Commissioner: As we continue to lose staff, our already unacceptable customer service would significantly worsen. Image: The Image Party/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe Social Security Administration has told Congress that an extended freeze of its funding at current levels would be “devastating,” requiring it to take steps including a hiring freeze with only “minimal exceptions,” cutting overtime to “historically low levels,” and reducing the hours its offices are open to the public.
The hiring freeze that would be required from locking in funding at fiscal 2024 levels for the first six months of the new budget year beginning October 1, as House Republicans have proposed, would result in being unable to replace some 2,000 employees expected to leave through December, Commissioner Martin O’Malley wrote to appropriations leaders.
That would reduce staffing to just above 56,000, the lowest level in more than 50 years, he said in asking that Congress provide the funding increase that the Biden administration has requested.
“As we continue to lose staff, our already unacceptable customer service would significantly worsen,” he wrote, with impacts including increasing the already record-high wait times for initial decisions on disability benefits applications; longer waits for approval for standard Social Security benefits and Medicare; and an increase in wait times on the customer service phone line that already are “far too long.”
“We have made do with flat, declining or nominal increases in administrative funding for years,” he wrote, even as the number of beneficiaries has increased. Since 2018, administrative funding has declined from 1.25 to 0.94 percent of outlays, while the initial disability claims backlog has more than doubled to 1.2 million since 2018 and the number of actions pending at processing centers have increased from 3.2 million to 5.1 million.
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