Transcripts For CSPAN3 Federal 20240705

The Social Security administration, National Archives, and state department testify on post Pandemic Services backlogs before a House Oversight and accountability subcommittee. Live coverage on cspan three. 22 more visas now than at the same period during prepandemic 2019. Despite our challenges, and thanks to the hard work of our teams in the field and domestically. We are currently issuing more u. S. Passports and visas than any other time in our history. Ultimately, this is great news for the u. S. Economy, businesses, family reunifications, and people to people ties. And we plan to continue our aggressive rebuilding efforts to be able to meet the demand today and into the future while rigorously safeguarding our National Security. We are striving to build a more agile and optimize bureau of affairs to be able to serve your constituents. To do so we are investigating the ante in Human Resources we need to ensure federal coverage experience. New parents overseas can now electronically register the birth of their u. S. Citizen children. American citizens caught in crises abroad can use a new online interface to directly communicate with Department Officials in life and death situations. Before the end of the year, we anticipate it up to 5 million americans annually will be able to renew their passports entirely online. Finally, i would like to say a word about the people of the bureau of counselor affairs. I could not be more proud of the scheme of public servants. We take very seriously our long history of serving our fellow citizens. Diplomats have been protecting the interests of americans overseas since before our nation had a constitution. The people of Council Affairs work in person both domestically and overseas during the pandemic to continue to serve the public often at personal peril. Our teams overseas support of the repatriation of 100,000 americans at the start of the pandemic. Our passport adjudicated return to inperson work in june of 2020. They did so because the nature of our work was to provide direct services to the traveling public. Often that means the work is extra warning. We can issue a visa to a student going to their dream school in the United States. Or a passport to someone who can bid farewell to an ailing family member. We can finalize an adoption for u. S. Families are helping american in crisis overseas. As the public face of the state department domestically, and of the United States overseas, we are proud of our partnership with congress and we are very grateful for their support. Your constituents are our constituents. As we navigate this current period of high demand, we want to say thank you to all members and to your Constituents Services staff. You are Invaluable Partners in helping off to serve our shared constituents. We are grateful for your support. Thankful, i look forward to your support today. Good afternoon chairman sessions Ranking Member information Ranking Members of the committee. My name is scott lebanese. I am a director of the National Personnel Center Component of the National Archives and component menstruation. Thank you for inviting me to testify about our ongoing efforts to eliminate the backlog of requests for military Service Records. The npr sea stories and provides access to over 2 million cubic feet of records documenting u. S. Military service of veterans. It also stores and provides access to more than 2 million cubic feet of civilian personnel records are access its bride to government agencies, military veterans and their families, former civilian federal employees and the general public. We are the physical custodians over 4 million cubic feet of analog, or paper, records. The Access Points and any growing electronic records. Employees in under 43 federal blazing contractors. Norah significantly curtailed on site production due to limitations on Building Occupancy that were imposed to protect staff from the spread of covid19. Other law, norah accumulated a large backlog of requests. It never closed entirely during the pandemic. A little was known about the spread of covid19 we still maintained a limited onsite to make sure we responded to urgent request for records and cases of funeral services, Emergency Health care and Homeless Veterans seeking shelter. As the country gained a better understanding of the covid19 protection, the nprc increased occupancy levels. Occupancy regulations were ended in march, 2022. By then, the total count of unanswered requests for military records with 604,000. Since then, nprc has added 73 federal employees and 63 federal contractors to address the backlog. Nara use funds, generally appropriated by congress, to add the staff and contractors, deploy laptops to staff, modernize our call center, and improve our systems for fulfilling military record requests. Nara is partnering with the veteran affairs to expedite our responses were possible. As of june 20th, 2023, yesterday, the backlog of unanswered requests for military Service Records its 266,000. It is a little bit different than my written testimony. I submitted the written testimony last week but i updated as today based on the current backlog. We define the backlog as the number of requests receive that have not been fulfilled within the 20 workday deadline. Since april 1st 2020 to be nprc has responded to almost 1. 8 million request for military Service Records including both new and backlogged requests. The nprc has continued to receive new requests throughout the entire period. The volume of new requests has increased. Prior to the pandemic, we received approximately 21,000 requests each week. Today we are receiving over 24,000. The nprc already eliminated a backlog for request for separation documents, forms 214, and equivalent. They have returned to the prepandemic level of servicing 90 of those requests in less than ten days. 95 in less than 20 days. The d. O. D. To 14 requests are approximately 60 other quest that we receive. It is the record most often needed by their veterans and dependence to prove eligibility for benefits. Nprc prioritizes these requests that of other requests for military Service Records. Other requests are more complex and often require extensive redaction of thirdparty personal data. Analysis of documents and extraction a verification of verification thing chained there in. Or the research of secondary sources. Therefore, these requests take longer to service then request for a didi to 14 despite the increase in demand we have a plan in place to eliminate the entire backlog by december of this calendar year. Nprc it is performing its work today in ways that were unimaginable before the pandemic. Nara as asked a great deal by the nprc work forth many films are veterans themselves and they have delivered. In Response Time and the most frequent and urgent requests have been restored and then president backlog reduction has been achieved. Earlier this month, nprc hosted an onsite congressional open house. More than 50 Congressional Staff from all over the country travel to st. Louis to learn about nprc holdings, observe the work processes firsthand, tour the facility, and work directly during the event, Congressional Staff reported significant improvement in responsiveness. During the pandemic, with each passing week, at the center experienced backlog growth. Today, with each passing week, another significant stride is made in the right direction. The backlog is further reduced. However, there remains much to be done. Naras senior leadership, as well as workforce, are committed to eliminating the backlog as quickly as possible. Providing americas veterans with the service that they have earned and deserved. The newly confirmed archivist of the United States, dr. Kailyn shogan, have made this her top priority. Receiving a briefing on the backlog within hours being sworn in. Visiting and prc in person during her First Official travel as archivist of the United States less than two weeks later. Throughout the pandemic, nara provided updates into Congress Regarding situation at the nprc. Nara well continue to provide quarterly updates to congress and looks forward to soon recording the permanent elimination of the entire background and the restoration of prime service on all types of requests. We think the committee for its interest in this important matter. We welcome any suggestions to improve service to americans veterans. [inaudible] for making sure that our investigators were able to come in and see firsthand not only the work that is performed but to make sure they understood the processes and some of those impediments. Thank you very much. It. Welcome we now move to mr. Boise. The gentleman is recognized for five minutes. Chairman sessions. Ranking member, members of the subcommittee. Thanking you for discussing the status of the Deputy Commissioner for budget. Social security programs and services tantalize of nearly every merrick and we appreciate oversight of our point and work. I hope to convey four main points first our budget directly determines the quality of Customer Service the public received from us. Second, the challenges we face do not have an overnight and they will take time to reverse them. Third, we are working to reduce backlogs and wait times by rerouting outwork fourth and modernizing our technology. Fourth, we are successfully modernizing and expanding our Digital Services to meet the growing demand for convenience selfservice options. Each day are dedicated employees and field officers a answer questions by phone to hold hearings pay benefits incomplete numerous other work loads our priority has always been and continues to be providing Mission Critical services to the public. During the pandemic, we made the unprecedented decision to implement maximum telework and walkin visitors except for a limited Critical Situations by appointment only. This allowed us to keep our employees and the public safe while continuing to deliver critical services. We also expanded our digital an Online Services as i will discuss later in this testimony. We successfully ranted our office and expanded inperson services in april of 2022. However after the destruction of the pandemic we continue to face significant challenges to return to Service Delivery to the public standards and what they deserve. This is largely due to our Staffing Levels. After years of tight budgets in fiscal year 2022 we dropped to our lowest staffing level in 25 years meanwhile the number of beneficiaries and recipients we have served has increased by over 8 million in the last decade. We simply do not have enough staff to timely serve everything that needs or help. The current tight labor market also makes it challenging to maintain staff to attract new staff. We expect to claim 50,000 more than last year almost 130,000 more initial claims. We also