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Federal News Radio
What is this
thing called ‘government’?
By Mike Causey
For most Americans, THE Government is probably the U.S. Postal Service,
the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration.
OK, and sometimes the Pentagon. Maybe the FBI or CIA, depending on your
level of paranoia. Or the Centers for Disease Control if you live in
Zika mosquito territory. After that the definition of what is the
government can vary regionally. The big three have one thing in common:
they take, give or deliver.
The Fish & Wildlife Service, for example, is big in Montana. The
Bureau of Land Management is known, loved and sometimes hated, in many
parts of the West. Not so much in New York City, where many probably
never heard of the Interior Department operation.
Most federal operations don’t make money or worry about profits. But
many taxpayers would be surprised at how the Minerals Management
Service brings in lots of revenue. So does the Customs Service. And of
course there is the IRS. Congress doesn’t turn a profit. But one of its
primary functions — which it rarely fulfills — is to approve funding
for government operations.
Mostly, like this year, it blows off that responsibility and approves a
CR (continuing resolution) allowing agencies to operate on last year’s
budget plan (which was also a CR) and hampering many operations in the
process. Congress to some extent can control the operations of a
service-oriented agency by giving or withholding funds. The IRS
continues to to be punished for what House Republicans (and many
voters) think was an unfair bias against tea party groups. While that
may be satisfying — and justified — taxpayers ultimately suffer in the
form of reduced service and lots of badly needed revenue goes
uncollected.
Social Security has had its ups and downs. It’s 65,000 employees serve
millions of Americans as they qualify for, enter and exit (in death)
the Social Security system. In its annual 200-plus page congressional
budget justification, SSA said that recent improvements in service may
not be sustainable under the agency’s 2016 budget. “The current state
of service remains fragile,” the administrator told Congress. That is
the view from the top. Here’s another look at things from an employee
in the trenches. Call him John.
”I am the person at Social Security who deals with first level appeals.
I can tell you some of the reasons this is the case. First of all, we
are having a tremendous bout of hiring to deal with the baby boomers.
We are probably replacing one-third of the staff and as a result of
this and other factors, the wait time for processing actions on
person’s record has increased immeasurably . We have six major
processing centers and the time frame on the best of these is 90 to 120
days to process to completion. The worst of these has work up to a year
or more old. A person coming in as a new hire is in class 4 1/2 months
minimum and then on review up to 18 months (a year is average). Once
off review, they take three years or so to become totally proficient
and to feel comfort in their job. The claims taking personnel learn
most of their job by video and then are put out on the floor to talk to
claimants. They do their best, but often do not know they do not know.
The error rate for all components is higher than I have ever seen it
and the worst part is that even if we discover we have made an error,
it goes in the backlog and takes 90-120 days to process.
“Our teleservice representatives go into their jobs after just six
weeks training and the main measure of their efficiency is the number
of calls handled per day. In all fairness, they do not try to make
errors, they just do. The law gets more complicated every year and even
more mistakes are made. Medicare and the different enrollment periods
is very complicated and people often make poor choices due to the
complexity of the law, only to find out they cannot fix their mistake
till months in the future ( even if very sick). Needless to say, all of
this leads to people who are tired of calling SSA and getting the same
run around they do from credit card issuers and banks, etc. They paid
their taxes and want their benefit correct and on time. They also want
the people they talk to to know what the correct answers are. Needless
to say, they want change. Government is too big and too unresponsive to
the people. Agencies that used to be small are now huge as those at the
top expand their kingdoms.”
Read this and other articles at Federal News Radio
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