quote:

Originally posted by Broadside:

quote:

Originally posted by Aglifter:
DC exploded under Obama. It was a little crap hole of a town before that.

No, it exploded under six years of Bush and a Republican controlled Congress who used the guise of the War on Terror.

I’ve lived in the DC Metro area most of my life. I watch the once great state of Virginia turn from solidly red to bright blue as a result of the Republicans reckless spending.

Don’t kid yourself, this wasn’t a problem just caused by Democrats. Plenty of Republicans had their hands in the cookie jar as well.

Bush is/was a globalist the Patriot Act was and is the largest government intrusion on American lives. He was never the best choice but it was "His Turn"
They squandered money (like Democrats) and that paved the way for Barack Obama.

quote:

Originally posted by Aglifter:
I promise the SSA is wildly overstaffed, compared to a private entity.

Haven’t looked at it, but it’s just how the feds/bureaucrats are.

On the bright side for the feds, once someone actually reviews for fraud, they’ll drop a sizable percentage of the recipients. (According to Sen Kennedy about 6.5 million SS recipients are over 112, so clearly the SSA is doing a horrible job on fraud.)

Feds don’t seem to understand the concept of “rent seeker.”

Outside of… MAYBE basic research, basic weights and measures/the court system, and the Navy/Coast Guard, EVERY person in Federal government lives off the efforts of others.

Now, we may want some of that - but the people working in those areas should understand that they consume, only. They cannot contribute.

I am going to ask for your forgiveness in advance for any strong language, as I do have some very strong feelings about this. I'll address some points you raise, not necessarily in order.

According to Sen Kennedy about 6.5 million SS recipients are over 112, so clearly the SSA is doing a horrible job on fraud.

This is absolute total BULLSHIT. Sen Kennedy was referring to an SSA Office of the Inspector General report. According to a Social Security Administration (SSA) inspector general report, approximately 6.5 million Social Security NUMBERS are linked to people listed as being 112 years old or older. Those are NUMBERS, NOT BENEFICIARIES. That's what the report said. Look it up yourself. SSA maintains a data base of all beneficiaries, and also a separate list of all social security numbers issued. SSA gets reports of death from a variety of sources. This includes reports from survivors, state BVS offices, DOD, the Veterans Administration and other sources. The death data goes to the data base of BENEFICIARIES. It also goes to the data base of social security NUMBERS issued. Benefits stop as soon as SSA gets the death report. The death reports do go also to the data base of SSNs issued. But since there are no checks, just the death gets annotated. Some states don't add SSNs to their death records. If you know anything about this, you would say that it's not surprising that there are lots of numbers (numbers, not beneficiaries) that never get annotated with a death. So I am sure the figure Sen Kennedy mentioned (which was compiled by federal employees, not an outside source) is accurate. But you have to consider. Is it worth the time, money and effort for SSA to hunt down whether there is an unreported death if no checks are involved? I'll anticipate a question and answer it- where do these SSNs come from where no death is annotated and they were never a beneficiary. Example - children who sadly pass away, the never married 30 yr old who dies in an auto accident etc.

So what does SSA do to guard against unreported deaths of BENEFICIARIES? Every office gets a listing of beneficiaries attaining age 100. SSA EE's do a personal FACE to FACE visit with all of the 100 attainments. ID is reviewed. The beneficiary (or caregiver) is also questioned to verify identity of the person seen face to face. After the 100 attainment cases are worked, periodically we get listings of older people who already had the 100 attainment review, but are still collecting. Same review process. The listings are annotated electronically by the employee who did the review with date, time of review etc. If you take a 120 year old for example, they have had multiple face to face reviews at different times by different employees. What if we discover an unreported death and someone else is getting the checks. Do we catch some fraudsters who are collecting checks from a dead beneficiary. Yes we do. We make a referral to the US Attorney and they make a prosecution decision.

There is also a second process used to detect possible unreported deaths of beneficiaries. This post is already too long, so I'll briefly describe it. The very large majority of all elderly beneficiaries are on Medicare. Almost all of them submit Medicare claims. If there is a beneficiary who doesn't use Medicare for say, five years, that MIGHT be an indication that you have an unreported death. Of course often that's not true. But it's worth checking out because we DO from time to catch unreported deaths.

I promise the SSA is wildly overstaffed, compared to a private entity. Haven’t looked at it, but it’s just how the feds/bureaucrats are.