expect to handle 2 million more phone calls an 800 number. The disability claims are based talent. Over 1 Million People are waiting over seven months for the initial disability decision. That is far too long. These delays are largely concentrated in the state disability determine jarviss which make the medical determination for certain steps or a disability claims. Late times lengthened during the pandemic due to a lack of medical evidence do to reduce doctor visits and a shortage of concentrated ddss faced higher attrition among their staff and challenges facing hiring new staff. During the dds capacity has hired cadres of professional actors to help the backlog. Theyve already showed results. So for this fiscal year theyve completed nearly 20,000 cases. We are also working with ddss to improve employee employment and retention. This includes making dds more competitive and it will take time, however, to see improvements in our Service Delivery metrics. We also faced challenges with Telephone Services on our national 800 number. In spite of these challenges, millions of customer successfully use the 800 number as a primary method of contacting us. Due to our outdated phone technology and understaffed call centers, some callers have experience busy signals, long waits, and dropped calls. We are addressing these issues with Better Technology and increased staffing. Prior to the pandemic, are outdated phone system was slated for necessary updates to transition into a modern platform. The pandemic redirected inperson service to telephone service, we were forced to develop an interim phone system to answer calls outside of our physical infrastructure. This temporary solution allowed us to serve the public safely and to continue our central Customer Service. But it did not improve our critical phone suncheon. Such as our billety to provide estimated wait times in a call back feature. We look forward to keeping you updated on a progress to improve our 800 number. The funding that we receive this year, which we do appreciate, we are beginning to rebuild our workforce. Once new hires are fully trained and gain experience gaining in fiscal year 2024, they will help us to reduce backlogs and improve service to the public. For instance, with the fiscal year 2024 president s budget we plan to reduce wait times in the national 800 number it down to 20 minutes in fiscal year 2024. Technology is another to improve customer experience. We are successfully modernizing and expanding our deterrence its meet that demand. This also shortens wait times for those who needed prefer to connect with us in person or the phone. I will highlight just a few of our recent accomplishment with digital and modernization of i. T. Online Social Security transactions have grown by about 25 each year since 2018. Each transaction includes tests like checking the status of an application. Getting a estimate of future benefits and managing the benefits someone already received. We also launched our redesigned sa website in the summer after incorporating used a feedback many visited the pages and not have a user friendly approach that provides a clear path that users need to accomplish. We also expanded our hearing options are in the pandemic. To hold disability hearings via telephone and video for customers to choose those options. Even post pandemic, these remote options have proven a strong success with our customers. In 2023 more than 80 of our customers have chosen to participate in the hearings by phone or video. It is worth noting that while our Online Services and Technology Requirements are important, they do not replace the need for trained staff. Even when a customer chooses to follow an online application, which occurs about 60 of the time, we still need employees to process the online application and conduct followup interviews. To end where i started. To prove the improve Customer Service we need sufficient funding sustained over multiple years. The sustained president budgets requests sustained president budget which could help us restore the staffing increasing work loads and continue to modernize technology, reduce backlogs, and lower. Waits if supported with sustained funding insufficient funding our path will be to significantly improve our path to the public in the coming years. We are working diligently to improve Customer Service but we need your support. We stand ready to work with. You, again i appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, mister poist. We will go to our first member, that would be the gentleman, chairman palmer. Thank you, mister chairman. Thank you for holding this hearing. I think it is greenport. And obviously all of us in the District Offices get a lot of requests for citizens with your various agencies. Particularly the Social Security. And, mr. Poist, is that the correct pronunciation . You mentioned having some staffing issues. Im wondering how youre staffing issues might be impacting improper payments . This is an area that ive done a lot of work. In over the years and ive been here in particular on this committee. We have found that well over half of the issues with improper payments have to do with integrated data systems. Administrative errors, failure to verify eligibility, things like that. Those are staffing issues. It could be stuff that are unable to process workload as quickly as they need to. People who may not be about to enter the need to be. Is that an issue . Is that something that you have looked into . We have not seen any notable differences in our human accuracy rates. We have relied heavily on other agencies and we have not seen any differences in payment accuracy rates. I will try to go back and look at the report and if i thought that before i came in here i got that listening to your testimony. The other thing i want to ask is, how are your staffing issues impacting your productivity . Obviously it is. He wouldve brought it up. So staffing alone doesnt affect the productivity we saw productivity declined quite significantly during the pandemic due to the business processing workarounds in the first lap 2023 weve actually seen productivity rebound quite nicely didnt even mention that you were having worker shortage issues . Correct. But your productivity is up even though you dont have an adequate workforce . Productivity is not up. Theres productivity and production. The total volume would be. Production productivity itself has many variables that go into. A new business processes implemented new systems implemented. It could be employees in training and several things like that productivity is not where it was prepandemic but it did rebound in 2023 compared to 2022. What percentage of your workforce is working remotely . Right now on the public facing sites the funeral offices we have almost all of our employees working in the field offices and theyre almost only eligible for telework. That wasnt my question what percentage of your employees you can break it up a field office or break it out here inside the beltway but what percentage of your workforce has not returned to the office . We fully reentered our offices in march of 2020 to 100 of the weighted back in the office . Theyre also eligible for telework. What percentage of your employees are in the office . Again, we look at it by type of office. In our field offices, almost one hunted percent of those employees are working from the office. What percentage of the employees that are d. C. Based are in the office . D. C. Based, an office based environment, not our frontline employees, it is a small percentage. How about you, mister elevens . What percent of your workforce has returned to the office . If you drive by our facility a parking lot this fall. That has been the biggest difference in our ability returning people. So to work out estimate 5 of our workforce is working on site. We have three small teams that we transition to offsite work during the pandemic. It is deliberately kids what we want to do, we have repurpose the space that they occupy in the building to add more employees to address the backlog. Those three small teams are data input. Prior to the pandemic when a receive we waited to find the and we would do that work on tsai. What we do now is we digitize them in batches. Its people working remotely, about 20 people, will transcribe those interest system. About 20 people are working in that one team about you, assistant secretary bitter . All of our public services, the passport educators, have been back in the offense since june of 2020. Overall . In the state Department One of the things im concerned about mister chairman, we have some information that indicates a fairly substantial percentage of federal employees have not returned to the office. That is part of what im trying to find down. By the way, overall i think your productivity, working with the state department and in particular it has been pretty good. You have been consistent with what is advertised and how long it takes to get things done. We would like to see that timeframe short. And if you need more people, we would like to know that. With that, mister chairman, i yield back. I think the gentleman. Thank you very much, again. Mister chairman. Miss bitter, i would like to go back to the state department for just a moment. The Inspector General published i think you may be aware, a report in 2021 that found real delays in ig modernization initiatives for Passport Services. I dont think they were trying to lay blame. They were simply reporting that there were serious delays here. Those delays kept staff working, essentially, in a paper based environment. And inconvenience in many respects for customers by requiring the submission of paper applications rather than the ability to apply on line. Thats incorrect . Yes sir. Okay. So, based on the Inspector Generals report, could you tell the committee what the current status is now of these i. T. Initiatives . How, hopefully, they will improve processing times. And, more importantly, Customer Service . Yes, sir. Thank you. Maybe i will Start Talking about exactly what you highlighted witches online passport renewal. The state department, we see opr as the future of our services we highlighted this program from the general public from august to february of this past year. During the time period, 565,000 americans got their passports on line. Officially and securely. We submitted, we asked everyone to submit a survey once they got the passport back. 12,000 people did. 99 of them said that they were satisfied with the service. It was a pilot. There were pieces that we wanted to work on. We took the pilot off line in february. We anticipate rolling it out more broadly at the end of this year. When we do, 5 million americans should be able to use that system and apply online to renew their passport from the comfort of their own