The Social Security Administration’s already debilitated services will further erode this year despite a $785 million boost to its budget, the agency’s acting head has told lawmakers.
Although the extra funding Congress added in December to the agency’s $13.3 billion budget aimed to ease those problems by increasing staffing to improve phone operations and reduce record backlogs in the disability system, Kijakazi said it will take significant time to see improvements.
Kijakazi’s letter, a broad report highlighting crucial Social Security operations as required by congressional appropriators, comes as House Republicans push to cut federal spending and reduce the deficit. Some conservatives have suggested an overhaul of Retirees, disabled claimants and others seeking help from an employee on Social Security’s toll-free number will wait 35 minutes for someone to pick up, compared with 33 minutes during the last year, the letter said — though advocates and customers say actual wait times are often far longer. And 15 percent of callers will get a busy signal, up more than double last year’s rate of 6 percent.
Staffing remains a significant challenge. Social Security made about 3,800 hires to full-time positions from October 2021 through September 2022, a spokeswoman said, but lost about 5,900 full-time employees to retirements and attrition during the same period. Another 2,300 were hired in the last quarter of 2022 through January as 1,400 employees left. A similar staffing problem has plagued state-level offices.
She wrote that the agency is working to hire new administrative law judges and disability examiners, but noted that training new examiners takes time.“We must address the significant number of people who are waiting too long for important disability decisions at all levels of the disability process,” she wrote. “In particular, we share claimants’ frustration about waiting over seven months on average for an initial disability decision.
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