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46–630—PDF 2007

S. HRG. 110–715

FUNDING SOCIAL SECURITY’S ADMINISTRATIVE

COSTS: WILL THE BUDGET MEET THE MISSION?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FINANCE

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MAY 23, 2007

(

Printed for the use of the Committee on Finance

COMMITTEE ON FINANCE

MAX BAUCUS, Montana, Chairman

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia

KENT CONRAD, North Dakota

JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts

BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, Arkansas

RON WYDEN, Oregon

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York

DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan

MARIA CANTWELL, Washington

KEN SALAZAR, Colorado

CHUCK GRASSLEY, Iowa

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah

TRENT LOTT, Mississippi

OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine

JON KYL, Arizona

CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming

GORDON SMITH, Oregon

JIM BUNNING, Kentucky

MIKE CRAPO, Idaho

PAT ROBERTS, Kansas

RUSSELL SULLIVAN, Staff Director

KOLAN DAVIS, Republican Staff Director and Chief Counsel

(II)

C O N T E N T S

OPENING STATEMENT

Page

Baucus, Hon. Max, a U.S. Senator from Montana, chairman, Committee

on Finance ............................................................................................................ 1

WITNESSES

Astrue, Michael J., Commissioner, Social Security Administration, Baltimore,

MD ......................................................................................................................... 3

Shor, Nancy, executive director, National Organization of Social Security

Claimants’ Representatives, Englewood Cliffs, NJ ........................................... 6

Warsinskey, Richard E., president, National Council of Social Security Management Associations, Inc., Washington, DC .................................................... 8

Schimmels, Charles, president, National Association of Disability Examiners,

Oklahoma City, OK .............................................................................................. 10

ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL

Astrue, Michael J.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3

Prepared statement with attachment ............................................................. 31

Response to a question from Senator Cantwell ............................................. 55

Baucus, Hon. Max:

Opening statement ........................................................................................... 1

Kerry, Hon. John:

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 58

Rockefeller, Hon. John D., IV:

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 59

Schimmels, Charles:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 10

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 60

Shor, Nancy:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 66

Warsinskey, Richard E.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 86

COMMUNICATIONS

Federal Managers Association ................................................................................ 93

National Association of Disability Representatives .............................................. 100

National Council on Disability ............................................................................... 104

(III)

(1)

FUNDING SOCIAL SECURITY’S

ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS: WILL THE

BUDGET MEET THE MISSION?

WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2007

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON FINANCE,

Washington, DC.

The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in

room SD–215, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Max Baucus

(chairman of the committee) presiding.

Present: Senators Rockefeller, Stabenow, Cantwell, Salazar, and

Grassley.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MAX BAUCUS, A U.S. SENATOR

FROM MONTANA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON FINANCE

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing will come to order.

The book of Leviticus commands, ‘‘You shall not insult the deaf

or place a stumbling block before the blind.’’

Today we will examine the stumbling blocks that the government

places before Americans with disabilities as they seek help from

Social Security. Today’s hearing will focus on the long waits that

people must endure before they receive Social Security disability

benefits, and today we will talk about ways to fix the problem.

It sometimes takes 4 years for Social Security to finally approve

disability benefits. By definition, the people applying for these benefits are not able to work so they have no earnings while they wait,

but they still have to pay for food, housing, and medicine. As a result of these delays, some lose their homes, their health, and their

families.

Listen to what one Montanan wrote in an affidavit to the Social

Security Administration: ‘‘I was living in a mold-infested camp

trailer for over 1 year without running water, or a bathroom, or

cooking facilities. Now I live in an 8 × 20-foot building, and I still

do not have running water or a bathroom. . . . I am only able to

afford food by way of food stamps. I have been unable to pay car

insurance. I have been unable to pay my treating physicians for

nearly 4 years, and I beg for the money for gas to drive to appointments. . . . I experience constant backaches. I can’t walk, sit, or

stand comfortably. I hurt all the time. I can no longer afford my

medications. . . . I don’t have any way to continue to receive treatment.’’

Listen to Susan Gobbs, an attorney in Helena, MT. Susan writes,

‘‘[W]e have an average of 10 clients who die every year from condiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:02 Feb 19, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 46630.000 SFIN1 PsN: SFIN1
2

tions related to their disability, waiting for hearings. We routinely

have clients who are living on the streets, or in their cars, waiting

for hearings.’’

Last year, the committee heard from Erwin Hathaway about the

hardships that he and his family endured. He waited 4 years until

his benefits were approved. The former Commissioner of Social Security, Jo Anne Barnhart, produced a study of why it takes so long

to decide these cases.

She found that one of the critical factors was the huge backlog

of cases waiting for either initial examinations or for appeals hearings before administrative law judges (ALJs).

At the beginning of 2002, there were 436,000 cases pending for

appeals hearings. By the end of this year, Social Security expects

that there will be, not 436,000, but 752,000 cases pending. That is

an increase of 72 percent. As a result, it can take years to get a

decision.

More than 1 in 10 of those waiting for hearings are veterans.

Many of these vets have risked everything for their country. This

is a poor way for the government to treat men and women who

have served our country in the armed forces.

One reason that these backlogs exist is that there are not enough

staff to process the cases and the appeals. The reason for the shortage of staff is that the appropriations process does not give Social

Security enough money to run its programs properly. The key reason that appropriations are tight is the administration’s effort to

constrain overall domestic spending. It affects this program, as well

as many others.

Funding is also insufficient for Social Security to adequately fulfill its other responsibilities. Phone service in local offices is abysmal, waiting times for walk-in service in local offices are very long,

and they are growing. On top of that, Social Security has new

workloads, with Medicare parts B and D, and the processing of Social Security cards.

Many jobs are not getting done at all. Social Security is not processing beneficiaries’ reports on changes in their earnings, and that

leads to over-payments. And Social Security is not doing as many

continuing disability reviews and Supplemental Security Income

redeterminations as it could.

Not doing those jobs is penny wise and pound foolish, because

every dollar spent on continuing disability reviews saves $10.

Every dollar spent on Supplemental Security Income redeterminations saves $7. We have to do better.

So let us stop the government from putting stumbling blocks in

front of Americans with disabilities. Let us do what we can to promote adequate funding to get the job done. Let us do what we can

to help those Americans with disabilities to save their homes, their

health, and their families.

Our first witness this morning is Mr. Michael Astrue, the Commissioner of Social Security. Then we have Nancy Shor, who is the

executive director of the National Organization of Social Security

Claimants’ Representatives. Then, third, is Mr. Richard Warsinskey. He is president of the National Council of Social Security

Management Associations. Finally, Mr. Chuck Schimmels, who is

the president of the National Association of Disability Examiners.

3

Thank you all for coming. You will have 5 minutes each. Your

statements will all be automatically put in the record.

So why don’t you, Commissioner, begin?

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL J. ASTRUE, COMMISSIONER,

SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, BALTIMORE, MD

Commissioner ASTRUE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members

of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity to share our plans

to reduce the backlog of disability claims.

As you know, our disability programs have grown significantly

over the last 5 years and will continue to do so at an increasing

rate as aging baby boomers reach their most disability-prone years.

At the same time, Congress has added new and non-traditional

workloads to the Social Security Administration’s responsibilities,

while appropriating, on average, about $150 million less each year

than the President has requested since 2001. As a result, the Agency is struggling to balance its responsibilities and its traditional

work within tight resource constraints.

When I appeared before you at my confirmation hearing, I promised to report back to you with my recommendations for reducing

these backlogs and preventing them from occurring. Today I want

to make an initial report on our first 100 days.

There are four areas which I believe hold the most promise to

eliminate the hearings backlogs: compassionate allowances, streamlining hearing procedures, increasing adjudicatory capacity, and increasing efficiency with automation and business processes.

Despite the fact that our administrative law judges are achieving

a record high productivity rate, backlogs continue to grow. The current number of cases waiting for a hearing decision is about

738,000, leading to an average waiting time of 505 days, the highest ever in SSA history. Pending hearings have doubled since 2001.

In addition, the number of applications for disability benefits has

been extraordinarily high throughout the first 7 years of this decade and, as I mentioned earlier, funding has not kept up.

To provide more context, congressional budget reductions below

the President’s request from 2002 through 2007 are equivalent to

processing an additional 177,000 initial claims and an additional

454,000 hearings.

Although attrition continues to reduce staffing levels, funds from

the recent continuing resolution allowed us to avert employee furloughs and hire a limited number of staff in critical areas.

We thank the members of the committee for the support you

gave us in obtaining these funds, and we very much need you to

continue your advocacy efforts on our behalf.

The success of the initiatives that I share with you today depends on timely and adequate Agency funding. Properly funded,

these initiatives will reduce the amount of time members of the

public wait for a hearing decision and will lead to a reduction in

the number of cases pending in our offices.

Attached to this testimony is additional information about our

proposals to reduce the hearing backlogs and address the shortfalls

of the disability determination process. One way to reduce the

number of cases in the determination process is to use automation

tools to screen cases.

4

We have seen the success of the Quick Disability Determination

(QDD) model currently in use in New England. To date, the New

England States have decided 97 percent of these cases within the

required 21 days, and they have an average decision time of 11

days.