home in a secure and quick way. We are looking forward to that. Broadly speaking, one of the things that we talk about, the future, the services we want to be a to provide people, a look at this in two different ways. One is we want to hire people. We want to make sure that we have enough people in place to do the work. We do not want to force people to do overtime. We dont want to surge our way out of backlogs and processing times. We want to be able to invest in our technology so we can anticipate needs and we can use technology to our advantage to solve problems before they arise we are grateful for the feedback in the reports that weve gotten our counselor systems. We have taken them very seriously. We are working closely with our teams to make sure the recommendations are implemented and with respect to passports in particular, online passport renewal as a product they were we are very proud of and we are looking for drawing it out. Thank you very much, mister poist, i want to get back over to the Social Security administration for just a second. Can you describe to the committee what you believe to be the main contributors to the disability claim backlog that exist that Social Security . Sure, thank you for that question. We were seeing in the pending an average in processing crime grow prior to the pandemic and the initial disability claim. I wanted to call this a bit of a perfect storm that had us. We had a pending prior to the pandemic we hit these challenges that allowed us to pause some work loads. We had trouble getting medical records from the medical community we saw examinations canceled. A number of providers kind of fell off. At the same time, ddss were having recruitment and retention challenges. We are facing now the third year of historic levels of attrition in the states in 2021 we saw about 20 attrition for the disability examiners in 2022 we saw that rise to about 25 for the disability examiners and in 2023 we are experiencing right around 20 again. Weve fallen back to the 2021 level. However historically we have seen attrition averaging between 12 and 15 . So, at the same time, we also implemented a new National Case Processing System that will make us more efficient. Anytime you implement a new system there will be a small learning curve. There is really just a perfect storm of recruitment retrenchment challenges. Not being able to replace all those employees to the budget. Due to some of the pandemic or grounds. Essentially the difficulty in getting medical records, if i heard you correctly, recruitment and retention issues, attrition which has continued to go up. Is there any contribution to that backlog because of telework practices . I dont believe there is any contribution due to telework. As telework assisted in what you are doing . Or has slowed the process . Telework during the pandemic allowed us to continue our mission. Without telework, i dont even like to think about what wouldve happened. An event now that the pandemic is over . Would you consider that and contributed to the backlogs . Or an asset to doing away with backlogs . I dont really believe it is either an asset or a contributor. In each day, again, there are 52 separate ddss across the country. Each of them have their own telework policy. I am reminded intermittent others of the last four lettered of teleworks work. People who are teleworking are, in fact, working. The question becomes are they being monitored in such a way that their work is productive or even more productive than it had been. I will leave that up to the agencies. That is me just conducting an observation. Chairman, very much. You. The chairman yields back is. Time the distinguish gentleman when louisiana, mr. Higgins, is recognized. Thank you mister chairman. Mr. Poist, is it your testimony, you are saying that telework has not impact of the backlog . That americans are currently experiencing, from your perspective . In your jurisdictional 30 . I do not believe the telework has contributed. You dont believe that . I do not. That is a stunning testimony. Who actually every american launching has been impacted, in some way, either the immediate family are those that we serve in our community, in our state. We have been subject to very long wait times that have coincided with covid. When telework largely began im not saying it was created at the time. But surely you know what im referring to. With massive numbers, percentages of our workforce was determined, i disagree with the determination at the time. I think history will prove men like me. Correct our nations most certainly shifted to a large percentage of its workforce being forced to work from home, including this body. It was not nearly as functional. In committee participating remotely as it is when we are here. Engaged in in person. Involved. Are you seriously telling this committee that you are satisfied with telework of compared to on site, in person, office work and the Level Performance that you received from each . Is that we are saying . So, there are many contributing factors. Again, budget and staffing upright two of the largest ones. I do not believe the telework is the main contributor to any of the service found. Is we are gonna have to agree to disagree because i only have five minutes to undo that not. Let me ask you, sir, regarding the wait times that we are dealing with. How is it that Social Security can move fast when the spouse of an elder times . To decrease their benefits but they have to wait 200, 250 days for a response on an application, through the very efficient teleworkforce that we have in place, how can you move so fast when someone dies . Im not an operational expert. I would have to defer that by two operational expert. Its just the way it is . Americans watching, they know what im talking about. We have another in our family. This best eyes. It is almost immediate that they receive a letter that there are benefits of being reduced but a certain amount. If they dare to have a collective karen additional month or so they get built for that. The agency seems to work very fast in that case. Across the country where awaiting times of over 200 days. Miss bitter, i would like to command some of your workforce, maam. Operating under challenging conditions. I would ask you, as well, do you think telework has impacted . But, i must say, my offices interaction with your offices, especially in new orleans, those guys just bend over backwards to help americans that find themselves in a bind with their passport applications. They seem to work miracles. I want to extend my gratitude for that. The larger picture is im concerned about workforce presents in the office across you jurisdictional 30. Would you address that as compared to telework, maam . Thank, you sir. Thank you for the kind words about our norms Passport Agency. We are brave proud of them. For public facing staff overseas and in washington, people have been working throughout the pandemic. The passport adjudicators since june of 2020. Throughout this, i cannot speak to the broader state department and what folks are doing. I think, in our office, we see plenty of people around. There are days where some people work from home. For the most part, certainly do you know what the numbers are . I do not, sir. Could you maybe get back with us . I would ask the same of mr. Levins, and mr. Poist. If you could respond to the committee and a given period of time on what the numbers or percentages are for onsite workforces telework. Mister chairman, my time is expired. I yield. Thank you very much, the gentleman yields back his time. The gentlewoman from pennsylvania, miss lee, is recognized. Thank you mister chair. As members of congress, we have a duty to ensure our government is both funded and functional. We need to make sure that everyone can easily renewal passport, access or Social Security benefits, or apply for veterans benefits. It is our most vulnerable population, the low income, people of color, and the elderly who suffer the most when our agencies cannot do their jobs. We cannot hamstring those agencies when they craft file things dont work. Republicans have starved these agencies and resources for more than a decade. The current backlog is turning routines act locations into emergencies. One of my constituents is a gentle student at the university of pittsburgh. He planned to do a gentle trip to house doris and lead team to have the people there. Although he applied well in advance the backlog meant that my team had to help him to travel to another state to get a same day passport at the buffalo password. Office with the current backlog only those who can afford to travel out of state to take a one day appointment and pay the increased cost can obtain a passport to travel abroad. The two district places in pittsburgh or buffalo and easy. A three hour and four hour drive, respectively. I am extremely appreciative of my districts hard work in situations like this. But they should not be the norm. Miss bitter, are there any plans to expand the number of locations offering sandy services that people do not have to travel hours away . Thank you for the question. I appreciated a. We absolutely understand why it is very important to have as many opportunities for people to be able to apply for passport in person. Across the United States there are 7000 acceptance facilities where people can apply in person for a passport. We do a lot of monitoring and data to see exactly whether we are able to meet the needs of people across the United States. Our data shows that 95 of our customers reside within 25 miles of an acceptance facility. That 90 of americans live within a five hour drive of a counter. That is where you can get seemed a service. What we think we need to do is invest more in ensuring that we have the technology that our systems are modernized and we are able to meet service demands. That said, with respect to acceptance facilities in particular, we are always looking for more places where we can provide service to people. We are happy to work with your staff to see if there are more places within your district, or close by, where we can ensure the people can be seen in person. Thank you. I hope that also means a commitment to working more of the District Offices to better expedite that process. Another turning over. My republican colleagues seem to convince the forget where is how a big part of how we got here were trump era policy that decimated workforce that are. Agencies last year Social Security administration saw its smallest workforce in 25 years while also increasing the person they serve in more than 10 million over the past decade. A 2018 trump getting out of the burning power of the. Worker likely President Biden since reversed the philosophies. As i say workers are not stuck with the context made during that time. These workers are