Let’s take quick stock of what this lame duck Congressional session has meant for middle-class Americans, especially seniors and their families:

  1.  Legislation that reversed 40 years of federal law protecting retirees’ pensions was tucked quietly into the massive spending bill. The change will allow benefit cuts for more than 1.5 million workers; many of them part of a shrinking middle-class workforce in businesses such as construction and trucking.

 2.   $42 billion in largely corporate tax breaks was passed without the “pay-fors” demanded by Congress for virtually every other spending provision. According to the Congressional Budget Office, if Congress keeps passing short-terms extensions every year or two, the tax breaks will cost $700 billion over the coming decade.  As Citizens for Tax Justice so aptly put it: “If our government has $700 billion to spare, it should be devoted to paying for things we really need, not wasted on corporate tax giveaways.”

3.   Congress has headed home for the holidays without confirming a Director of the Social Security Administration.  This is after nearly 18 months without a permanent agency head at a time when the agency faces the largest workload increase and budgets cuts it’s faced in its history.

Since we’ve already written about the first two items, we’re going to fill in the details on the third, including why it matters so much to Social Security beneficiaries.  Social Security expert, Eric Laursen provides this recap:

“Republican senators are upset about delays and cost overruns on a new computer system at the Social Security Administration—so upset, they have blocked President Obama’s nominee for commissioner. The only the trouble is, the new computer system was planned and ordered up by the prior commissioner—a George W. Bush appointee.”

“A lot of this is simply hyperventilating. It’s not clear that the GOP senators “received information from whistleblowers,” as they claim. What happened for sure was that an interim report from the Social Security Administration’s inspector general said that officials at the SSA may have misled Congress about aspects of the $300 million computer system. The report stems from an investigation that Colvin herself ordered after she took over from Astrue early last year. And when the senators point their fingers at “the activities of certain members of your immediate office” in their letter, they would be referring to officials who were in place under Astrue as well. Yet the tone of their letter suggests, misleadingly, that Colvin herself may be under suspicion.”

“It’s been an article of faith for Republicans from the early days of the Reagan administration that the heads of agencies like the SSA must not come from within the agency itself. If at all possible, they must be strongly conservative critics who are committed to “reforming” it by shrinking it and pushing back against its unionized workforce. The less experience they have with the day-to-day running of a big, complex agency like the SSA, the better. Astrue fit that bill. Colvin, by contrast, represents the so-called “permanent government” Republicans are determined to break. That they were ready to exploit any chink in her armor, however unfair, should have been foreseeable.”

Colvin’s qualifications to be SSA’s Director are undeniable, as NCPSSM’s President/CEO, Max Richtman, told the Senate in a letter last week:

“Ms. Colvin has extensive experience with the Social Security Administration (SSA) that makes her uniquely qualified to provide leadership to this vitally important agency. She has been Acting Commissioner of SSA for more than a year and, before that, had served since 2010 as the agency’s Deputy Commissioner. In addition, she has in the past held a number of other key executive positions at Social Security headquarters, including Deputy Commissioner for Programs and Policy and Deputy Commissioner for Operations.

The broad-ranging nature of Ms. Colvin’s experience has provided her with the knowledge and the temperament to lead SSA through the years that lie ahead. We personally know her to be a woman of great integrity and respect the compassionate leadership she has displayed throughout a long and distinguished career.”

Why does this matter to beneficiaries?  Because the Social Security Administration needs a leader in place to tackle the challenges ahead.  Leaving the agency in limbo leaves it vulnerable to even further attacks virtually guaranteed with the new Congress:

… as Social Security faces the sharpest increase in its workload and its most bitter political challenges since its creation in 1935, it will continue to chug along without an official commissioner. Colvin, 72, will stay on as acting commissioner, a post she has held since February 2013.”

“…there’s no reason to doubt Colvin’s commitment to Social Security, which she served as a high-level executive from 1994 to 2001, returning in 2010 as deputy commissioner. As Paul Van de Water of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities observes, Colvin has to work with the budget cards she’s dealt: “She been doing a good job under very difficult circumstances, with a continually shrinking real budget,” he said.

Indeed, the problem is Social Security’s budget — and the Democrats’ failure to safeguard it. The crisis emerged in 2011, when Congress started to pare the president’s budget requests for the Social Security Administration. From then through fiscal 2013, Social Security got $2.7 billion less than the president sought. Some of the shortfall was restored this year, but most of the increase was designated for anti-fraud programs, not pure administration.”

Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times asks, “Are the Democrats allowing Social Security to Twist in the Wind?”  We think that’s a very good question.