About 85 percent of these cases have been allowed during the initial review, and more have been allowed with additional documentation. We plan to build on the success of the QDD, because

it is both efficient and compassionate for us to do so. To date, the

majority of QDD cases are cancer cases, because the model does not

yet cull a wide enough variety of cases.

Currently, QDD cases constitute only 2.6 percent of our cases,

but we are committed to pushing the number of cases that can be

decided through the model as high as we can possibly go, while

maintaining accuracy.

An added difficulty is that our examiners are working with outdated medical listings and poorly defined categories of disabilities.

Many cases that should be resolved quickly are not being determined in a timely manner because of our listings.

To help with this initiative, Secretary Leavitt has generously offered the assistance of the Department of Health and Human Services on a task force to jump-start our efforts to refine and update

our rules.

Other course corrections at SSA include reorganizing the Office

of Disability and Income Security Programs to better align our organizational structure with our mission of dedicated service to

Americans with disabilities.

In addition, we found that two of the new electronic systems developed for Disability Determination Services (DDS) as part of the

Disability Service Improvement (DSI) initiative were not ready for

real-world use and were, in fact, causing considerable delays in

processing caseloads, and we have pulled those systems.

Let me turn, now, to how we are improving our hearing procedures. We have already begun to attack the problem of aged cases,

starting with the cases that are, or will be, 1,000 days old as of

September 30, 2007. An applicant should not have to wait 3 or 4

years for his or her day in court.

We have established a goal of reducing these cases to a negligible

level by the end of this fiscal year, and I am pleased to report that

this number has already dropped from more than 63,000 on October 1 of last year to about 14,000 as of last week. We have made

this progress by reallocating resources and redefining the metrics

by which we measure success.

We are also studying the experiment of 1995 to 2000 that authorized senior attorney advisors to issue fully favorable decisions

under certain circumstances. We will evaluate the lessons from this

experiment for similar approaches we could adopt to improve the

disability determination process.

Hiring additional administrative law judges is an essential element in a successful plan for reducing the backlog. Further improvements are expected from our plans to increase efficiency of

support staff. Before a hearing can be held, there is a large amount

of work that must be done to prepare the case to be reviewed. With

advances in technology and improved management, there are a

5

number of ways to increase the efficiency of this behind-the-scenes

work, and we will pursue them all.

As an interim measure, we will streamline the folder assembly

portion of case preparation. Streamlining the assembly will have

an even greater impact as we add the software needed to automate

this function.

We will send volunteers from our field offices to hearing offices

with the largest backlogs to help assemble the remaining paper

files. We plan to dedicate 5,000 hours of overtime per month to this

effort, which will probably continue into next year.

To a large extent, the cases pending the longest at the hearing

level are the remaining 220,000 paper files. When these cases are

finally adjudicated, they will be replaced by electronic files, which

will require less time and effort to prepare.

We have also decided to mandate the use of the Findings Integrated Template, or FIT. This tool is now being voluntarily used by

about 80 percent of our judges. It is an abbreviated decision format

that captures all the key elements required for a defensible opinion. Those judges who now use FIT have a lower remand rate from

the Appeals Council, which saves us substantial time and money.

In addition, we will screen our oldest cases using profiles recently developed by the Office of Quality Performance to identify

cases where there may be a high probability that an allowance can

be issued on the record without a hearing. This screening initiative

will begin next month.

We are also planning on capitalizing on the flexibility now available to us with electronic folders and other technologies. Assigning

our ALJs to 141 offices nationwide does not give us enough flexibility to address the worst backlogs.

Video hearings have successfully addressed backlogs on an ad

hoc basis, and we feel that reserving a percentage of ALJs in a central office solely to do electronic hearings for the most backlogged

offices is a better and smarter way to use an expensive resource.

At the hearing level, we need the ability to——

The CHAIRMAN. Commissioner, I will let you go for a couple more

minutes because you are the Commissioner. We want to hear what

you are doing.

Mr. ASTRUE. I will try to rip along, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Mr. ASTRUE. At the hearing level, we need the ability to sign decisions electronically. In addition, we need shared access to the

electronic folder. Currently, cases cannot be transferred from office

to office in an electronic format. We are forced to print and mail

cases that are remanded or shared with another office.

To help us reduce ALJ travel time and costs, we are installing,

in all hearing rooms, video equipment to enable us to increase the

number of hearings, an initiative which will particularly benefit

rural areas.

We are also excited about the long-term potential of a new automation tool called ePulling. Our progress in working down our aged

cases is an example of us successfully improving our business processes. Other initiatives in this area include, but are not limited to:

directing the Appeals Council to issue final decisions when possible

to reduce remands; be more proactive in investigating alleged ALJ

6

misconduct complaints; improve management training; encourage

greater cooperation between hearing offices, field offices, and area

directors; standardize the electronic folder in hearing offices; and

implement a quality assurance program.

To conclude, Mr. Chairman, when it comes to disability backlogs,

there is no single magic bullet. Our goal is to slow the growth of

cases pending until we reach a tipping point next year with the addition of a substantial number of ALJs who can help us begin to

drive the backlog back down.

With better systems, better businesses processes, and better

ways of fast-tracking targeted cases, we hope to return to the more

manageable levels we experienced at the beginning of this decade.

This task will not be easy, and it will not be possible without your

continued support for adequate funding.

Thank you again for your past support. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Commissioner, very much.

[The prepared statement of Commissioner Astrue appears in the

appendix.]

The CHAIRMAN. Now, Ms. Shor?

STATEMENT OF NANCY SHOR, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF SOCIAL SECURITY CLAIMANTS’

REPRESENTATIVES, ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ

Ms. SHOR. Thank you very much for inviting us to testify today.

I am the executive director of NOSSCR, the National Organization

of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives, which is a membership organization of nearly 3,900 attorneys and other advocates

who represent individuals seeking Social Security and SSI benefits.

These benefits are the means of survival for millions of individuals with severe disabilities. Delays and backlogs in adjudicating

their cases have reached intolerable levels. If a case goes to the

hearing level, it can easily take more than 3 years to get a decision

after filing the application.

We believe that SSA is generally doing a good job with limited

resources, but for now we believe the primary reason for the increase in the disability claims backlog is that the Agency has not

received adequate funding. While the situation currently is dire

without adequate appropriations for the Agency, the impact on

claimants will only deteriorate.

I would like to say that we are encouraged by efforts to provide

the Agency with adequate administrative funding. The recently approved fiscal year 2008 budget resolution conference report recommends an appropriation of $10.1 billion, an amount that is $430

million above the President’s requested level.

Given how long many claimants currently wait for hearings,

eliminating backlogs much sooner than the 5 years this funding is

targeted for would be a terrific outcome.

We must remember that each claim file represents an individual

with severe disabilities whose life may be unraveling while waiting

for his or her claim to be properly decided. Families are torn apart,

homes are lost, medical conditions deteriorate, and many claimants

die while waiting for a decision. Once-stable economic security

crumbles.

7

My written statement graphically describes the desperate circumstances of some individual clients of our members which, sadly,

exemplify the serious nature of the current backlog situation, and

I would like to highlight just a couple.

In Montana, one client has been waiting almost 2 years since she

filed her claim for benefits. She has lost everything: her house, her

car, her health insurance, and her husband has left her. She cannot afford medications. A medical exam has indicated that she is

actively considering suicide.

Another client has worked at hard physical labor his entire life

and led a so-called ‘‘typical’’ Montana lifestyle, enjoying hunting

and fishing. He now has rheumatoid arthritis, coronary disease,

cellulitis, and severe sleep apnea.

Described by his attorney as a ‘‘big, strong, tough Montana man,’’

he broke down in tears during his hearing because it shames him

so much that he cannot support his family and that he needs the

government’s help at this time in his life. He has waited 2 years

for benefit approval.

Another NOSSCR member in Des Moines, IA routinely tells her

clients to expect to wait 14 to 24 months for a decision after filing

for a hearing. One of the hearing offices where she represents clients is short two ALJs and six support staff, causing a significant

increase in the office’s backlog.

One client from Boone, IA filed her hearing request in May of

2005. The hearing was held in August, 2006, but she has not yet

received a decision 2 years after requesting a hearing. She lives

with a friend, on food stamps. She was forced to withdraw all the

money from her company’s pension plan and had to pay the IRS

penalties for that early withdrawal.

She has no medical insurance. She has not been able to receive

adequate medical care for her impairments. Because of the stress

caused by worrying about how she is going to afford to live and

take care of her medical needs while waiting, she has now been diagnosed with anxiety and depression.

What do these cases, and so many others like them, tell us about

the current budget situation at Social Security? First, we note the

processing times have increased dramatically. According to the

Agency, the average processing time for cases at the hearing level

this year will be 524 days, and 541 days next year, nearly twice

as long as it took in 2000.

This is just an average. Of course, many individuals will wait

much longer. While the hearing-level processing times are the most

striking, it is important to keep in mind that processing issues,

such as the reconsideration slow-down last summer, can add to the

overall processing times.

SSA’s statistics show that the processing times in many hearing

offices are much longer than the 524 days targeted from this year.