essential for getting millions of americans the benefits they rely on to live. As i say was ranked as the worst federal agency to work at in partnership with annual ratings. Mr. Poist, why was essay not reopen. Why has essay not reopen contract renegotiation after President Biden renegotiated the President Trumpera policy . Thank you for that question. We have a Great Partnership with all three of our unions. We, last summer, didnt come to terms with six contract articles with afg. E we are in negotiation with afge right now for another six articles. Thank you. Often it is the frontline workers they get the most flak and the hard work. One of my constituencies with mistakenly list by deceased by some medicaid payments were made an error. Miss hill lost some of that line of money. Our team was able to work with essay to quickly fix that issue. They issued him a reimbursement track. If the had the funding in Districts Team they would not need to step. And by that we all have positive steps we taken. Mr. Levins, can you briefly explain with the Modernization Fund is . The tea mf was a vehicle that we were able to leverage to basically get a loan to fund the development of a Replacement Development system. The system that we use is about 20 years. Old it is out of data needed replacement. It is one of our high value assets. With those funds we were able to Begin Development we are targeting deployment in december of this year. Thank you i will be respectful of my time. I wanted to add to my republican colleagues seem so invested in fixing the backlog of our agencies but i think they need to understand that cutting funding is not the answer. We need to invest in people and the tech to ensure that our constituents get the money there are from our government. Are you. Back gentlewoman yields her time we now yield to the english gentleman from florida, the gentleman mr. Donald. Thank you mister chairman. Quick comment on the spending levels. The federal agencies are spending more up over 40 from where they were in precovid spending levels. Covid19 is now over. Im not sure what additional work the agencies are having to do except for backlog worked at the agencies were not able to get to because a lot of federal workers are at home. Going to the office and go into the practices that they are hired to do. Look, i get. It would covid19. Youre not quite sure what youre dealing. With that made sense in year one. But year two in year three that makes little sense to continue to leave the offices closed or on partial schedules. From what we understand from the previous testimony, from the director of personnel. The federal workforce which is not return to the office today. Cutting money from the federal agencies because we continue to overspend drastically is a good read and how the physical thing that we should be doing in our country. If that means there are services that are purposes need and are going to need them maybe washington should rethink its policy overall that can address the needs of the American People while not wasting the money of the American People to the Witness Panel thank you for being here i will propose a couple of questions here when you can answer whether it is acceptable or not miss bitter im gonna start with you. And government that forces and essential business only policy while simultaneously paying its employees full salaries while millions of americans weigh an inexcusable amount of time for basic required services. Is that acceptable or not . Im sorry sir, the question is . If we develop and essential businesses only policy but everyone is still being paid fulltime full benefits while americans are having to wait exorbitant amount of times. Frankly they have to call their member of congress to help we through the bureaucracy, is that acceptable . Or is it not acceptable . I want to understand the questions are, please forgive. Me essential services, i think what i hear you asking is about part of the government that were closed except to essential services. Is that correct . Yes maam. Is that acceptable or not . I can speak only for my organization in for the Pepper Services which i think people are most interested in. We have been again open since june of 2020 we had interruptions to her service because of the pandemic but we never stop serving the public. I would argue it has been very delayed. Thank you for your question. I will never forget marta 2020. The day that the pandemic hit mr. Elevens. I agree. We all remember march of 2020. The question is in september 2020 and march of 2021 september 2021 in march of 22. Is it still acceptable for the American People to require services of their government to not be able to get them in a timely fashion because we have members of the federal workforce not at their post doing their job . Is that acceptable or . Not i will speak for our office. We never entirely closed. From day one we have people there mr. Poist, thank you mr. Levins. Mr. Poist, is that acceptable or not . Like the other two panelists, our office is never close to the public. They were by appointment only. What percentage of your workforce is actually in the office in the calendar year of 2021 . I will excuse you for 2020, i get. It early pandemic. Everyone is trying to figure out what was going on. What is your office fully open in 2021 . No we were. Not in 2022 . They. Were fully open. Everyone is back to work 100 and 2022. Obviously not 100 . We know people get sick, people call. Out he had, essential, your entire workforce available to you in the year 2022 . The end of march 22 we had fully rented our offices. It took about a year and a half or everyone to come back. Is that correct . That is correct. No problem with that delay with people coming at work . I dont see a problem. That is the problem, mr. Poist. You dont see a problem with that. I will tell you right now the American People see a big problem with that. When people call my office. This is not a partisan thing. It could be an office every republican member or democratic member of congress. It doesnt matter. People call and looking for Social Security or pass for services trying to figure out how to get something done. They are not getting an answer. They get hung up on the phone. They call our offices. When we call, i get, it everyone is jumping through hoops to answer the call of a Congressional Office. You guys dont think that there is a problem with that . I do. Listen, we will take care of every constituent request. It doesnt matter who the constituent is. It is unacceptable. I yield back gentlewoman yields back its time the gentlewoman from new mexico miss stansbury. I want to thank the employees and the agencies that are with us here today. I want to say that casework and helping new mexicans is the bread and butter of my Congressional Office. It is a huge percentage of the work they do on behalf of my constituents that includes everything from helping our veterans to helping our elders and seniors were Social Security. Helping with immigration issues with the state department. These are very serious issues. Obviously all of us and all of our constituents are experiencing real life impacts that are affecting their families and their lives. I do want to take a moment because it really bothers me when my colleagues bring folks in front of this committee and Oversight Committee and attack our federal public servants. Folks who are literally working for us everything go day to try to address these issues the facts are that when you freeze hiring when you cut pay, when you dot backfill jobs and when you consistently attacked federal employees that affects their morale it affects federal hiring, and it affects the services that our agencies are able to actually provide to the American People. The facts show that when we are not adequately funding our agencies, when we are not adequately staffing our agencies, when we do not support our federal personnel we see the kind of issues we are seeing here today. Obviously we want to talk a little bit about some of the challenges that the constituents across the u. S. , my district in particular, are facing. New mexico is a place where a disproportionate number of our families are low income. Seniors depend on their access to Social Security to live. In some cases, check to check. We also have one of the highest percentages of the number of individuals who are veterans who have served in our military. We are very grateful for their service. I have to tell you, in preparation for this hearing, i spoke indepth with our staff about their casework and what they have been seeing in each of our federal agencies. In fact we have Social Security Service Center in my district in albuquerque. First of all when it comes to Social Security i agree with my colleague on the other side of the aisle on this issue. Folks who are on Social Security, many of them are elders. Many of them did not feel comfortable using some of the technology that the federal government is trying to transition to. When they call our regional offices. Or they call the 800 number and they get a run around by an employee who is not physically in the office, it means that they are not going to be able to get the check. It means they wont be able to pay their rent. It means they are not gonna be able to go Grocery Shopping and put food on the table. For many of the folks who are also living with disabilities it means theyre also not able to get qualified for their Disability Support systems. One of my asks, i hope that you will take this back, mr. Poist, to the Social Security administration and to those who are up the chain and listening today, we do need those offices reopened. We do need more staff, physically, in person. We need to not believing our elder seniors and people with disabilities standing in long lines outside of Social Security offices trying to get their Social Security checks and benefits approved. I do want to make that point. Secondly, miss bitter, i am very appreciative of your work. I will tell you i think everyone here is having this experience right now. The passport backlog the backlog on immigration and other issues we are seeing is astronomical right now. We have not received an adequate answer, in my office, about why we are suddenly hitting this wall. Normally our regional folks are fantastic. They help us all problems when we call it reactor help. Now we are even running into some huge problems. Can you please explain why are we seeing this backlog . When do you hope actually get it resolved . Thank you for the question, congresswoman. I just want to clarify we are talking about passports . Yes. Thank you. So, for the big picture and a back up and explain a little bit about where we are, we are fee funded. Our revenues come from fees paid for the services we provide. Like the rest of the state department, we went into the