UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL SECURITY: How The Sequester Will Hurt It

BY MICHAEL P. BOYLE, ESQ./ I’m sure you’re aware of the mandatory budget cuts imposed on federal spending as of Mar. 1, 2013 due to sequestration. This process applies to every department of the federal government, including SSA.

While payment of benefits is not affected by sequestration, you can expect this process will exert a negative impact on SSA’s ability to provide services, and will affect the agency’s daily operations.

SSA is already significantly underfunded due to Congress’s failure to implement the President’s proposed budget. This failure has resulted in district offices having to reduce the hours in which they are open to the public. Sequestration will further damage SSA’s ability to provide prompt service, to schedule hearings, and to issue decisions for pending claims.

A Fact Sheet released by SSA (socialsecurity-works.org/wp…/2013/02/SSA-Fact-Sheet-Sequestration.pdf) acknowledges sequestration will impact its field office and hearing office operations. While the timing is not clear, SSA estimates sequestration will result in longer waits in field offices (a likely average of 30 minutes) and for its toll-free 800-number service. The wait to process pending levels of initial disability and SSI claims would rise by over 140,000 and result in additional delays of at least two weeks in issuing decisions.

Sequestration could result in the loss of more than 5,000 SSA employees. At the hearing level, claimants will have to wait nearly a month longer for a hearing decision, and progress in reducing the hearings backlog will decline. Average processing times are already on the rise, with the average now more than a year. With each furlough day, ODAR would not be able to hold 3,000 hearings.

The only way to prevent this from happening is to contact your Representatives in Congress, and your United States Senators, and demand they eliminate the sequester and fund SSA at the levels it needs to function effectively.

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