One office in Atlanta, GA is averaging 28.5 months, nearly 2.5

years, just to have a hearing. This does not include the time for the

decision to be issued after the hearing or for the individual who is

found eligible to actually receive a check.

Second, the number of pending cases continues to increase dramatically. The number of pending cases at the hearing level has inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:02 Feb 19, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 46630.000 SFIN1 PsN: SFIN1
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creased almost 250 percent since 1999, despite the fact that the

number of ALJs has remained almost exactly the same.

Third, staffing levels have decreased, which leads to a decrease

in service. Our members have noted the loss of ALJs and support

staff in hearing offices across the country. The hiring freezes and

low replacement rates have had their impact, especially since many

of those SSA employees retiring are those with the most experience.

Because of cuts in the budget requests over the last few years,

fewer ALJs have been hired than planned. Again, this comes despite the fact that about the same number of ALJs are now expected to handle more than twice as many cases as in 1999.

Frankly, even more of a problem may be the inability to hire support staff, which directly relates to the productivity of a hearing office: files cannot be organized, records cannot be requested, hearings cannot be scheduled, and decisions are not written.

Finally, we note a decrease in service provided by SSA district

offices and State agencies. While the delays, in fact, at the hearing

level are the most dramatic, the current budget situation has left

all SSA offices and State agency offices without adequate resources

to meet all of their current responsibilities.

Under the President’s fiscal year 2008 budget request, SSA will

need to reduce its staff. This does not take into account reduction

in 2006, or expected in 2007.

My testimony provides more details about the impact on people

with disabilities. Last summer, because the initial application

backlog became too high, DDS directors were authorized to temporarily redirect resources.

This means that, in several States, cases at the reconsideration

level were not processed for several months. Post-entitlement work,

such as processing earnings reports, is given less priority than initial applications. Fewer continuing disability reviews are performed. New caseloads are added by legislative changes without

providing the funds to implement the new mandates.

We thank you for the opportunity to testify today. Because of the

impact on individuals with severe disabilities, we urge Congress to

provide the Agency with adequate resources to carry out its mandated responsibilities. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Shor appears in the appendix.]

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Warsinskey?

STATEMENT OF RICHARD E. WARSINSKEY, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SECURITY MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATIONS, INC., WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. WARSINSKEY. Chairman Baucus and members of the committee, my name is Rick Warsinskey, and I represent the National

Council of Social Security Management Associations. On behalf of

our membership, I am pleased to have the opportunity to submit

this testimony to the committee.

Social Security is a primary source of income for millions of

Americans. It accounts for 90 percent of the income of the aged,

non-married beneficiaries and provides for at least 50 percent of

the income of 74 percent of the aged beneficiaries. People need SoVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:02 Feb 19, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 46630.000 SFIN1 PsN: SFIN1
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cial Security to live on. And they need to receive these resources

in a timely manner. This really is the bottom line.

SSA will lose about 4,000 positions from the beginning of fiscal

year 2006 to fiscal year 2008. Our Agency will be at its lowest level

of staffing since the early 1970s. Field offices have lost about 2,400

positions in the last 19 months, and about 1,300 positions in the

past 7 months.

It is interesting to note that, while total executive branch employment is expected to increase 2.1 percent from fiscal year 2006

to fiscal year 2008, SSA’s employment is expected to increase 6.2

percent.

The CHAIRMAN. Decrease?

Mr. WARSINSKEY. Decrease. I am sorry. A big difference.

This year, an average of over 850,000 people are visiting Social

Security Administration field offices every week. At the same time,

field offices are also being overwhelmed by approximately 68 million business-related telephone calls a year.

The fact that the public cannot get through to SSA on the telephone is also creating an overwhelming amount of walk-in traffic

in many field offices. Waiting times in many field offices are running 2 to 3 hours long.

Every day, SSA field offices and teleservice centers throughout

the country are being contacted by people regarding the status of

their hearings. We know that an increasing number of people are

losing their homes and are going homeless due to severe delays in

hearing decisions.

People are dying while waiting for hearing decisions, some as a

result of suicide. Stress levels on those waiting are unbearably

high. Approximately 125,000 veterans have pending disability

claims, of which about half are awaiting a hearing decision. A significant percentage of those awaiting decisions have no health insurance.

Next year, in 2008, the first of 78 million baby boomers will be

eligible for Social Security retirement. As a result, there will be a

steady rise in retirement claims being submitted to SSA.

The rising number of workers who are baby boomers will also be

reflected in the increase in disability claims. Workers over the age

of 55 who lose their jobs are many times turning to filing for disability as a last resort.

The resource demands of SSA’s involvement in administering the

Medicare Modernization Act have been vastly underestimated, and

no additional funds have been allocated for continual administration of this program. The funding needs for SSA could dramatically

increase, depending on the final language in any legislation enacted relating to immigration.

The Commissioner is required, by law, to prepare an annual

budget for the Agency. The budget amount submitted by the Commissioner of Social Security for fiscal year 2008 is $10.44 billion,

which is $843 million above the level of funding that the President

requested.

The Social Security Trust Fund is intended to pay benefits to future beneficiaries and finance the operations of most of the Social

Security Administration. The additional funding of approximately

10

$430 million proposed for SSA in the fiscal year 2008 budget conference report represents about 1/50th of 1 percent of $2 trillion.

Don’t the workers who have paid into this trust fund with their

taxes deserve to receive due consideration and the very benefits

they have paid for in a timely manner? Our Agency certainly needs

additional funds. And additional resources would certainly help address the growing backlogs at SSA and restore good field office

service. We urge Congress to provide SSA with enough resources

to meet our responsibilities to the American public, your constituents.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to appear before

this committee, and I welcome any questions you may have.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Warsinskey, very, very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Warsinskey appears in the appendix.]

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Schimmels?

STATEMENT OF CHARLES SCHIMMELS, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF DISABILITY EXAMINERS, OKLAHOMA CITY, OK

Mr. SCHIMMELS. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,

I am pleased to have the opportunity to submit this testimony to

you.

The National Association of Disability Examiners, NADE, is a

professional association whose purpose is to promote the art and

science of disability evaluation. A majority of our members work in

the State DDS agencies adjudicating claims for Social Security and/

or SSI disability benefits.

It is our extensive program knowledge and hands-on experience

which enables NADE to offer a perspective on disability issues that

is both unique and which reflects a programmatic realism.

Unfortunately, both SSA and the State DDSs are finding it increasingly more and more difficult to perform the mission, given

the significant funding reductions experienced by SSA and the

DDSs over the past 5 years.

In the disability process, there has been a growth in disability

applications and in the number of individuals receiving disability

benefits. As baby boomers age and more and more individuals retire or become disabled, this places a significant strain on already

stressed resources just to manage daily work involved with maintaining benefit levels of more beneficiaries.

There is no doubt that the backlogs in the disability program

have increased. This is a direct result of the hard choices that

needed to be made by SSA over the past few years to deal with the

realities of inadequate budgeting and staffing.

If SSA continues to be burdened with inadequate funding, this

problem will only exacerbate an already over-strained system.

Backlogs are a direct result of inadequate funding and staffing.

The complexity of the Social Security disability programs, coupled with the need to produce a huge volume of work, justifies even

more the need for adequate resources in order to provide the service the American public has come to expect and deserve.

It takes at least 2 years for a disability examiner to be fully

trained and function independently to make high-quality and timeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:02 Feb 19, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 46630.000 SFIN1 PsN: SFIN1
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ly disability decisions. It is critical that DDSs be provided with the

resources needed to hire and train replacement staff immediately

upon staff losses so that further delays in service do not result.

Even if SSA receives the funding increase recommended by the

President in fiscal year 2008, staffing will be cut due to increases

in expenditures in several areas, including rent, salaries, medical

expenses, security and benefit costs, which total more than the annual appropriated funds.

Limited resources have forced SSA to reduce the number of Continuing Disability Reviews (CDRs) performed. Of utmost concern to

NADE is the past history of these types of actions and the resultant negative impact as the Agency falls behind in these critical reviews.

While there are some increased administrative costs with the

performance of CDRs, there is the potential for increased savings

in program cost. Dedicated funding above the cap has shown to be

the best means of staying current with the CDR workload.

The projected cost savings from dedicated CDR funding from fiscal year 2003 to fiscal year 2006 would be $1.8 billion over 10

years. NADE encourages this committee to recommend appropriating dedicated funding for CDRs to ensure that this workload

gets the attention it deserves.

The Electronic Disability Process, e-Dib, is still a work in

progress and requires ongoing refinements, upgrades, and improvements frequently in order to make the system work as efficiently

and effectively as possible.

Continued attention to e-Dib is needed to ensure that the proper

financial support is given to make it successful, since DDSs process

over 2.5 million cases on an annual basis. Any shut-down or slowdown of this case processing system equates to a significant loss of

production capacity.

NADE believes that e-Dib and its full implementation may result

in a significant reduction of processing time at all levels of adjudication, from the field office, to DDS, to ODAR, and above.

In summary, inadequate resources, along with increased workloads, have not only caused backlogs, but have allowed existing

backlogs to increase. Disability backlogs are affected by inexperienced staff, hiring restrictions, and the implementation of constant

program changes.