pandemic at a deficit from hiring freezes in prior years. Because of fees funded, travel stopped. Our fees stopped. We had to implement further hiring freezes. I had the time travel came back and our fees rebounded, about 18 months ago, we were starting 25 down. Miss bitter, im so sorry to interrupt you. But we are short on time. Can you tell us when you expect to be caught up on this backlog . We anticipate by the end of the counter year we will be back at the prepandemic waiting level. [inaudible] wait times continuing to fall incrementally. Thank you, mister chairman i know im out of town but i did want to say one quick thing. Mr. Levins, im grateful that you are here today. We are also seeing significant backlogs and getting those federal records for our veterans. In fact, one of my constituents was unable to get a Veterans Home loan because he did not get his paperwork in time. Please let us know how we can help support your agencies we know that you need support and funding and we are really grateful for all the work that you do. Thank you, i yield back. The gentleman yields. Back to gentleman from South Carolina is recognized. Thank you, mister chairman. As every one of the where we just had a long debt ceiling fight. The outcome was determined by 11 of the budget. Our leaders preemptively removed 89 of spending from any conversation. We have 32 trillion dollars in debt. We are on an unsustainable path. It is a National Security threat to this country. The solution lies in three areas. Health care, immigration, and Social Security. Im gonna talk about Social Security right now. Im going to begin this by saying that im not proposing that we take away anyone Social Security who has paid into the system. We have structural deficiencies. We have problems. Mr. Poist, i will go over them with the real quick. What year was Social Security created . 1935. What was the retirement age in the Social Security act of 1935 . Im actually not aware of that. 65 is the answer. Do you know Life Expectancy was in 1935 . 59. That math works. It doesnt take an actuarial model to see that if most people are living to 59, they dont get Social Security until 65, that math works. What is the retirement age now . I think it varies based on your date of birth. 67 is generally the earliest that most people can retire at that point. Is this fair . Sounds fair. Okay, do you know the Life Expectancy is in 2023 . I do not. 76. 76. So, we have a problem. We have a problem. I have here the 2003 annual report of the board of trustees of the federal old age and Survivors Insurance in the federal Insurance Trust funds. They are required to an annual communication to congress to the president and in this communication it says i will summarize it, basically we have ten years at best until we go into austerity measures where individuals who have paid in that are due benefits from these programs will not be able to meet our obligations. Have you, do you know what happens when we go into austerity measures for Social Security . Do not, we have to get back to you on that one. Okay, the reporter says of nothing is done, 80 of benefits, if you are supposed to get 1 you get 80 cents, will occur in 2023. There is also discrepancy as to what here this is. A couple of models say it will be sooner, almost three years sooner. The challenge is that the people that are responsible for administering these benefits are saying that there is a problem. And im actually just going to read this. Lawmakers addressed the shortfalls in a timely way, in order to phase in necessary changes and to give people time to adjust to them. Implementing changes sooner rather than later will allow more generations to share revenue increases or scheduling benefits. Social security will play a Critical Role in 180 million covered workers and their families in 2023. Within form discussion, creative thinking, and timely, legislative action, Social Security can continue to protect future generations. The people that are responsible for administering the programs that we all hold dear are saying we have a problem. Our leader said that we wont discuss Social Security, receiving our 32 trillion dollars in debt. There was brief talk of a commission the day of the vote but that number has materialized. So, i just think that this is a major problem. I think that the longer we wait, the worst it will get. And i think that it is incredibly irresponsible for us to not begin conversations on how to save Social Security, because the people responsible for administering the program are saying that there was a major problem. And we are doing nothing. And the American People deserve better, and i hope that this congress can get together and find the path forward. Because the alternative is very bad for the American People, and we were sent here to solve problems. This is a big problem. It is past time that we given the attention it has do. And with that, i yield back. Gentleman yields back has time. Thank you very much. The distinguish gentleman from the district of columbia is recognized. Thank you mister chairman, for more than a decade, i say this to our witnesses, congressional republic, and their majorities have sought to severely constrain the federal budget causing lasting harm to agencies. This is a question for all of the witnesses here today. Is your agency able to function properly if it is underfunded, yes or no . No. No. No. In 2017, Congressional Democrats signed a letter expressing concern to then President Trump, that the Social Security administrations decline in budget would affect services some of americas most vulnerable citizens. I asked unanimous consent to insert this letter into the record, mister chairman. Objection, the letter will be entered. Thank you. The Social Security declining budget led to the closure of one, sorry, 64 field officers nationwide. A burdening disability hearing backlog with an average of 540 waiting, day waiting periods, increased wait times, at every point of contact and extended durations for retirement and disability and appointments because of the underfunding. Social Security Administration has had to impose an agency wide hiring increase multiple times, forcing fewer employees to serve more constituents. In 16 out of 20 last appropriations cycles, Social Security receive significantly less than its telling congress it needed. How has this consistent underfunding affected your agencys ability to serve over americans and those with disabilities . Thank you for that question. So, the history of underfunding in Social Security has led to some of the challenges weve talked about today. We hit our low staffing in 25 years, and the fiscal year of 2022. We did receive an increase in our appropriation in 2023, so that has allowed us to rebuild some of our staffing, we are pleased to report as of today that we are up about 2000 people from where we ended the fiscal year, 2022. But the under funding that you are asking about, it also extended our ability to implement new initiatives across the agency. It has also limited our ability to fund our frontline operations to work on some of these critical backlogs. All right, this is another question for you. The Social Security administration reported its smallest workforce and 25 years. The result of insufficient funding. But the number of beneficiaries that they served increased by more than 10 Million People in the past decade. Field offices, payment centers, and disability termination. Services agencies the country continuing to operate under the effects of decreased staffing, while also helping more people at some of the most vulnerable, and sensitive moments. Sustained funding cuts have topped the Social Security administrations current budget, when adjusted for inflation, its funding has decreased more than 17 over the last 17 years. At the same time, because of an aging population, the number of people qualified for benefits has increased 21 . So, how would sufficient funding and staffing affect your agencys ability to provide Customer Service to Older Americans on those experiencing a disability . Right, so, with support of the fiscal year 2024 president budget request i think we would see significant improvements to almost all of our Customer Service metrics. I would mention that in my oral testimony we would see the national 800 number decreased 35 minutes this year to 20 minutes next year. We would also see all parts of the disability process, delivered action of volumes improve, as well, in 2024. We would also be able to continue modernizing is a variety of systems in developing an online suite of services to help customers reach us both online and inperson. Congress needs to provide Adequate Funding to federal agencies to both of your workforce to provide adequate compensation to provide benefits and to provide other steps to track the next generation of federal workers. Otherwise, it may be very difficult for agencies to make progress on backlogs and to improve Customer Service. Mister chairman, i yield back the balance of my time. The gentlewoman yields back or time. Thank you very much. The gentleman from North Carolina, mr. Edwards, is recognized. Thank you, mister chair. I certainly appreciate you convening this hearing. I think it is important for us to understand how our federal agencies are working. How they are failing. And how we can better provide service to americans that pay their taxes and expect a high level of services. There is an awful lot to unpack here with these distinguished folks like this. I would like to focus, just a bit, on passports. That seems to be one of the issues that my office deals with the most. Dont get me wrong, i am excited to be in a place, and my staff certainly is eager to help those with passport issues. We get all kinds of calls for folks who need to go to weddings, running movements, they have business trip, sales calls, mission trips, vacations of a lifetime. They seem to not be able to get service from the state department on passports. In fact, while i see the role of Congressional Offices being to break loose a logjam with bureaucracy, i feel that my office is now often the first point of contact. In fact, there have been situations where constituents would call and ask for help with a passport, to a Passport Agency. To be told by the agency, you need to call your congressman. Then my staff takes the information, turns around and call the agency back. It seems to be a very awkward, inefficient way to run things. Just a few questions on that. Miss bitter, i think i heard you say that 100 of the employees im gonna call it the department of state, are back at work, live. Is that correct . All of our passport, our public facing Passport Offices are open. They have been open since june of 2020 with the staff in the office. I get reports. There are so many folks that are told they have to