You clearly have a presumption that since these are feds/bureaucrats, SSA must be grossly overstaffed. I note that you "haven't looked at it." Yet you are certain that it's true, because that's just the way "they" are. Well I have looked at it. I could post all kinds of statistics showing increasing workloads and declining staff, but they are available with any google search. I can tell you what I have seen personally. I've been in an office staffed with 15 employees and every singe seat in the reception area occupied and literally dozens of people waiting outside to get in. That's pretty much the case in every office I have been in.

Every single employee that i have worked with who had prior private sector experience ALL said that the pressure and the workloads were greater at SSA than anything they ever experienced in private industry. No exceptions. I'll tell you how SSA has kept from drowning. Overtime. Lots of it. Congress keeps authorizing more overtime money rather than money for staffing increases. (I will agree that overtime is in the long run cheaper than new staff.) So you guarantee that SSA is overstaffed. I suspect that no amount of facts or anecdotes are going to convince you otherwise. After all, that's just the way we all are.

So I need to understand that I consume only. I don't contribute. So I didn't contribute when I went into my office at 3:00 AM to respond to an entry alarm and met the police there to survey the office. Never got paid for it and didn't expect to. I was at work a 7 AM the next day. I was about to type some more anecdotes of myself and others about the tax payer dollars saved, such as checks stopped to incarcerated felons not eligible taken from department of corrections listings. But it's kind of difficult to read that in my 43 year career the only thing I did was to consume like some fucking welfare recipient since I cannot contribute. I'm sure I should not have taken it personally, but I did. For that I apologize.

I've got two kids and seven grandkids. The current amount of debt is not sustainable and will ruin the country unless cuts are made. So I am glad that DOGE is taking a look. We must make cuts. But to his credit Musk said DOGE won't always get it right. What organization does? During my career I worked with lots of veterans. I worked with some of the most decent hard working, caring people I have ever known. In fact, I would say that most fall into that category. I was talking recently with a friend of mine who is a federal retiree. He was saying to me that he is a rock solid conservative who voted for Trump. But sometimes it's hard to be a MAGA Republican because of the utter contempt that so many MAGA supporters clearly have against federal employees. There is a clear presumption many of them have that federal employees on the whole are lazy and corrupt.

I am sure that I haven't changed your mind about a single thing. But i feel better posting this. I got a chance to get it off my chest. No offense intended to anyone. Thank You.

^^^

"This post is already too long,..."

Not when you are making a point, maintaining civility as well as making that point based on experience and thoughtful opinion.

Long or not, nicely done.

....Relating to the office space discussion, not the SSA branch of this thread....

Stopping the waste is what needs doing. Zero concern about the impact. Every bit of wasted spend has been making someone or other happy - of course there will be many tears when the gravy trains stop running.

If this kind of thing were left to the usual politics, the gravy-train-smoochers would all go one after another to bribe beg their reps/senators for parochial exceptions... and nothing would ever get done.

IMO, dump the leases and let the chips fall where they may. If the locations and buildings are decent, the landlords will eventually get other tenants.

Fed161 I understand that you worked in the SSA for a long time and I appreciate your comments but one comment stuck out for me after reading it.

My 101 YO grandmother passed and kept receiving checks for months after her passing. I know for a fact that nobody came to her home to actually check if she was alive the year she turned 100 as I was living with her and taking care of her needs in her last few months.

Could this have been a one off case? Sure but this is my personal experience. She was living in NYC so not some out of the way boondock… It took about 6 months before she stopped receiving payments and of course we set the money aside because we knew we would have to return it.

Just one persons experience.

Fed 161 I cannot read single spaced type without losing my place or getting a headache. It is similar to reading the fine print on a medicine bottle.I could probably read double spaced type. Your posts have been educational.

quote:

Originally posted by smlsig:
My 101 YO grandmother passed and kept receiving checks for months after her passing.

I had the opposite experience with my mother last year (and into this year). She died on November 6th, and within a few days they automatically closed out her SS and actually clawed back her November SS check from my dad, even though he was still entitled to it since she lived all the way through October and into the month of November and SS checks are paid for the prior month.

It then took 2.5 months to get my father a video conference appointment with a SSA employee (no in person appointments available), which finally happened a few weeks back, and they said it'll be another 3 months or so before the money is authorized to be released back to him.


So your grandmother received 6 months worth of checks she wasn't entitled to, while my dad is stuck waiting 6 months for 1 check that he is entitled to.