Dedicated funding is necessary in order to avoid the costly possibility of having backlogs of overdue CDRs. Resources should not be

diverted from e-Dib until the e-Dib system is fully operational. It

is critical that necessary refinements be made to the system in

order for it to produce the anticipated and desired efficiencies.

In conclusion, NADE believes that the American public wants,

and deserves, to receive timely, compassionate, and efficient service

from SSA and the State DDSs. Therefore, we request that you approve at least the amount included in the fiscal year 2008 budget

resolution to begin the process of restoring the levels of service that

the public deserves from all components of SSA and State DDSs.

On behalf of the membership of NADE, I thank you again for the

opportunity to submit this testimony to the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Schimmels.

12

[The prepared statement of Mr. Schimmels appears in the appendix.]

The CHAIRMAN. This whole situation is tragic. I just cannot believe our country, the United States of America, lets this happen.

I mean, it is an outrage. I hope that this hearing today, at the very

least, documents and dramatizes the need for more resources so

that Americans who are on disability get fair hearings in a very

timely manner.

In the judicial system there is a common phrase: justice delayed

is justice denied. That is true here, too. Justice delayed is justice

denied. These backlogs are just unconscionable. I cannot believe

this country has let this happen. So, now it is time to fix it.

First, I want to thank you, Commissioner. You have acknowledged the problem. You are not trying to dance around it and explain it away or rationalize it, and so forth. I think this committee

deeply appreciates your recognition that there is a problem and you

are trying your level best to help solve it.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. You mentioned, a lot of it is inadequate resources. You also mentioned that Congress appropriated less than

the President’s budget. That is true. That is unconscionable, too,

that Congress would do that. I think, in part, the overall presidential budget submission to Congress is deficient in lots of areas,

lots of social programs.

I am not on the Appropriations Committee, but I guess the Appropriations Committee decided, well, we have to cut here because

otherwise we have to cut other programs within the HHS budget.

It is an impossible situation to be in.

But that just means we need to do a little bit more to spend more

in all these areas. I am going to do my level best to try to get that

amount that is in the budget resolution—the $430 million, roughly,

increase—adopted. At the very least, that is what we have to do.

Ms. Shor, I would just like to ask if you, on behalf of claimants,

and so on, and so forth, basically think it is essentially a resource

problem. Is that essentially the problem, do you think?

Ms. SHOR. Yes, at the hearing level. Again, the numbers are

stark. In the year 2000, and today, we have the same number of

ALJs. We have a smaller support staff working in those hearing offices, and the number of cases they are processing or that they

have pending at the hearing offices is up 250 percent.

So, there are lots of fixes that can improve the situation, but fundamentally such a mismatch between the size of the workforce and

the size of the work is going to lead to the outcome we have today.

The CHAIRMAN. Commissioner, if the President’s budget were the

amount of dollars you would have, you are saying you think you

can get rid of that backlog in 5 years. Is that correct, or not?

Commissioner ASTRUE. I think that it is unlikely that we would

get rid of the backlog. I think we could, under the best scenarios,

make some very significant progress.

What we are trying to do right now, in advance of knowing

whether we can hire ALJs, in advance of whether we can hire this

new group of ALJs, is to try to put the brakes on, through a variety

of regulatory and administrative techniques, and essentially try to

get to a steady state.

13

The backlog has gone up approximately 70,000 cases a year for

the last 5 years. We think with the package we have here that we

can, over the next 6 to 8 months, put the brakes on, get that number level, and maybe even bring it down a little bit with that.

Once we get to that point, we will get some efficiencies with some

of the things that are longer-term, with technology, but it becomes

much more a matter of brute force with the number of ALJs. The

most direct connection you have for reducing the backlogs is increasing your capacity of ALJs.

Our target for what we think we need to accomplish the goal

that you mentioned is about 1,250 ALJs. That is ambitious, because they come with a little over four support staff, each one of

them. So what we are looking at is trying to shift about 700 to 900

full-time equivalents (FTEs) into the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR). We are trying very hard to do that within

the constraints of the President’s budget.

We are on our first round of budget meetings. We have made

some progress, but I cannot guarantee you that we are going to be

able to get there this year. So we are going to hire as many as we

can, given the numbers that we have, and we do not know what

number yet we will have in the budget process.

The CHAIRMAN. Would others agree that a significant increase in

ALJs will solve a large part of the backlog problem, as the Commissioner indicated? Do any of the other three of you have any comments on that?

Mr. WARSINSKEY. I would say that it is certainly going to help.

You are going to have to have more support staff to get the cases

ready, so it has to be a combination of both. You have to have staff

at the back end to move the cases once the cases are decided while

they are in the field offices or in the payment centers.

So you have to have a package of staff in all areas, basically, to

support the whole process. But definitely, with the current level of

ALJs staying basically steady for this decade while the cases have

gone up so much, I do not see how——

The CHAIRMAN. How many ALJs do we have now?

Commissioner ASTRUE. It is a question of definition. I like to say

‘‘sits actually on the bench deciding cases.’’ So we have some administrative judges; some are on disability, some are on leave. But,

in terms of the best number I have been able to get today for the

number on the bench deciding cases, 1,077.

The CHAIRMAN. And your goal is how many?

Commissioner ASTRUE. Our goal is 1,250. That is fairly similar,

if you go back as I have, and read Commissioner Barnhart’s testimony over the years, although there was a little bit of wavering on

the numbers, it is essentially the equivalent of what Commissioner

Barnhart had.

The CHAIRMAN. Any plan to reach that level of 1,250?

Commissioner ASTRUE. Right now, I do not know. Right now we

are going through a zero-based budgeting exercise. We have done

the first round of discussions with some of the components, trying

to find as many FTEs as possible so that we can make that shift.

But until I know what the FY 2008 budget is going to be, I am not

going to be able to make a decision on how many ALJs we are

going to be able to hire.

14

The CHAIRMAN. My time is expiring, but just one question here.

Assuming you had the amount in the budget conference report,

when could you reach 1,250?

Commissioner ASTRUE. When could we reach 1,250?

The CHAIRMAN. By what date would you be able to reach 1,250

ALJs if the amount appropriated were the amount that——

Commissioner ASTRUE. In the budget agreement? We would be

able to do it next year. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Can you do it at the President’s requested level?

Commissioner ASTRUE. We do not know yet. I believe we will be

able to go up over the current 1,077. The question is, exactly where

will we hit between 1,077 and 1,250, and I do not have enough information yet to know.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. My time has expired by about 2 minutes.

Senator Salazar?

Senator SALAZAR. Thank you very much, Chairman Baucus, for

holding this hearing on this very important issue.

Commissioner Astrue, thank you for your work in Social Security. I know you are new—relatively new—on the job, so you have

inherited a problem that has been there a long time.

But let me say a couple of things, first. I look at these numbers,

and to me they are totally unacceptable. I am sure that for you and

the people who are here, my Chairman here, and Senator Stabenow, it is alarming to see what has been happening with these

numbers, where the numbers that I have, which came from the Social Security Administration, show that the ALJ hearing backlog

was 311,000 in 1999. The delay in getting your decision out of an

ALJ was 316 days, so that is about a year.

In 2008, the projection is that the backlog is 768,000, so more

than double, and a delay in decision of 541 days, so almost 2 years.

Almost 2 years. I go back to the point that Justice Baucus—not

Justice Baucus. He should be a justice. [Laughter.] But as Senator

Baucus said, justice delayed is justice denied.

So I might ask you this question. So you are the CEO. You have

this problem. You are the guy who is leading the charge here, telling us how we ought to fix this problem that is unacceptable to all

of us. Moving from 1,077 to 1,200 ALJs, frankly, at the end of the

day it is going to be a pittance. It is not going to do much. It might

move the numbers just a little bit.

So if we asked you the question this way, Mr. CEO of Social Security, what is it, within a year, that you would need to be able

to do the following and achieve these visions and these goals with

respect to the backlog on disability claims. One, that every disabled

claimant gets their hearing and their decision from an ALJ within

90 days of the time the petition was filed. It seems to me that is

a reasonable time, 90 days, to review the evidence and get a decision. Second of all, to reduce this backlog to the point that it is a

reasonable backlog. There are always going to be claims in the system that are going through adjudication, so it may get down to

50,000, 100,000, a set number there.

But what would it take to get us to that kind of effectiveness

with respect to the processing of these claims? Let me make it a

little more simple for you. What would be the top three recVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:02 Feb 19, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 46630.000 SFIN1 PsN: SFIN1
15

ommendations that you would give to this committee, to the Congress, and to the President? Unconstrained by budget issues that

we are dealing with right now, what would they be?

Commissioner ASTRUE. A lot of questions there. I think something that is important—and I do not mean to disagree with the

Chairman—but I have read all of our past testimony over the years

and we have had a tendency to present this solely as a resource

problem.

The resources are critically important, and I continue to say that,

but part of fixing a problem is accepting responsibility for it. There

are a lot of things that this Agency should have been doing over

the years that it has not done.

Senator SALAZAR. Let me acknowledge that, that I appreciate

your recognition of the problem and praise you for that. That is

where we need to start: there is a problem. So this remedy then

ultimately is going to be a combination of getting additional resources to do what you have to do with the ALJs, and also systemic

changes that you were talking about.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Right.