go visit and office. Sometimes in charleston. Sometime in atlanta. I represent North Carolina in the southeast. Folks have driven all the way to charleston to see locked doors. Is that something you would be aware of . Can you think of a reason why that Passport Office might have their doors closed . Sure. Thank you for the question i should also say that first of all we are grateful for the partnership of your Constituents Services staff. It is really important to us to be able to work with your staff to be able to draw attention to problems that people may be having we have most of our Passport Centers and agencies have public counters they see 23,000 people per week on an emergency basis. We tried to publicize wildly our Service Expectations, 10 to 13 weeks right now. So that people can plan for their trips. It happens that charleston is not one of our agencies and has a public counter. I think the closest thing to your constituents would be in atlanta. We have a number of folks have been sent to atlanta. What are the your performance metrics for your agency . How do you measure success . How do you measure productivity of employees . There are how do we measure productivity . Overall, what we want to see is a reduction in weight times. We are disappointed with the wait times. We think that there are high. We anticipate that they will be going down later in the summer, back to prepandemic levels by the end of the calendar year. There are negotiating with the Union Service expectations and Production Centers but i do not know, off the top my head, what they are. That is a bit vague to me, as a business person. I hear you saying that you are looking for reduction and wait times. What are the wait times right now . Right now it is time to 13 weeks is the Service Expectation for a regular passport. We think it is 7 to 9 weeks for an expedited passport. Those are the times right now. Do you have a goal for the agency, what it should be . Prepandemic wait times, typically although it is seasonal, were 6 to 8 weeks. And 2 to 3 weeks per expedite. We anticipate we will be back there at the end of the calendar year. We were there at the beginning of this fiscal year, i think 7 to 9 weeks. We are experiencing Unprecedented Demand, last year we issued 22 million passport books and cards. Which was the most ever. This year we are on track to do 15 above that. That accounts for the wait times. So that lens another question. Could we have anticipated, should we have anticipated the pentup demand, which it appears to me what we are experiencing after covid, folks are traveling and trying to make up for lost trips. Could we, is there something we couldve done to anticipate that demand . What we have been doing is continuing to aggressively higher passport adjudicators. We came out of the pandemic after hiring freezes that we were rebuilding from, and hiring freezes cause of the loss of the fees that we collect for travel. We are 25 below where we have been four years before. We had been working very hard to rehire people, and rehire as much stuff as possible. We hired 10 of our staff within the last year. We have 10 in the pipeline now. We submitted a plan, and ops plan, that was approved yesterday by congress, requesting more positions and more investment into technology. Today, how many positions are not fueled to deal with passports that are funded . I think we have a 10 vacancy rate. I will have to confirm that. About a number. I think that we probably have, i dont know the answer to that. Where we have requested 177 more in the plan. And i think we probably have about 100 that we need to fill right now. 100, 110. We will have to confirm that. I would just like to say, because my time is expiring. My staff is mostly complimentary about the interaction that they have with those folks dealing with passports. Once they are able to make contact, but my staff spends an enormous amount of time on hold, and calling back to make that contact. It just seems as though we should do better, the American People, with a service that only government can perform. Thank you. Mister chair, i yield back. The gentleman yields back his time. I also want to thank the gentleman for requesting this hearing several weeks ago. And i hope that this meets some of the expectation. The distinguished gentleman from maryland, the Ranking Member of the committee, my friend mr. Raskin, is recognized. Thank you for recognizing me. The philosophy in my office is that everything we do is about continued service, whether it is about helping people get their checks, helping people get their passports, getting ppp loans. When i go to vote on Something Like expanding americas infrastructure investment, or drug costs, that is in the service of our people. So that informs everything we do. I agree with my friend from new mexico who said that his politicians, we cannot defund the government and then rail against the government. We need to make sufficient Resources Available so that we can actually serve our people. But i am speaking for someone who supports funding the government to get the work done. And ive had some problems, and i want to start by referring to a constituent who is immunocompromised, and applied for disability benefits in the spring of last year. She quickly got a denial for a nonmedical reason. It took more than six months for the Social Security administration to tell her she had simply checked the wrong box, without obtaining her records. Had she checked the correct box, she was told that it wouldve changed the determination in her case. She replied, waited another six months to get her case to a different examiner, and then she contacted me for help, getting a status update on where things are good, and then she got another denial. Shes been unable to work since before the pandemic, and needs a Social Security determination once again, which could take yet another year. Despite being immunocompromised, she had to get a Part Time Job because she was broke. She then caught covid19 on the job. This story, about seeming bureaucratic difference and responding to fellow citizens is not unique. Theres hundreds of cases like this every year from desperate constituents who have been waiting, and could not get a status update from federal agencies like Social Security, which is probably not the worst from my experience. What is causing these delays, and what can congress do to help to remove the jam. Thank you so much for that question, we have a lot of challenges with the initial process, and the delays that the constituent was in. So theres a lot of problems leading into the pandemic relating to long wait times, and they are led mostly by recruitment challenges in our states. Again, during the pandemic, that person, i think we got a good plan in place to reverse the course here. That supports the fiscal year 2024 president budget requests that allows us to rebuild staffing at both the agency and our state partners. You know, staffing is probably the number one concern in the state, and we mentioned previously that weve seen record high we are also working on a comprehensive plan for the disability backlog that we have to really sometime later this year. I hope you do that sooner rather than later. We dont want a backlog and a plan to deal with the backlog. And i appreciate your hard work on this, and if there is anything we can do to help, let us know. It is hard to think of anything more important to us for passport help. My office is open 1000 cases in the First Six Months of this year, which is double what we opened in all of last year. And it is impossible to manage our constituents expectation, because the office of Passport Services continues to change the processing times. And that is not an acceptable way for us to be doing business. Recently, the Passport Agency, which is the Passport Office closest to my district, announced it can no longer help with congressional planning on behalf of our constituents. We are told only in cases of life or death emergency can we work to schedule our constituents for appointments. But if the constituent is on the phone all day, and randomly manages to get through to the National Passport Information Center themselves, the call representatives can then schedule a local appointment, even without a life or death emergency. So why are the Congressional Offices encountering such radical discrepancies and policy and inconsistency about weather, when, and how we could actually help our constituents get their passports . Thank you, sir. I am surprised to hear that your staff received feedback, i really appreciate it now that we know we can fix it. But that is not our policy. Can we contact you . Ive got people working fulltime on this now. We would be grateful, we work closely with Constituents Services staff, we would be grateful to be in touch with you. My staff is very nice, and very good. We will get in touch with you. Then we will be able to remove some of the obstacles here. I appreciate that. I yield back to you, thank you for calling this important hearing. I think the distinguished gentleman for taking time not only to join us, but for his specific information that would be helping that those organizations achieve a better viewpoint. Thank you, sir. The gentlewoman from colorado. Thank you mister chairman. As director of the and prc, how many unanswered requests do you currently have . As of yesterday, there were 338,000 unanswered requests of which 265,000 are considered backlog. How many unanswered requests we service about 30,000 a week, and generally speaking, prior to the pandemic, our Customer Service standard was tenday turnaround time. More than 60,000 would be too many intend ease or less. I know for a fact that my Congressional Office has contacted the and prc multiple times to help veterans obtain a copy of their records to verify eligibility and receive their benefits we saw the backlog of the quests skyrocketing to over 600,000. This is often too late for a veteran to receive lifesaving care because bureaucrats were refusing to show up for work. I see that that number is about half now. All your employees back at work fulltime, in person . Yes. Since march of 2022. March of 2022. From what i understand, the backlog has decreased significantly after the npc return to inperson work after multiple requests from congress to do exactly that. You said you came back to work in 2022, and everyone came back in person. Why did it take so long . I want to be fair, we never closed entirely. We always maintained a crew there to make sure that we handled the most urgent requests, those involving funerals, medical emergencies, Homeless Veterans seeking shelter throughout the pandemic, as local Health Conditions improved, we were able to bring additional people into the building. We worked with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and