they are, 

who they are, they may not have doctors, medical homes or whatever. So they are denied quite often the benefits. 

Then they go, they basically appeal, to an administrative law 

judge, is that correct? Is that right? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes. 

49 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Now, let me say, the four people that testified 

yesterday, I don’t think there were any accusations of fraud, there 

were issues of whether they followed policy and good conduct. 

Ms. COLVIN. Right. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And by the way, there was testimony, if I recall 

correctly, that Judge Krasfur is on leave. That is my understanding. 

Ms. COLVIN. That is correct. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. All right. Now, one of the things that was said 

during that hearing, and I want to go to what the Chairman is getting to, because I really want to make sure I understand this, one 

of the things that they said was, one of the judges or maybe more, 

that there was a lot of times testimony or records that would come 

in later. And that they took that into consideration. And basically 

what they were saying is that the person’s condition may have gotten worse, and then there was submittal of some kind of documents 

to show that. 

So how does that work? When you say that the record is supposed to be in, in other words, I am not trying to put words in your 

mouth. 

Ms. COLVIN. No, what I was trying to convey was that we would 

not want to not have that information provided to the ALJ. If the 

person has waited over a year, that is through no fault of their 

own. If additional new evidence comes in that indicates that that 

condition has deteriorated, that may now, in fact, make them eligible for a benefit, they are entitled to have that medical information 

presented. 

So when I said that I would not want the authority to prevent 

that information from being presented to the ALJ, that is what I 

was speaking to. They should have that information to be able to 

make a decision about that case. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Okay, now if I understand the Chairman’s question correctly, I think he was asking about, do you want the ability 

to send it back to one of the first few reviewers. 

Ms. COLVIN. No, because you will start them all over again. The 

case is now with the judge, why not provide that additional documentation that will allow them to make a decision? 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes. 

Ms. COLVIN. Why start them all the way back to the beginning 

again. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I was thinking about the man in my district with 

prostate cancer who died waiting, and a number of others. 

So that then, with regard to these folks that came in here yesterday, you said it several times, you were concerned about them, 

right? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes, I am concerned, because they’re not making 

policy-they may not be making policy compliant decisions. But 

again, just because of their award rate, we can’t make a determination just on the award. We have to do the reviews, determine if 

there are policy decisions that are not being-policies that are not 

being followed. One variable is not sufficient for removal of an ALJ. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I want to make a clarification here. I want to 

note that the majority had a staff report yesterday, and in most of 

the average lifetime benefit including the benefit from programs 

50 

linked to enrollment in a disability program is $300,000. But this 

also includes the cost of Medicare and benefits estimated to be 

$109,000. 

While disability programs incur real costs and provide real benefits, I wanted to be clear on the cost of the benefits to the disability 

trust fund that is the focus of today’s hearing. Ms. Colvin, the 

source document in the majority’s estimate suggests that the 

present value of a disability alone is $163,000, is that right? 

Ms. COLVIN. I think that is more likely. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Is this consistent with your understanding? 

Ms. COLVIN. The average benefit is about $1,500 a month, I 

think. So I would have to look at the data. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Can you get that information back to me? 

Ms. COLVIN. Yes. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Because I tell you, I just think about, I keep 

hearing this word, entitlement. And sometimes I have to, I think 

it is social insurance. Basically people pay into this. 

Ms. COLVIN. It is an earned benefit. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I think about my father, for 45 years didn’t miss 

a day, lifting drums, moving chemicals and paid into the system. 

I think about the many black men and white men who I worked 

with at Bethlehem Steel as a teenager who died, who died before 

they could get a penny. I think about folks who truly are suffering. 

I know we use that word entitlement, but the implication is that 

people don’t pay into the system. And they do. They do. And they 

pay over and over and over again. So I just don’t want to lose sight. 

And I want to make it very clear. I want us to deal with the 

outliers. 

Ms. COLVIN. I do, too. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I want us to make sure that everybody has a fair 

side. I want to reduce the caseloads, I want to do all of that. And 

I want the system to work like it is supposed to work. That is what 

we are about here, we are supposed to be trying to make sure that 

government does what government is supposed to do. There are 

some who believe that maybe government shouldn’t exist, but it 

does, and it must. 

So I am just hoping that we can work with you to try to address 

some of these issues. And I thank you very much for being here. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

Madam, a couple quick things. I have a letter I will ask unanimous consent to be placed into the record. Without objection, so ordered. 

It is from May 27th, inviting you to this hearing on June 10th. 

Were you made aware of it? 

Ms. COLVIN. I was out of the country for two weeks, and I know 

my staff negotiated with your staff. I came back to work on the 9th. 

And you agreed to have the hearing on the 10th, then it got moved 

to the 11th. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, we moved it to the 11th to accommodate 

your request. 

So were you doing official business out of the country 

Ms. COLVIN. No, I was on leave. 

51 

Chairman ISSA. Okay, so you are on vacation, you find out you 

have two weeks before this event. We add an extra day on the request of your folks. So I am terribly sorry for your loss, but I just 

want to make sure the record shows, it wasn’t three days notice. 

You had two weeks notice. 

Ms. COLVIN. I was out of the country when the notice came in. 

I had already left to go out of the country. 