Senator SALAZAR. So, acknowledging the problem. Now let us

move forward. What do you need in resources? What are the systemic changes to get us to where we would want to be in a year?

Commissioner ASTRUE. Well, let me tell you some things that I

do not think you want to hear, Senator Salazar. First of all, in the

90-day goal, I do not have the tools to do that.

Senator SALAZAR. Do you need changes in the law?

Commissioner ASTRUE. Well, I would. Congress has substantially

tied my hands—not entirely, but substantially—in supervision of

ALJs in the name of independence of ALJs. If you want to see firm

time deadlines and performance targets, you are going to have to

substantially change the law.

In terms of reducing the backlog——

Senator SALAZAR. What would you do in terms of those changes

to the law? What would be your recommendation? Firm dates? Performance deadlines?

Commissioner ASTRUE. I do not want to wing this subject because it is a very delicate topic that Congress has wrestled with in

the past, trying to make a balance between inappropriate interference from the Agency and the independence of the decision making. It is a very long topic.

I am happy to work with you to talk about what you could do.

We do not have a formal proposal on the table. We are looking at

what we can do administratively within the current constraints.

Now, even that is difficult, but we are looking at it.

Senator SALAZAR. My time is up, but let me just say this. I,

frankly, think that——

The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead, Senator. There are only a few of us

here. Why don’t you take a couple more minutes?

Senator SALAZAR. All right. Then please continue with your answer, because I am very, very interested.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Let me answer, I think, the other important question.

Senator SALAZAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

16

Commissioner ASTRUE. It is not the answer you want to hear,

but I cannot get the backlog down in a year no matter how much

money you throw at the problem. It is going to take some time.

Part of that is, we are not going to be able to hire off the new

register of ALJs for some time. I think that is the single most important thing we can do to get this problem under control. The new

register will be available in late October, according to OPM.

It will take us about 4 months to go through the hiring process

and honor our collective bargaining agreements and do everything

that we need to do to get new ALJs on the bench. Then there will

be some lead time before they become efficient.

Senator SALAZAR. Let me just say this, Commissioner. I fully appreciate the fact that it takes time to hire people, and it is going

to take time to hire the additional ALJs. I appreciate the time and

that there are resource limitations here in the President’s budget

and what Congress has appropriated for this function in the past.

But it seems to me, if I were in your shoes and CEO of SSA and

looking at what is happening with disability claims and the delays,

especially in the ALJ piece, over the last 10 years, I would be saying, well, here is my 5-year plan. That 5-year plan means there are

additional resources that we need to provide to the system. Maybe

you need 2,000 ALJs.

I do not know what you need. Maybe you need new technologies

in order to be able to get rid of the paper that probably causes a

lot of the delays we have to deal with. Maybe you need legal

changes in terms of giving some additional authorities and deadline requirements that would be imposed by Congress.

But I think it would be a reasonable thing for all of us who agree

that this is a huge issue to ask you, as a person who knows 10

times more about this issue than I do, to come up with a plan on

how you effectively are going to get us to a point, over a reasonable

period of time, where people can expect a timely final determination from an ALJ about their Social Security claim, and also how

we are going to reduce this backlog to a level that is reasonable.

Frankly, the way that I see this conversation going and our discussion on the budget here, we are going to be back here next year,

essentially with the problem continuing, and then the next year

with the problem continuing. I think we need to get to a point

where we have a plan of how we are effectively going to deal with

the problem.

Commissioner ASTRUE. And you are perfectly entitled to be frustrated. If I were in your shoes, I would be, too. If you look at the

written submission, which is much longer, you can see that there

has been an extraordinary amount of activity in 100 days. We are

not done.

There is a lot that we need to do where we need approval or consultation, with the unions, with OMB, with OPM, and other agencies. We are working very hard. We have regulations that we have

started working on in February that are already over at OMB. We

have legislative proposals that will be over there shortly.

I have not had a chance yet to submit a budget. My first budget

will be the fiscal year 2009 budget. You can count on the fact that

we will submit a budget that will do our very best to try to bring

17

the backlogs down as rapidly as we reasonably can. That is our biggest priority right now.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator, very much.

Senator SALAZAR. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Cantwell?

Senator CANTWELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Commissioner, continuing on that same line of questioning, obviously I am very concerned about the backlog, and the Nation as a

whole.

But I am also very concerned specifically about the northwest region in Seattle. It is my understanding that Seattle ranks second

to last. Only one other region has a worse response rate in terms

of the delay; at 584 days between the request for hearing and a decision, it is 172 days slower than the Philadelphia region.

So do you have any knowledge or information about why the

northwest region in Seattle is so much worse than the rest of the

country? And I do not want to underplay how bad the rest of the

country is, because we are having this larger hearing to discuss it.

But now we are at the very harsh end of that poor performance.

Commissioner ASTRUE. It is a very fair question. I look, on a

monthly basis, at the ranking of our hearing offices from 1 to 141

in terms of the backlogs and have been trying to ask those types

of questions. I have asked our Office of Policy to do an analysis,

looking forward to how we should place judges.

It looks to me like there is at least a serious possibility that, in

terms of the geographic assignments, we may have been using an

overly simplistic metric for deciding how many judges to put where,

because there are certain patterns. The Midwest is also highly

problematic—Michigan, Ohio, and States like that.

So we are asking those types of questions, with an eye toward

seeing what we should be doing to try to address that most effectively with the next round of ALJs. Some of it is random. One of

the problems when you manage a system that is going down from

attrition is, you are not able to replace in any sort of rational rate,

that who decides to retire or who decides to go do something else

dictates who is left behind.

So there are, in the district offices and the hearing offices, some

that are in reasonably good shape, and some that are hurting very

badly, where a big factor is just, simply, who has decided to retire

or leave.

One of the things that I want to stress that I think is going to

be very important going forward, we are going to try to pilot, I

think, with probably about 15 ALJs initially, but I think that we

will probably get much larger.

As long as we are tied strictly to hearing offices that often have

three, four, five people, every time there is attrition, every time

there is an issue with an ALJ, that makes a huge impact on that

particular region. If we have judges in a central location that can

pick up work wherever the problems are the worst, then we have

a safety valve for the most affected regions, which we do not have

now.

We do this on a very limited basis—for instance, Boston is doing

Cleveland cases—but we do not have that much extra capacity anywhere. So, actually building some of that capacity into the system,

18

probably expanding that going forward, I think, is going to be very

important, not only for the problematic ones in Seattle, but in the

Midwest and other places.

Senator CANTWELL. Commissioner, could you look into this issue

as it relates specifically to Seattle and give us a concrete answer

as to what are the anomalies, or attrition issues, or administrative

law judge issues?

Commissioner ASTRUE. Yes.

Senator CANTWELL. I mean, you are covering a lot of territory

here, but as we look at remedies for the larger nationwide problem

I think it is important for us to understand exactly what the cause

is in Seattle so that, as we look at these issues from a budget perspective, we do not just say, all right, it is all about ALJs, then we

come back in 2 years and find that Seattle is still drastically off

what the rest of the Nation is.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Yes. First of all, I will submit something

for the record. I actually was going to be out there this week, but

I canceled the trip because of this hearing. We have rescheduled

it for next month.

What I am trying to do is to actually look at the best and the

worst. I am trying to figure out where the problems are, and I am

trying to figure out what best demonstrated practices look like. So,

it is certainly my intention, when I go out to the regions, to try to

get a better handle on that as well.

Senator CANTWELL. Because, right now, you do not know whether it is ALJs or people who have left through attrition from the

workforce that is there on the ground, or whether there is some

other unique situation about cases.

Commissioner ASTRUE. It is too complicated and important for

me to try to make something up, other than give general responses

to what tends to happen in general. But it is a fair question, and

we will submit something for the record.

Senator CANTWELL. I would very much appreciate the specifics to

highlight. We have had other instances of discrepancies on Federal

agencies out in Seattle. I do not know if it is just too far away from

people or something, out of sight, but we have found in other instances Federal agencies without either the resources or at least on

a level playing field as it relates to per capita populations. So, I

think it is very important that we get down to the specifics on this.

[The information appears in the appendix on p. 55.]

Senator CANTWELL. If I could, Ms. Shor, I know that we are talking a lot about administrative law judges in general and their process. Do you think these cases are just too complicated or are you

seeing too much complexity here?

Ms. SHOR. No. Certainly that is not a characterization of many

of them. Certainly there are very complex ones. But I think attacking the backlog is really a two-pronged project. One is dealing with

the cases that are at the hearing level and how you are going to

process them more expeditiously, but certainly the second part of

that is, how can you prevent cases from coming to the hearing offices at all?

If the State agencies had more resources and could better develop the evidence in these cases, you might find that many people

would have their claims approved earlier in the process, they would

19

never file a request for hearing, and, gosh, that cannot be a better

solution to the backlog problem.

Senator CANTWELL. So you are saying you think it is more about

process and efficiency in the system as opposed to very complicated

cases dragging the whole system down.

