SSA's Hearing Backlog is Top Priority

In February, President Obama’s budget plan for fiscal year 2013 was introduced. Only a slight increase from the 2012 budget amount is proposed for SSA. SSA’s budget amount for 2012 was already $400 million less than the 2010 appropriation. With all of the goals set forth in SSA’s latest strategic plan, how will they be accomplished?

SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue, in response to the budget proposal, stated: “I committed, by the end of FY 2013, to eliminate the hearings backlog and reduce the time it takes for a hearing decision to 270 days. Mustering help from across the agency, we remain determined to achieve this goal despite the significant increase in hearing requests.” (NOSSCR Forum, February 2012, page 4)

This means SSA has to make some tough choices. Other parts of the agency will see fewer resources. SSA will lose almost 5,000 employees within the next two years. On the other hand, over 1,500 ALJs and support staff will be hired to accommodate the hearing backlog. Therefore, claims pending at the initial and reconsideration levels will increase, as well as the wait time for a decision at these levels of adjudication, while the wait time at the hearing level will continue to be reduced to Astrue’s goal of 270 days.

In an earlier report, TRAC discovered that SSA was in line with achieving this goal until 2010, when the amount of disability cases rose so significantly that even the increased amount of SSA staff could not handle the burden. “While considerable progress has been made, the agency’s goal of reducing average processing days to 326 days next year and 270 days in 2013 will not occur unless these recent trends can be reversed.” (TRAC SSA http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/ssa/266/)

Interestingly, SSA’s previous fiscal strategy for years 2008 through 2013 also included plans for reducing the hearing back log. According to a study done by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) through Syracuse University in 2011, the backlog of disability cases awaiting a hearing actually continued to rise during the quarter of 2011 in which the measurement was taken, from July until September.

TRAC reported a 9.3% rise in such cases from last year (click here to view TRAC’s data).This was the 5^th straight quarter in which the hearing backlog actually increased rather than decreased, creating a 11.1% increase overall.

Will Commissioner Astrue be able to achieve his goal before his term is complete? This challenge is a daunting one for SSA that must be handled with great attention and care. Disabled Americans are entitled to a timely decision, which is why this has become Astrue’s top priority. Fiscal year 2013-2016 will be the true measurement of the success of this goal.

Written by Anna Westfall & Attorney Andrew November

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