There are 6.5 million more people than our population on SS roles ranging from 112 YO to 375 years old. Doge reported, and announced on Andrew Wilkow patriot Channel Sirius XM.

quote:

Originally posted by downtownv:
There are 6.5 million more people than our population on SS roles ranging from 112 YO to 375 years old. Doge reported, and announced on Andrew Wilkow patriot Channel Sirius XM.

Read Fed161's post above. He spent his career working for SSA, and he addresses that claim. The SSA OIG report is being misquoted/misrepresented.

That's 6.5 million Social Security numbers. As in their numbers still exist in the system.

Not 6.5 million beneficiaries.

There's not 6.5 million dead people receiving SS benefits.

I'll repost the directly pertinent portion of his post here:

quote:

Originally posted by Fed161:

According to Sen Kennedy about 6.5 million SS recipients are over 112, so clearly the SSA is doing a horrible job on fraud.

This is absolute total BULLSHIT. Sen Kennedy was referring to an SSA Office of the Inspector General report. According to a Social Security Administration (SSA) inspector general report, approximately 6.5 million Social Security NUMBERS are linked to people listed as being 112 years old or older.

Those are NUMBERS, NOT BENEFICIARIES. That's what the report said. Look it up yourself.

SSA maintains a data base of all beneficiaries, and also a separate list of all social security numbers issued. SSA gets reports of death from a variety of sources. This includes reports from survivors, state BVS offices, DOD, the Veterans Administration and other sources. The death data goes to the data base of BENEFICIARIES. It also goes to the data base of social security NUMBERS issued. Benefits stop as soon as SSA gets the death report. The death reports do go also to the data base of SSNs issued. But since there are no checks, just the death gets annotated.

Some states don't add SSNs to their death records. If you know anything about this, you would say that it's not surprising that there are lots of numbers (numbers, not beneficiaries) that never get annotated with a death. So I am sure the figure Sen Kennedy mentioned (which was compiled by federal employees, not an outside source) is accurate. But you have to consider. Is it worth the time, money and effort for SSA to hunt down whether there is an unreported death if no checks are involved?

I'll anticipate a question and answer it- where do these SSNs come from where no death is annotated and they were never a beneficiary. Example - children who sadly pass away, the never married 30 yr old who dies in an auto accident etc.

But he then goes on to describe in several further paragraphs the safeguards that exist to prevent dead 112+ year olds from receiving SS checks. So please go read his entire post.

I used to know a guy that got out of the military and started working for SSA in the Houston area (I cannot recall exactly which office). He told me stories of incompetence and he was told not to do anything outside of his job role. Mediocrity was the way of the office. They actually discouraged him from doing more. He quit and moved on. He was in his mid 20’s and had his career in front of him. I am sure there are offices where the employees go above and beyond, but there are probably as many that do not.

quote:

Originally posted by downtownv:
There are 6.5 million more people than our population on SS roles ranging from 112 YO to 375 years old. Doge reported, and announced on Andrew Wilkow patriot Channel Sirius XM.

Hahahahaha. So by your logic, when we started issuing social security numbers, there were 275 year old people that signed up?

Oh my.

The real question is not if there are 375 year old folks collecting social security, the question is how many. If we are talking about one guy who's birth date was misentered into the computer and is still on the rolls I could see that. If there are 10,000 folks who's checks are all being deposited into Nancy Pelsoi's bank account, that would probably be a little more concerning. But not surprising.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:

quote:

Originally posted by ridewv:
Unfortunately, in affected areas, these massive cuts in jobs, leases, and selling off property will be awful for many property owners, both residential and commercial, and maybe some lending institutions.

I do not feel sorry for property owners that have been doing business with GSA. Renting to GSA is an above market value gravy train.

Spent a month in Russia on a .gov contract. Appartment they had leased I found out they leased for $5k per month. That was about 10 times the nominal rental rates there. Bet every embassy does the same.

@Fed161

How did your career generate wealth? (Eg, I take lower cost inputs, and turn them into products which the market places a higher value on. As do all manufacturers, farmers, etc.

People on logistics take goods from a lower value place to a higher one - often to the point of consumption/conversion into higher value goods.)

By definition, you were in an economic rent seeking role.

It did not create any wealth. It is not a role which can.

You took tax dollars - which cost considerably more than free market dollars, burned a percentage of them, and gave them to other people.

It is a structurally flawed system. You may have been a very dedicated person in it, but it’s a failed model.

The absurd amount collected vs. what someone received is a sign of that.

As to the SSA, in particular.