Ms. SHOR. Right. There certainly are very complicated cases and

ones that, for one reason or another, it is almost inevitable that

they are going to need to go to a hearing. But we think there are

lots of cases that could be paid earlier in the process, and that is,

of course, the very best way to tackle the backlog: not let it begin

in the first place.

Senator CANTWELL. So, 584 days, almost 600 days between the

request for a hearing and a decision. It’s way off.

Ms. SHOR. Way off.

Senator CANTWELL. So what do you think that should be, just in

a norm?

Ms. SHOR. I think the reality is, as Senator Salazar mentioned,

there are always going to be cases in the pipeline. But why it

should be more than a year from request for hearing to getting a

decision—it is not enough to just have a hearing. If you have the

hearing and then nothing happens, that claimant has gotten nowhere. So to get from request for a hearing to a decision in a year

seems like a very reasonable target.

Senator CANTWELL. Thank you.

Senator Stabenow?

Senator STABENOW. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I appreciate it.

Welcome. I very much appreciate this hearing. In fact, this is

something that has been a growing concern, tremendous concern

for me in Michigan. I have six offices all over Michigan, from Detroit to the upper reaches of Northern Michigan, upper peninsula

of Michigan, if you are familiar with Michigan; a lot of territory,

a lot of people.

I have been hearing growing concerns from those who do constituent work for me. In fact, the woman who is in charge of our

constituent work who has been with me for over 20 years doing

work has said she had never seen it as bad and is extremely

alarmed by what has been happening.

I just want to start by sharing observations that have come. This

is from people from throughout Michigan. I want to speak to the

first one, and I want to ask you about it. Here is what she says:

‘‘It appears that initial applications are denied on a pro forma

basis—just denied—and not based on facts or merit of the individual case.’’

Now, that goes to the question of where you start, because, if

something is not denied, then you do not have to worry about going

on to a hearing and an administrative law judge. So I have a real

question about how these applications are being addressed on the

front end.

Second, our observations are that wait times to have an appeal

hearing in Michigan scheduled after a case has been denied have

steadily increased, as we have talked about, from an average of a

year to over 2 years. That has been our experience in Michigan.

20

Then, finally, we are seeing an increase in Social Security Disability cases, particularly those who have experienced severe hardship before being found eligible. People are being forced to put their

lives on hold, with no income, no ability to work. I have hundreds

of cases I could share with you, but I just want to share two. A

gentleman named James contacted our office in April of 2006. He

had been denied SSDI, even though—even though—the VA had

found him to be 100-percent disabled in March of 2003. I would

really like to know how that happens.

If the VA says somebody is 100-percent disabled, this goes to the

question of, are we just automatically, the first time you apply, just

denying these questions? He filed an appeal in January of 2005. He

and his wife filed bankruptcy in May of 2006. They then filed for

separate maintenance.

He was 2 years behind in his property taxes, became suicidal,

and we finally were able to help him, in June of 2006, be able to

get a favorable decision after he was found, in March 2003, as 100-

percent disabled by the VA. How could this be so far off?

Then I would just share one more, and Commissioner, I know

you want to respond to that. A gentleman named Brian was denied

SSDI in 2002. He did not appeal at that time, but he applied again

in 2004 and was denied. He filed an appeal in January of 2005, but

he had been unable to work since 2000. He was dependent on relatives to support his family of four children.

He became so desperate that he and his wife were forced to send

their children to live with separate relatives. He contacted us in

October of 2005, and we finally were able to help him get a decision

in January of 2006.

So, he was unable to work since 2000, separated his family, and

finally was able to get a favorable decision in January of 2006. I

have, literally, hundreds of these. Every day in Michigan we are

dealing with this.

And so the first question I would have is, how can we have a system where one part of the Federal Government says somebody is

100-percent disabled and they are denied by the Social Security

Administration?

Commissioner ASTRUE. Senator, first of all, I would have to look

at the particular case to know for sure. It is quite possible that it

is a mistake on our part. On the other hand, it is possible that it

is not a mistake. For instance, it is possible that the person does

not qualify for Social Security benefits at all because, under the

statute, there are earnings requirements and that type of thing.

Senator STABENOW. No. They ultimately were approved in June

of 2006.

Commissioner ASTRUE. All right. I do not know. Sometimes it is

also lack of documentation. I know we have talked with claimants’

representatives. There is increasing difficulty getting physicians to

cooperate, sending the paperwork that we need to support a case.

We have been talking about how to deal with that issue. So the answer is, I do not know. We would be happy to look at the particular

case and let you know. If we made a mistake, we will tell you.

Senator STABENOW. I guess the larger question for me is, how do

you interface with other Federal systems, or do you at all? Does it

matter if someone is found 100-percent disabled by another Federal

21

agency, or should it—should we, in order to leverage resources?

Clearly, I am very sympathetic to the fact of those lack of resources.

Even though I am desperately concerned about what is happening to people, I know that there is a responsibility that has

come from the administration and the Congress to get this right,

and that is why we have increased the budget. But have you looked

at the notion, even, of working with other agencies that are also

in the business of determining disability?

Commissioner ASTRUE. Sure. We try all the time. We have looked

to try to coordinate systems, for instance, for electronic hearings to

try to make sure that we try to share systems and things. It is very

difficult, it turns out, to do that because of procurement barriers

and that type of thing. But we do try to talk to the VA; we talk

to CMS all the time.

We do try to work collaboratively with other agencies. I do want

to stick up for the States here, because they are the ones that

make the first level of determination. I understand if a disappointed claimant feels that the system is rigged or unfair, but

they do a very good job under difficult circumstances.

Our assessment of the quality of their decision-making based on

the evidence they have before them is that it is generally very high.

I will have to give you the exact number for the record, but at the

two levels, some States have two levels in the process, some States

have one, but it tends to be about 40 percent, if I remember correctly. So about 40 percent get allowed who apply at the State

level.

In FY 2006, the allowance rates at the State DDS initial and reconsideration levels were approximately 35 and 13 percent, respectively. As of May 25, 2007, the allowance rates at the DDS initial

and reconsideration levels for FY 2007 were approximately 35 and

13 percent, respectively.

Then at the Federal level, the ALJs, the allowance rate has been

increasing fairly steadily over the years; I believe it is a 62-percent

allowance rate for ALJs. So, the system is not rigged against claimants.

Again, I would be misleading you if I said we are perfect, we

make the right decision in every case. In general, you have wellintentioned people doing the very best they can under a lot of pressure, under an extraordinarily complex system. But they do make

mistakes, and when we find them out we try to correct them as

quickly as possible.

Senator STABENOW. And this is not about individual workers, because I am certain that individual workers are working hard and

doing the best they can. In fact, we have had a number of cases

where individuals have gone in, people have seen, physically, the

disability and they have tried to respond, and so on. This is very

much both funding and system.

But I guess what I would leave you with is that we are seeing

marked deterioration in what is happening. I have been, now,

working in the House and the Senate, in my 11th year. We have

a very aggressive constituent operation. We work with people every

day.

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We have an excellent relationship with people in the local offices.

But it is worse than we have ever seen it, to the point where there

are just tragedies every day that we are seeing. So I commit myself

personally to work with you in every way we can, but this has got

to change.

Commissioner ASTRUE. I would be delighted. Again, our numbers

speak for themselves. It is not an acceptable situation. I have said

that multiple times. I agree with you on that. We are doing the

best we can with what we have.

I think one of the things that I hope you will start seeing a difference with constituents is the stories about claimants waiting 3,

4 years. We have made a commitment to try to drive those cases

down. We had incentives before to deal with the easiest cases first

so that it would keep the numbers down generally.

This is going to cause our numbers to go up in terms of overall

numbers for a while, but I think from a moral point of view, from

a system efficiency point of view, we have to just say, look, there

is a point where this is America and you should not have to wait

3 or 4 years for a hearing, and we are moving in that direction,

and we are moving as rapidly as we know how to do it. The numbers are actually encouraging. I did not even want to mention the

goal the first time I came up here because I was not sure we could

hit it.

The way the people in ODAR have gotten behind that goal, there

is just this real good spirit to try to flush out those cases. I think

if you could talk to the people who are hands-on in that effort, I

think you would be much more encouraged about the system for

the future.

Senator STABENOW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Thank you, Senator.

Commissioner, putting resources aside for a moment, assuming

you had adequate resources—in your discussion with Senator

Salazar you were saying a lot of this was not resources. You mentioned the ALJ issue, and so forth. Could you list the one, two, or

three other non-resource challenges that you have in addressing

the backlog?

Commissioner ASTRUE. I think something that is more within our

own control, and something that we have to try to make a lot of

progress on in the next 12 to 18 months is, we do have the tools

to define who is disabled and then how they are triaged in the system. So we really need to have, going forward, essentially three

categories of cases triaged up front.

There should be a category of cases that I call ‘‘compassionate allowances,’’ where, if you are entitled to benefits and you have a certain specified disease and condition and that is documented, that

is it, conversation stops, you get benefits. Examples would be pancreatic cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), patients who

have been comatose more than a certain period of time. Those

types of cases, we should stop developing.

The CHAIRMAN. And what percent of cases would those be?

Commissioner ASTRUE. We do not know. We have not tried hard

enough yet.

The CHAIRMAN. Anyway, that is one thing you can do.

