AFGE SSA Council 220, which represents 26,500 SSA employees at field offices and teleservice centers nationwide, and allies last week held an online forum to discuss urgent issues at the Social Security Administration (SSA) and urge lawmakers to make sure that SSA is fully funded and fully staffed so that it can provide Social Security benefits to the American people today and for generations to come.
AFGE SSA Council 220 President Jessica LaPointe was joined by Social Security Works Executive Director Alex Lawson and Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans (WIARA) Executive Director Alex Brower at the forum.
LaPointe said SSA is an agency in crisis as its budget simply has not met the growing needs of rising beneficiaries. While baby boomers are turning age 65 at a rate of 10,000 a day, SSA’s staffing is at the lowest level in 25 years and SSA’s operating budgets have decreased by 17% (adjusted for inflation). Cuts from short-term funding measures like the Continuing Resolution (CR) are forcing SSA to suspend new hires and limit overtime, resulting in huge claims backlogs, longer wait times for beneficiaries, and high turnover as overworked employees leave for less stressful jobs.
LaPointe said employees should not be blamed for the customer service delays caused by elected officials’ failures to fund the agency properly and give employees the tools they need.
To fix the problems, AFGE, Social Security Works, and WIARA called on Congress to do three things: fully fund SSA during its annual appropriation process, provide $20 billion in emergency supplemental funding over 10 years, and fix solvency issues.
“Without the funding, we’re going to be in this same position year after year of just barely meeting the public’s needs, if at all,” the Council 220 president said.
Solvency
Currently, Social Security’s funds will be able to pay 100% benefits until 2034. After that, the program will be able to pay roughly 80% of scheduled benefits.
The program is funded by a 6.2% payroll tax paid by workers and an additional 6.2% paid by employers. But because it has an income tax cap of $168,600 this year (or $160,200 last year), income above that is not subject to Social Security tax. There have been attempts to either raise or get rid of the cap to solve the solvency issues and make the wealthy pay their fair share. The Social Security 2100 Act, a bill introduced by Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., for example, would impose the Social Security payroll tax on earnings over $400,000 to raise Social Security revenues. If enacted, the bill would extend the depletion date of the Social Security trust funds by 32 years.
Social Security Works’ Lawson said the issue of solvency stems from the fact that billionaires don’t want to pay their fair share. So, Congress needs to overcome the political power from the billionaires who don’t want to pay more.
“There’s no social security crisis. There’s a billionaire crisis,” he said. “There’s billionaires that don’t want to pay in at the same rate as rest of the country’s workers.”
O’Malley is following through on his commitments
LaPointe also gave an update on the new SSA commissioner – Martin O’Malley, whose nomination AFGE supported. She said she has seen a few signs of change that are encouraging. After being confirmed by the Senate right before the holidays last month, O’Malley met with labor leaders to discuss Engage SSA, a new employee engagement tool he wants to enact to help with service delays, issues employees are seeing in their jobs, and others. Through Engage SSA, employees can share their thoughts anonymously to improve customer service delays.
“We wholeheartedly at AFGE encourage this type of interaction because employees don’t feel like their voices matter, aren’t listened to,” LaPointe said. “This will be a great tool, postings are anonymous. With that said, AFGE wanted to make sure to stress to the agency that the root cause of all major themes related to customer service delays are direct result of underfunding, understaffing, dead last in employee morale, and subsequent attrition crisis we’re in.”
Asked how the public can protect their Social Security benefits, the group urged them to call their lawmakers at 315-817-5437 and ask them to fully fund SSA, support supplemental funding and any bill that resolves solvency crisis.
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