There are 58,000 employees.

There are 20,000 claims per day. So, about 2.5 employees per claim.

100,000 office visitors. (This seems like an absurd number. I cannot see any reason for a number to be this high, in the modern era.)

So, 1.5 visitors per employee, per day.

240,000 callers. So, about 4 calls per day, per employee.

One thing you won't hear me say is that all experiences with SSA go well. Of course not. They don't .Actually a far bigger problem with SSA is the opposite to checks going out to dead people. It's checks terminated erroneously for death to people who are alive. SSA sometimes gets crucified in the press when that happens. Before you think - there you go. More proof those fucking bureaucrats don't know what they're doing. I have never seen an erroneous death case caused by an SSA employee. When you enter a death into the system, you enter both the SSN and the name. So if an employee keys in the wrong SSN (say transposes two digits) the death input won't process. It's kicked out because there is no name match with the SSN. Unless by an incredible coincidence and the wrong number happens to have the same name as actual deceased person, can't happen. How do erroneous deaths happen? Lots of deaths of beneficiaries never get reported to SSA by surviving relatives etc. In many cases it's not because someone is trying to rip us off. It's because they think the funeral director or BVS will take care of it. (which they often don't). So here is an example of how it happens. A hospital submits a bill to Medicare. They key in the bill incorrectly and enter the hospital release date in the field for death. So the data passes off in a data exchange to SSA, and the alive person winds up getting their checks terminated erroneously.

Responding to other posts, during the first Trump administration I know in person visits were suspended for a while because in a cost cutting measure SSA and other agencies were prohibited from authorizing any travel funds. But that may not be your situation. Is it a one off. Maybe that particular office got behind in their 100 attainment cases. I don't know. But I will say again that the notion that there are 6.5 million SSA beneficiaries over age 112 still collecting benefits is complete total bullshit.

Regarding delays, if anybody thinks that I am offering some sort full defense of SSA's service, I'm not. I think that SSA's public service right now stinks. There are lengthy delays that I think are unacceptable. Where all the haters are going to disagree with me is why. I know it's lack of staff. If you doubt that, I wont make any effort to convince you otherwise. But I know different.

What I wonder is what's going to happen when DOGE gets around to SSA. There is absolutely no chance that DOGE is ever going to recommend staff increases. So once the axe gets to SSA, lots of luck getting an appointment with SSA or timely processing of your claim.

There are some conspiracy theorists who think that Trump wants to fire all SSA employees and turn Social Security over to private industry. I am about to pass along some information that will make some heads explode. I urge you look it up if you think this can't be true. Compared to private companies, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has significantly lower administrative costs, typically only around 0.5% of benefits paid, while private companies often have administrative costs much higher, sometimes reaching into the double digits as a percentage of revenue. From the Brookings Institution, a conservative think tank: No private insurance or investment management company comes close to matching Social Security's low operational costs. I urge you google SSA administative expenses vs private industry and see for yourself.

At this point I'll bow out of this discussion. I don't think I can add anything more of value. Not going to try to raise any new issues.

A) Any private entity would do vastly better than SSA.

The average taxpayer would add about ~1MM to his retirement account if his SSA taxes went to his Roth etc instead.

B) Fed161, I think your in the same boat as a Soviet military officer.

The Wall is coming down, and all the sins are coming to light.

It is hard to realize that a career was spent in the furtherance of corruption and oppression, but lots of people did get over it, and process their part in it, when the Soviets fell.

The feds will have to do the same


As for admin efficiency, bit hard to figure out as it appears yall paid out more than you received. .

Fed161,
Thanks for taking the time to explain so much of the SSA's work. I am sure there is fraud, but the SSA appears to be relatively efficient.

quote:

Originally posted by Aglifter:
@Fed161

How did your career generate wealth?

I don't think that is quite fair. Though by definition every government employee is a cost to private sector tax payers, many of the jobs are functions valued by citizens.

The fire department costs us money, but we need their services.

Productivity creates wealth. Yet value can be added without a direct productivity per se. The people who make fire fighting equipment add value directly to raw materials, and generate wealth via sales. Firefighters indirectly add value to our community but don't have an easily quantified wealth creation through productivity. We are clearly better off for having a fire department though there is arguably a net drain on the citizen's monetary wealth.

It is the nature of the public sector.

Whether a particular government program is justifiable is a different question. I believe the Social Security retirement program is doomed to failure, and needs to be tailed off before it collapses with severe consequences.