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Commissioner ASTRUE. Right. One of the problems with our listings right now is that we have basically stopped at the low-hanging

fruit, the very big categories of cases. To really make this system

efficient, we need an up-front effort now to go much further down

the list, because a lot of these cases that should be clear are not

going to be clear at the State level because they come up a little

less often.

If we tell the States, this is a clear case, they will act on it instead of having to go out and get a consultative exam and have it

wait 90, 120 days at the State level.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Again, what are the challenges, what are the impediments, what

are the problems you have that make it difficult to get this backlog

way down to, as Senator Salazar was saying, 90 days?

Commissioner ASTRUE. Right.

The CHAIRMAN. You had mentioned the ALJ issue. I would like

you to mention the two, three, or four major challenges/impediments that prevent you from doing that.

Commissioner ASTRUE. I think the first one is, we have to rethink disability. We have to do a better job of defining it. We have

never taken advantage of the advances of diagnostics in recent

years to subcategorize large groups.

The CHAIRMAN. That is an impediment today?

Commissioner ASTRUE. Well, we just have not done it. We have

to do it, and we have to do the regulations. It is going to be a lot

of work. It is going to require a lot of medical resources up front

to do this well and do it fast.

The CHAIRMAN. So that is one.

Commissioner ASTRUE. That is one. Obviously, ALJs are critical.

The CHAIRMAN. Can you flesh that out a little bit, please? You

started to talk about it a little bit with Senator Salazar. If you

could, flesh that out a little bit.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Well, the average ALJ caseload these

days runs somewhere in the 500 to 600——

The CHAIRMAN. No. I am talking about the congressional——

Commissioner ASTRUE. Oh. In terms of the congressional. Right

now, the ALJs have what is called ‘‘decisional independence.’’ We

are not allowed to in any way try to affect how they decide their

cases. There are also a number of other restrictions through OPM

that make it very difficult for the Deputy Commissioner at ODAR

to discipline or set standards for judges.

Again, this is a choice that the Congress has essentially made in

the past. Maybe we are not using all of our tools for some of the

most extreme cases, and we are looking at what we can do within

the constraints of the current system, but, if you want more accountability from me for ALJ productivity, you have to give me the

tools to make the ALJs more productive. Right now, I do not have

those.

The CHAIRMAN. What potential change there comes to mind?

Commissioner ASTRUE. For instance, there is a wide range in

case disposition among judges. We had, if I remember correctly,

four judges last year who decided fewer than 100 cases. We had 13

that decided between 100 and 200. Right now there is no easy way

24

to go after those issues and try to make sure that those judges are

more productive.

Another way of dealing with the backlog, if the least productive

judges could be brought significantly up to what the mean is, then

that would make a very significant dent in the backlog, and we are

looking at ways to do that. It is a tough topic.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

What is another problem, non-resource?

Commissioner ASTRUE. Non-resource. Again, I think this is largely under our control, but this is an extraordinarily complicated

business. The systems are inadequate for dealing with it right now.

Right now we are running both a paper system and an electronic

system. It is the worst of both worlds.

So, flushing the paper cases out, getting away from the paper

forever is a big efficiency gain in my opinion just from doing that.

But the system that we have now is the basic spine. It needs to

do a lot more. We are going to have over a 3-year period where we

are going to need substantial systems architecture and resources

focused to get that the way we need it.

The CHAIRMAN. And what are your plans to get the right architecture?

Commissioner ASTRUE. One of the things we did this year is that

we went deeper than what was budgeted into the reserve fund for

technology. One of the things that is an open question for me next

year is looking at whether we need to go even deeper into that for

next year.

I have a scheduled review for the systems projects for next year,

and I am going to look at everything that is above the line and everything below the line. Everyone knows that I made adjustments

last year based on that, and we may make additional adjustments

this year as well.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have another challenge/impediment?

Commissioner ASTRUE. I think those are the big ones. Again, I

do think that this is hard, and there is a tendency to give up and

say this is a system that cannot be managed. I do not believe that.

I think if you get really good people who stay focused for a long

period of time and stick with it, I do think that this is a system

where we can manage this significantly better than it has been

managed in the past.

The CHAIRMAN. I am just wondering if any of the other three

want to comment on the basic three that the Commissioner mentioned. He mentioned better diagnostics, the ALJ problem, and

also—what was the third? I have forgotten the third.

Commissioner ASTRUE. We talked about the number.

The CHAIRMAN. That is right. The architecture. Any of you three

want to comment, any of those three?

Ms. SHOR. I would be glad to comment.

The CHAIRMAN. Sure. Does that make sense? Do you agree with

it, disagree?

Ms. SHOR. They all make sense, but there is no getting around

that resources is the number-one issue. I mean, there are problems

with a small number of ALJs who are not very productive. Some

of them will tell you it is because they have no staff, or they have

very limited staff. There are all sorts of reasons for that.

25

But the number of judges whose productivity is extraordinarily

low—the number of ALJs—is extraordinarily low, so you can go

after that situation. And these are all excellent ideas, they just do

not reach out to the over-arching problem, which is resources.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Either of the other two?

Mr. WARSINSKEY. I think that it is a combination of both. I agree

with the Commissioner. He has a very detailed plan of things he

wants to do within the Agency, and I think these are great ideas.

It will, I think, take some resources. He mentioned the systems architecture. That takes resources.

His discussion regarding the ALJs, the Administrative Procedure

Act, probably there needs to be some changes in that, still allowing

and giving the judges independence, but also setting some minimum performance standards in terms of how fast you should get

a case out.

We can always manage better and I think the Commissioner is

very much committed to that; I have seen his plan. But I think it

cannot be one or the other, I think it needs to be both. We need

to have a good management plan and we need to have additional

resources, with the additional resources very carefully monitored,

and how the money is used, to make sure it is used very economically and efficiently.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Mr. Schimmels?

Mr. SCHIMMELS. I would agree with the Commissioner that our

systems need to be overhauled. We do have a lot of problems, I

know, operating in a dual system when you are having to work 90

percent of your cases electronically, but then you still have paper

come across your desk.

Then the slow times or the down times that we have with a system that is not able to even keep up with the 90 percent we have

right now coming in, new initial claims, without the system upgrades, and not being able to work 100 percent of our cases that

way, we are going to continue to see slow-downs at the DDS level.

We are hoping to not have backlogs there. We want to keep those

backlogs down.

The CHAIRMAN. I ask these questions because some people automatically say, well, gee, that is easy for Congress to just throw

more money at the problem here. The Agency should be more efficient. That is the common refrain you hear around the country. I

very much appreciate your trying to address some of these nonresource solutions as part of the problem.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. But I also tend to think, and I think everybody

agrees—you have all four said it—it is also resources.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Absolutely.

The CHAIRMAN. This is very much resources.

Mr. WARSINSKEY. I would like to say, I think sometimes that the

more resource shortage you get, the harder it gets sometimes to

deal with the backlog. You have so much paper, and the hearing

offices have so much.

Part of it is just because we have had such short budgets in recent years that it is making us more inefficient, because we are

26

having to re-work cases and they are getting older, they are getting

thicker. I was at a hearings office in Cleveland. They are often a

foot large. That is a lot to deal with.

The longer it takes to do a hearing, the more time it takes to put

it together. If you can get these efficiencies in place, get the backlog

down, then I think we will be able to use the money a lot more efficiently.

The CHAIRMAN. You, Commissioner, outlined some of the unfortunate additional burdens that are being placed upon you in terms

of, as has already been mentioned, the Medicare Modernization

Act, for example. What are those? Whether it is part A, B, D, or

whether it is potential immigration legislation, if you could just

give us a sense of the additional demands that you are going to be

faced with.

Commissioner ASTRUE. In terms of the recent past, the Medicare

burdens have hit us extremely hard. They are particularly frustrating because we can only do so much, and we are trying to deal

with issues that are created by subcontractors of contractors that

work for CMS. We are sort of the messenger and at the back end

of the process. We try to do our part as best we can and communicate as best we can, but there have been huge workloads.

Every time I think we have a handle on it, I get a call from Bea

Disman, who has been a saint working on these cases, and there

is another pile of them that we have to work on. So, originally, I

believe Congress funded us for a couple thousand FTE, I believe for

a year, to deal with that, but we have had to absorb a very large

FTE burden on that.

Immigration. That is more and more every year. What we do,

simply, to issue a card takes more. One of the things that we are

doing—and I am sad about this in a way—is we are moving to a

lot more specialization, because we have to because of the complexity of the system.

So, one of the things I have greenlighted that we have piloted is

Social Security card centers, where there will be co-located facilities

in high-density urban areas that simply deal with the cards. When

you go and look at these offices, you can see the complexity of what

they now have to do. I mean, when I got my card, I just went into

Rossindale Square, I filled out a form, and they gave me a card.

But now, with the amount of documentation required under

Homeland Security and immigration rules, checking previous documents to see whether they are counterfeit or not, it is taking, I

think, up to 16 minutes now, I think. I will double-check that for

the record, but I believe it is 16 minutes just to issue a Social Security card.

On average, it is taking field employees 16 minutes to interview

an individual and process a request for a Social Security card.

