The House Social Security Subcommittee held a hearing this week on the challenges the Social Security Administration (SSA) faces in determining who is eligible to receive disability benefits and how to reduce wait times.
Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX), chair of the subcommittee, said too many Americans spend years trying to get an answer from Social Security on their benefits.
“Social Security has a lot of work to do. People are waiting too long to get a hearing – and that’s simply unacceptable,” Johnson said. “Social Security needs to get these wait times under control. The American people deserve no less.”
Johnson said more than 1 million people are currently waiting for a hearing with a Social Security Administrative Law Judge. On average people will wait around 600 days to get a hearing.
“While not all of them will qualify for benefits, all of these people deserve an answer in a timely fashion. And for those who don’t qualify for benefits, these long wait times make getting back to work even harder,” Johnson said.
Bea Disman, the Acting Chief of Staff for Social Security, agreed that the wait times were unacceptable.
When asked if the SSA has a plan to eliminate the current backlog and prevent a recurrence, Disman said “[W]e have to put everything on the table… not just the hiring of human resources, it’s being strategic… if we don’t have a plan that’s strategic, and deals with the core of our problems, just giving us the budget won’t stem the cycle that you’ve just spoken [of].”
Kathryn Larin, director of education, workforce, and income security issues at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), said the SSA needs to update and modernize the processes, policies, and tools it uses to determine eligibility for disability benefits, many of which have not been updated for decades. Even programs like the SSA’s Compassionate Allowance (CAL) initiative – which was created to expedite claims for beneficiaries with certain severe medical conditions – fall short, she said.
“We found that a third of CAL impairment summaries are more than five years old, even though medical experts we consulted suggested that, given advancements in medical research, summaries should be updated every one to three years,” Larin said.
There are things that the SSA can do within its budget to speed up the process, Larin said.
“Is SSA using the resources that they currently have as efficiently and as effectively as they can? We found several instances where we don’t believe that they are – where they can be more effective and more efficient,” she added.
Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH) stated that simply appropriating more funding isn’t the answer when it comes to the SSA processing people’s claims.
“It’s always easy to talk about money,” he said. “We have to be more efficient. That’s what we do in business and that is what families have to do. We just have to be more efficient.”
Johnson along with members of the subcommittee sent a letter to President Trump in February
asking that he nominate a commissioner without delay.
“Social Security needs a Senate-confirmed commissioner who can lead the agency and focus on providing the service Americans expect and deserve,” Johnson said.