health, to review our building blueprints, our hvac systems, and inform our leadership on what the safe amount of occupancy in the building was. At the time, our records were an analog, and not digital. We werent able to work remotely. Weve made a lot of changes. Yes. Agencies are transitioning away from paper records, and and prc still stores millions of records into facilities in st. Louis. When a veteran or former civilian employee needs a copy of their records, often to verify these eligibilities for benefits, and whatnot, the and prc staff has to file those and process the requests. Its clearly impossible to do that, that would explain why your backlog reached 600,000. Im happy to hear that it is down, but i think that theres a lot of work to do. Because its certainly impacting my constituents back home. Deputy commissioner, how did the fsas transition to exclusively remote Customer Service, during covid, negatively impacting citizens who previously relied on inperson service . Thank you for that question, in the early days of the pandemic, we definitely recognize some challenges as we transition from that inperson service to most telephone and Internet Service in the early days of the pandemic. I think service did improve to the american public, we did experience some challenges in our 800 number, and we have since tried to overcome those challenges to have a stable system today. We are hoping to implement our next generation project system by the end of the fiscal year. Candy essay expedite determinations for applicants who do not have over 200 days to receive the benefits they are entitled to . Once they get them back, but we dont have them. Thank you. Assistant secretary, and if your family have planned a trip, and they needed their passports, they needed them issued, renewed, would you prefer to have your appointment before or after the trip is scheduled . Thank you for the question, we published our Service Standards widely, so that people do not have to make that choice so that they can renew their passports before they make their plans. So, in my district, to give you the backlog, several of my constituents, and the families didnt receive their passports on time, and when they requested appointments, they were scheduled for after their trips. This certainly has caused many families to have to cancel their trips, whether that is for pleasure or something serious. This is an issue that comes up in all of our offices regularly. So we would love to work with you, to expedite all of these services that are provided and represented here today. We would love to work with your constituents, services, and staff. Thank you, mister chairman, i yield. The gentlewoman late back her time. The gentleman from florida, mr. Frost, is recognized. Thank you mister chairman. I am proud to represent Central Florida here in the United States congress. Central florida is home to orlando, one of the top tourist destinations in the entire country. The closest Passport Agency of orlando, florida is actually in miami. It is 235 miles away, about a four hour drive. An expensive plane ticket or train ticket to get there. The miami Passport Agency is only open monday through friday, 70 am to two pm. Im concerned about the people who work monday through friday, the working class people, who have a hard time taking off to go travel for hours to miami for their passport applications. Assistant secretary, i understand the miami passport agencies staff are working extremely hard under the constraints that they have, in the hours they are open. The problem for my constituents is that it is not always possible to take time off to get down there. Are there any solutions that come to mind with the justice problem. Thank you so much for the question, congressman. We have 7000 acceptance agencies across the United States, where people can apply in person, and people can send them in by mail. When we do our geographic surveys, we find that 95 of our customers live within 25 miles of an acceptance agency. And 90 of americans live within a five hour drive of the counter. But what we are aiming to do is ensure that our service team is widely publicized, so that people can plan their trips. They do not have to go to a Passport Agency. Also, to invest in technologies so that people can have more access to the ability to apply from their own homes. We would love to work with you, if there are more opportunities to increase the number of acceptance facilities so that people can apply in person in your district. We would love to work with you on that. I would love to work with you on that as well. Yesterday i sent a letter to the assistant secretary, asking if the department of state would consider accepting appointments on saturday at that office. Would you be able to commit to taking a look at that letter, just so that working families who have a hard time working during the week they could go to see somebody. Certainly. Our counters across the network have, each of them have opened some Weekend Hours. But i would love to look at that letter. Thank you to committing to take a look at the letter looking at how we can accommodate work and families on the saturday, and also looking at how we can get florida, the constituents have and so, we just want to make sure we are doing everything we can to advocate for them. Just this morning, i was rallying with afgy, with a lot of our workers, one of my colleagues brought this up earlier. The Social Security Administration Currently ranks one of the worst federal workplaces. What is being done to support our Government Employees who are currently working under some pretty severe constraints in terms of capacity . Thank you for that question, again, staffing is really the number one reason that our employees are reporting that they feel overworked. Again, with the fiscal year preparation that we received for the increase, we have received in 2022, we implemented a pretty aggressive powering plan. We reported 2000 and then it gains so far this fiscal year. So kind of a help is on the way for those employees out there on our frontlines who are working day in and day out for us. I think that is the biggest challenge we see. They need staff, they need the Additional Support and their offices next to them. For the next fiscal year, could the administration request more funding in field offices, and hotlines, and reduce the disability claim backlog . I know youve expressed the capacity is the root cause of a lot of the problems that we are seeing. Which federal bodies are in charge of funding the Social Security administration . Sorry, im not sure i understand your question. Which federal body is in charge of funding the Social Security administration. Who approved their budget . Congress. Thats it, congress. What percentage of the funding that your agency requested has actually been authorized . So, for, i mean, 14 of the last 20 years, we have not received the budget that we requested for funding. So really funding for multiple years, but yes. There you have, and the reason why disability claims are slower than the last, its not just a fact of life, it is because republicans in congress have chosen to defund Social Security, and Social Security administration. What was the affected telework during the pandemic . Really, telework and operations to continue during the pandemic, our Service Transition mostly, a telephone based service, our office has never been fully close to the public. There was an appointment of both employees, and the public to have an ability criteria with the pandemic. So really, it allowed us to continue our operations, and now that we have heard back in march of 2022, that we do have telework within the agency itself, its mostly adjourned by a business decision. 2020 was not telework eligible, and the flexibilities to suspend telework has an expected high demand. Thank, you i yield back. The gentleman yields back his time, thank you very much. The gentleman from missouri, mr. Burlison, is recognized. I would like to thank him for sticking out through this entire hearing. I am the cleanup hitter. Yes sir. Thank everyone for coming, i appreciate the work you do for the citizens of the United States. I would be remiss if i didnt convey, you know, i dont think it is anyones particular fault, but the frustration that our constituents have, when they call, whether it is theyre canceling their family vacation, or you know, someone is not getting their information timely from, as a veteran. And that people cant get into the Social Security office, our offices are in those calls. So we appreciate the work that you do to work with our office staff. I kind of want to go over this question. I come from the private sector and i worked in i t. We had tickets whenever you have someone calling we had people who manage those tickets. Because of that, we were able to look at particular Employee Data and look at an apartment. We were able to identify picket turnaround time and how that is normative compared to other departments. We were able to identify employees that were exceptional and then we would send out surveys. And then you would be able to determine not only if an employee is fast, but people are happy. People like talking to that employee. They are very pleasant to deal with. Im asking this question because i want to know, is your agency going about the process of doing the same thing . Collecting information about the productivity of your staff . And we can start with thank you. Absolutely we do have a very productive staff that challenges what we are experiencing frankly, we are coming out of a pandemic that is challenged in sectors of the United States, where our challenges are is that we have not enough employees right now to handle what is record setting president. Do you have a system in place where you are able to keep track of the volume that they are taking on . The tickets, the turnaround time and satisfaction scores . You are keeping that . We keep that for the agency and for our call center and all parts of our organization. Do you use that data for individuals on their annual report . Is there any merit pay based on their success . Or satisfaction . I do not know the answer to that. It is certainly part of the Performance Review of people. I dont know how the data is used. Because that is what we do. Your performance or pay increase is dependent upon data as opposed to whether or not people at work like you. Whether your manager likes you. So understood. Something to consider. Same question as mr. Levant, thank you for your question. We are a very numbers driven organization and we have a pretty sophisticated Production System so every transaction gets assigned in number two it. All of our employees have performance plans and all the jobs lend themselves to qualitative standards as well. That is how they are evaluated. There are also programs based on productivity and we do have that instead of programs. That is great. Go ahead i stop to you. Okay. Mr. Poise, same question. The survey said that we do extensively survey our employees but you are asking the employees if they are satisfied. I am asking if the people you serve, the taxpayers, if you are surveying them. We also survey our customers pretty extensively so we have a one line survey so any member of the public can go with one line. Are you using any kind of merit paper performance pay . I would encourage you to do that. My next question i have got a little time, it has to do with how do we improve . How do we digitize or streamline an improved process of getting a passport, and renewing a passport. Then, same thing, how do we streamline the ability for a veteran to just login and download all the documents that they belong. Thank you for the question. We piloted earlier this year, our online passport renewal system. 