It is too bad, in a way. It would be nice to go into a full-service

center and talk to somebody who can deal with everything. But you

look at Medicare, SSI, immigration, card-related issues, it is a lot

for any one person, so we are doing more specialization.

Immigration, potentially, is a big burden. We have tried to anticipate an uptick in requests under the basic pilot program. I have

already authorized a systems expansion so we can handle, I believe

27

it is, about 5 times as many requests as we had before, depending

on what happens with the legislation.

That will be way short of what we have to do, but, if the discussion of the legislation increases the number of calls, I think we are

relatively prepared in the short run. But with all those things,

compared to what the Agency was like when I worked in it 20

years ago, it is enormously, exponentially more complicated.

The sad thing is, we have almost exactly the same number of

people that we had 20 years ago. With the demographics growing

and the workloads much higher, and the burdens under the statutes much greater than before, we are feeling the stress, and there

is fraying in parts of the system. We are doing the best we can to

address it.

The CHAIRMAN. The next question is, how do we assure we make

progress here? I am a little haunted by Senator Salazar’s question

or point that it sounds like we are going to be back here again,

with the same kinds of problems, unless we make very significant

changes.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Again, I am a big believer in not promising what you cannot deliver. I am reconciled that, until January

20 of 2013, I am going to be up here on a regular basis on this

issue of the disability backlog. It is hard. It is going to take time.

I think it is a good thing that members such as you are paying

attention, are monitoring the Agency and asking what our progress

is, and, as you are, asking what you can do to help. I welcome that,

and I think that is a good thing. So, we will be talking.

I cannot make things perfect in a year. No matter how much

money you throw at me, I cannot make it perfect in a year. If we

are adequately funded going forward and we do not have a lot of

new burdens, we can make very substantial progress on these

things.

It will happen faster in the States than it will happen in our system. The States do a better job in terms of timeliness than we do.

It is going to take time at the ALJ level to get the system back into

something that we can all be reasonably proud of.

The CHAIRMAN. What do the States generally do that is better?

Commissioner ASTRUE. I think that they have been doing this for

a long time. They are very efficient.

The CHAIRMAN. Why?

Commissioner ASTRUE. Part of it is, it is a different process. I

mean, they are getting, to some extent, the easier cases. By definition, every case that ODAR gets—almost every case—is a close call,

where there is a claimant that feels exceptionally strongly that he

or she is entitled to benefits and there has been disagreement

below. But I think that they have been better organized over time.

The CHAIRMAN. Just because they are smaller?

Commissioner ASTRUE. Maybe it is that they are smaller. Because they are smaller, they have been better able to develop business processes that work well.

They also have not had the issues of independence. I mean, there

is not a lot that I can tell an administrative law judge to do right

now. In the State system, that is not true for the examiners in the

State system, and that is a fairly fundamental difference.

28

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think it might make sense for you to look

at proposed recommended changes in the law that Congress should

consider?

Commissioner ASTRUE. I certainly think Congress should consider it. There is a history of being very dubious about the Agency’s

motives, so what I would suggest to you is, I think you are raising

an appropriate issue.

I think it would be good to consult with outside experts in the

field and get a really impartial look, because I do not want to aggravate any of the tensions in the system if I do not have to. I

think if you get good outside advice on this, you may very well

come to the conclusion that there are some changes that you want

to consider making.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, that may be and that probably is the case,

but you are also, in effect, the CEO.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Right.

The CHAIRMAN. It is kind of your job to manage and deal with

the challenges that develop, as the top guy.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Right. We are looking at it as well. I

think probably what you will see first is what we think we can do

within the existing system in that zone, because I think that we

do have some authority in some extreme cases relating to productivity and the actual performance of the work responsibilities that

perhaps we have not been using to the extent that we should, and

we are looking at that very carefully. We are not ready yet to tell

you what we think we might be able to do.

The CHAIRMAN. Might you be in a position to do so at some reasonable future date?

Commissioner ASTRUE. I hope so. I do probably have to work

through OPM on most of those, so I am not sure I can unilaterally

give you a date. But I am certainly, as I have on a large number

of issues, happy to update your staff on a regular basis on where

we are.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Mr. Warsinskey, could you address some of the problems we are

having in the field offices?

Mr. WARSINSKEY. Sure. I would be happy to. I mentioned in my

testimony, I think one of the areas that we are having one of our

biggest problems is just answering the telephones. We get about 68

million telephone calls, business-related calls, into the offices,

which is substantially more than our 800 number gets.

The problem is, we really do not have staff devoted, by and large,

to answer the telephones. Because we are losing staff, we are having to devote and redirect our staff basically to speak to people who

come into the office. So I think we really could use some additional

resources just to answer the telephones.

All the letters that go out from Social Security have the local office telephone number on it in addition to the 800 number, so a lot

of people choose to call the local office.

Therefore, because we are getting so many calls and we cannot

answer them, either the calls are just ringing or they are getting

a ‘‘busy’’ on it. I do know the Agency is looking at replacing their

phone system.

29

Our phone system is basically falling apart. It is over a decade

old. We are looking at, I think, a Voice-Over-Internet Protocol system, VOIP. The contract is coming pretty soon. It may cost close

to a billion dollars, I think, to replace. That would require a lot of

resources. We do need to get it replaced.

Another area would be just the number of people we have coming

in. We have more people coming in. They are having to wait longer.

We have had offices where people bring chairs just to wait outside.

I know one office where the fire marshall only lets so many people

come into the office because there are just so many coming in.

The CHAIRMAN. The fire marshall is restricting?

Mr. WARSINSKEY. Yes. Right. That is not good. As the Commissioner said, in a lot of cases our interviews are taking longer, therefore it is creating the need for more people up front because of the

waiting times, because it takes longer to take a Social Security

number interview than it used to take because there are more

rules that we need to look at in terms of issuing cards to make sure

that we are issuing the card to someone who should have it.

The Commissioner also mentioned, as I did, part D Medicare.

That is a workload that has kind of surprised us in how much it

has continued to be a major factor for us in the offices, because we

have had so many people coming in asking to get help from us.

Part of the problem is, they are in a triangle between us, CMS,

and the providers in trying to get their premiums resolved, to get

questions resolved, and in a lot of cases we do not have the authority to deal with a lot of their situations. We certainly help them

with the ‘‘extra help’’ in trying to answer the questions. So we do

the best we can in terms of helping people.

But we have been losing people. I mentioned we lost 1,300 people

this year. It takes 3 or 4 years to train someone up so they are

really proficient. A lot of our employees—I would say over half of

them—were hired in the 1970s when we brought in SSI under our

Agency, so we have to get these people trained and into the system.

We basically are the farm club for the rest of the agency, the

field offices are. We train people. They move into our headquarters,

they go to our regional offices all over, and even work in our systems branch. You have to understand Social Security basically to

work in most of the rest of the agency. ODAR is a little bit different, but a lot of our people go to ODAR, too, to help manage

those offices.

The CHAIRMAN. How many people are there? How many Americans are at the wrong end of this backlog?

Mr. WARSINSKEY. I am sorry. How many what?

The CHAIRMAN. How many Americans? How many people, how

many claimants?

Commissioner ASTRUE. In terms of ODAR, the most recent number when we cleared the testimony—and it is a little higher now

because of the system—is about 738,000.

The CHAIRMAN. Seven hundred and thirty-eight thousand. That

is right. I mentioned that in my opening statement. Seven hundred

and thirty-eight thousand.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Right.

The CHAIRMAN. And it is getting higher.

30

Commissioner ASTRUE. Getting higher. And probably what we

would consider a backlog, as opposed to what is built into the system, is somewhere around 400,000. It is sort of built into the assumptions of the system right now, if it were functioning the way

it ought to be functioning as it is defined now.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Does anybody want to say anything—here is your chance—that

has not been said or address any question that should have been

asked and was not?

Commissioner ASTRUE. No. Just, thank you again, Mr. Chairman. The continuing resolution meant a huge deal for us. We went,

in March, from furlough preparation to being able to distribute approximately 2,000 FTEs.

Since you came up with the money, you might want to know

where it went. We delivered about 1,250 of those FTEs to Operations with the direction that they go out primarily to the field offices. We sent 400 to the DDSs, and we sent 492 to ODAR, about

two-thirds of which went into hearing offices.

The support staff ratio went up from 4.2:1 to 4.4:1, which I think

is making a difference in a number of the most affected hearing offices. Some of them benefitted a lot more than the average.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, this committee is going to be watching very

closely. I am not going to ask for specific benchmarks at this point,

but we will be asking for progress.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Yes. I understand that.

The CHAIRMAN. If you think that you need some statutory

changes, need some additional assistance in addition to the resource additions, let us know.

Commissioner ASTRUE. We are looking at that broadly. We have

possible legislative proposals in a whole wide range of areas that

are being drafted. I do not believe we sent the legislative ones to

OMB. We went with some of the regulatory ones, particularly the

ones related to DSI, first. But the legislative proposals will be coming and I would expect, in the next budget, you will see a number

of those.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Well, thank you very much, all of you.

Commissioner ASTRUE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. We all care. We all, together, want to solve this

problem. Together, we are going to solve it. Thank you very much.

The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:37 a.m., the hearing was concluded.]

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