Chairman ISSA. Was your BlackBerry turned on? 

Ms. COLVIN. Absolutely. 

Chairman ISSA. So you knew there was a hearing in two weeks, 

correct? 

Ms. COLVIN. I knew that the hearing was scheduled for the 10th, 

yes. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay, I just want to make sure that we understand that you did not have as much time to prep as you would 

like, because you were on vacation. And I understand that. That 

happens. 

Ms. COLVIN. But I was not here in the country. 

Chairman ISSA. I understand that you had less time to prep. I 

just want to make sure the record indicates it was two weeks advance notice of the hearing and we added an extra day. 

Ms. COLVIN. Thank you for your consideration. 

Chairman ISSA. You are very welcome. 

I want to go back through just one last closing point, and I am 

not going to ask it as a question, but if you care to respond to that, 

I will let you. This is not an adversarial relationship, when somebody goes up before an ALJ. It is all one-sided. The judge is very 

powerful. He or she has to evaluate what is being brought. Normally in front of the ALJ, the moving party, disabled or presumed 

disabled person is represented by a counsel who is being paid a 

commission on successful accomplishment, most often. And they 

have a motivation to get the job done, to get something for their 

client 

So you have an advocate for the client who has resources, who 

has medical professionals, if you will, doctors, that prepare and 

help the person make their case. Late in the case, after they have 

been turned down once or twice, and the ranking member is right, 

sometimes they are not represented by counsel at that time, sometimes they are. After they have been turned down twice, they come 

in with new information in the eleventh hour. 

There is nobody from the government who says, hold it, we want 

time to cross-examine that information, we want to consider it, we 

want to send this patient to an independent doctor, we want to 

make sure that this decision is good. 

So this documentation comes before a judge, and sometimes a 

judge who approves 90 some percent of the time, with new information not considered by the people who also work for you, the people 

who have already evaluated the earlier information. 

Now, there is a reason not every case goes directly to the ALJs. 

And you know the reason, which is, you have good, hard-working 

professionals who are trying to find out whether or not to grant or 

not grant disability. Those people, when last minute information 

comes in and it goes to the ALJ, they are denied the best information. They are denied the opportunity to make a good decision. 

52 

Now, procedurally, it happens all the time in courts all over 

America. Last minute information comes in, it is sent back to the 

lower decision, give us an update. We will low-number it back, you 

won’t be prejudiced other than the time it takes for this new information to be properly evaluated. You won’t be prejudiced and you 

will be low-numbered right back to the judge. 

That technique, if we give it to you, if you are not empowered 

to use it, and you never answered the question of, are you empowered to do it, but let’s assume that you are not, if we give you that 

ability. That technique means your ALJs are not looking at cases 

that could be approved by lower individuals as far as the rest of 

your staff that would love to have had the full information, love to 

have made the decision and might have said yes. 

That is what I was saying. Of course, I don’t want people to wait, 

in what we used to call in program, a do-loop. I don’t want them 

to, every time their condition gets worse and they submit something to automatically wait another year. But there is no reason it 

couldn’t go back to somebody whose job it is to make that first review. They make the first review. If they approve it, they are off 

to the races. If they disapprove it, they come back low-numbered 

to the judge. 

So when you go home over the next days and weeks before we 

likely call another hearing to this committee or another committee 

of Congress, I want you to really think, and I want you really to 

come back with the reforms, flexibility, changes that Congress 

could give you, or that you have that you haven’t been using. Because I think that people on this committee, on a bipartisan basis, 

do believe that at least in some cases, the process is failing a person by their waiting too long to get a determination, waiting too 

long. 

And part of the reason is that the process is broken and too 

many people are getting in front of ALJs. If you have a 50 percent 

reversal rate, that is too high. If you have a 99 percent reversal 

rate, that is too high. The difference is what we want, and I believe 

the injured person or disabled person needs, is they need to get the 

right decision as early as possible at as low a level as possible. If 

there is a rejection, they have to understand that unless there is 

new information, that rejection will probably stand. 

Today that is not the case. The numbers speak for themselves. 

So we didn’t bring you here to just say we are mad at you. We are 

not mad at you. You have only been on the job 14 months and 

many things have improved during those 14 months. But I am disappointed that you weren’t here with more proactive ways that we 

could continue doing a better job for those people who shouldn’t get 

disability and for those people who should and aren’t getting them 

or aren’t getting them in a timely fashion. That is the goal of us, 

this is an entitlement, this is something that was earned, something that people are looking forward to as a safety net. 

And we are failing them. We are failing them in the time to adjudication and in some cases we are failing to protect the American 

taxpayer against lawyers who are smarter at proving a disability, 

or at least giving the image of a disability than we are at detecting 

it. On both sides of that, we want to get it right. 

53 

If the dollars spent are exactly the same, will we get it right? 

Then Mr. Cummings and Mr. Issa and everyone else on this dais 

is happy. And if we get it wrong or people wait too long for this 

the way they have at the VA, then we have failed people who desperately need our help. 

That wasn’t heard by any one person here today, but hopefully 

I have summarized what people on the left and the right want you 

to do. 

Mr. Cummings? 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I don’t have anything more, thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. At that point, we stand adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:53 a.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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