565,000 americans renew their passport online. 12,000 filled out a survey saying that they were very satisfied. It was a pilot that we are consolidating the lessons we learned before we rule it out before the end of the year. Finally, americans should be able to. Thank you. As i testified earlier, the majority of the holdings in our facility in the late 1990s and early 2000 the military department began setting up electronic personnel systems on a point basis. They didnt go back and digitize all of the paper. However, this is why we struggle, because we did not have access to electronic records. However, the vas aggressively digitized faster than weve ever seen in my lifetime. We build technology to enable our Production System outside of the office for another event like this and when there are emergencies people can now be productive remotely by accessing those electronic records, and we have functionality to send them to veterans in a secure manner as well. Thank you. I yield back. The chairman yields back his time. Thank you very much, you are now recognized. Thank you so much mister chairman. This is an important hearing and i appreciate so many of the members all working to solve challenges for their constituents and wanting these federal agencies to work. We have stories about veterans records and Social Security benefits and i want to focus on some stories about what folks have been dealing with their passports and then thinking about how we can move forward from there. This is not just about people going on trips. Weve heard about a single mother who sacrificed so much that her daughter could get a study abroad trip. That almost all fall into part. We had to do the necessary work so she could get in that trip. A recent constituent neutralized a citizen who needed a passport who was severely ill and they were not able to get her to see him in time before his passing. These are serious challenges people face and their daily life and we want to be able to be responsive so i appreciate the questions around how is it that we can fix these backlogs. I want to focus on the state department. We do not have enough time to cover everyone. But folks have brought up the surge in demand that you are facing. People brought up telework. Theres also the conversation about Staffing Shortages. Amongst those three, or any other, what percentage would you say of what you are facing in the backlog is the surge and demand for passports, and the request, how much has to do with telework, and how much has to do with Staffing Shortages at the agency . Thank you for the question. Just to zoom out a little bit, i just wanted to also emphasize, thank you to your Constituents Services. We understand these challenges and work very hard to publish eyes are standards, so that people dont fall into that trap. Our counterservice was raising 27 people a week, we have been working very hard to try to keep up with what is record demand. And record Staffing Shortages. If i could zoom out and say that there really are two things that we need in order to be able to meet the demand of your constituents number one is fully funding the state department. While we are funded, everything we do relies on the state department platform hiring, contracts, i. T. , all of it is on the state department. When the state department platform is not fully funded it is very difficult for us to hire the people that we need to make sure we have the technology we need to roll out the systems. That is number one. The second thing we need, something that Congress Already gave us, which is expanding the authority so that we can move the feet we receive two emerging challenges more efficiently. We got the expanded spending authority, but just on a year to year basis. For us to be able to make the kinds of investments that we want to make to be able to meet the demand and serve your constituents, investments in the hiring, we need the certainty to be able to strategically plan into the future, to be able to know that we will be able to expand those funds in as flexible a way as possible. So, your sense, or your testimony here is that it really is an increase in demand and a Staffing Shortage that has caused the backlog. And that the president s budget requested additional funding, but my assumption is that we can confirm that if we actually went back and cut back on agencies, that would make the backlogs worse and not better. It would make it much more difficult for us to meet your constituents demands. According to secretary blinken, did Trump Administration caused a loss of 1000 jobs in the state department because of the 16 month hiring freeze. Is it correct the trump hiring freeze impacted Staffing Levels at the state department . The state department has a 16 month hiring three, which we were covering from when the pandemic hit. We had to further freeze positions because of our fees, they were reduced. So we came out of the pandemic, 25 below where we have been for years prior. Thank you for your testimony, i appreciate everybody today talking about how we want to help our constituents, and clear these backlogs. But i want to advocate for the funding of these agencies, and funding these hardworking staff, making sure that theres adequate hours, Holding Agencies accountable to being affected with those dollars. We cant break the government and then complain about how the government is broken. That cannot be our strategy moving forward if we want people to be able to get their family funerals, and if we want people to access their records. If we want people to get their disability checks, we have to be realistic about adequately staffing these programs, supporting hardworking staff, and then not having a strategy of breaking the government and complaining about how government is broken. Thank you so much, i yield back. Jim yields back his time. The distinguished gentleman, mr. Burton, is recognized. Thank you mister chairman, thank you for allowing me to be here. I dont know why we always think you all, you all are just supposed to do your job, so we appreciate that. I guess im thinking you, and your expert coaching skills and the baseball game, mister chairman, i appreciate you on that. A big win. Thank you all for being here, i empty 435th most powerful member of congress, and by the time they get to me, all the good questions have been asked. As i tell most of these folks about the questions already being asked multiple times, act like it is a great thought provoking question, and it is the most incredible question that youve ever heard. I want them to think im on top of my game, thank you all. My first question, though, how do you intend, and i guess this is the assistant secretary, is it ms. Bitter . All right, how do you intend to improve the internal communications to help americans get prompt passport status updates, provide payment information, or get details on problems with their applications like a bad photo or missing photo application. Plenty of our constituents have called my office complaining about difficulties getting timely updates on their passport applications, after they cant get through the National Passport line or they wait, on the line for hours. To be read the same status update Available Online at travel dot state. Gov. Thank you. That is actually a question that has not been asked. Thank you very much. I would like to think the people in my office to handle these all the time. We are grateful to them. Weve been working really closely with our contractor to increase our capacity. Weve seen improvement, but we need to see more. Our call center handled 3. 5 million customer inquiries in the first four months of this year. I think about 1 million just in april. So what they have done is they have tripled the number of phone lines, and theyve hired more operators that have expanded their hours, and concluded Weekend Hours. They will punt up a third facility to be able to handle these calls. Theres also introduced new technology to improve responsiveness. We also have volunteers gotten together on a search team to support them. You mentioned one thing we are working on, which is the passport status check on travel dot state. Gov. We recognize that is something that is lacking, and it does not give robust enough information. We anticipate ruling that out i think in the next couple of months. That will take pressure off of our center. The Congressional District officer uses buffers, because my office has opened 112 passport cases in 2022, from january to june, and in the same timeframe this year the number is 304. Thank you, yes, i think that we, think you for that, we tend to think of the constituent Service Staff as partners, and we are, rather than buffers, we are grateful anytime somebody can draw to our attention, challenges that a constituent is having. It is important to us, because if we dont know about, it we cannot fix it. I would go further, we want to work with Constituents Services staff. We want to partner on outreach into your district, to make sure that people do not miss trips, and that they understand what the Service Standards are. Yes, but when they are on hold for three hours, that i would say those words are very hollow, i should say. Because when i get an angry constituent, and i can tell you what happens a lot. If im in the Church Parking lot are going to the store, i can generally tell him the tone of their voice that it will be a question dealing with Something Like this. Because it seems to be the real hot button right now in my office. And the ladies and my office are doing an excellent job of, it so im pretty sure that our senators call them or push them off on us as well. A lot of the times i know they are dealing with folks that arent even our constituents. So it is very troublesome that this keeps happening. But you are telling me but you are doing something to fix this problem. We anticipate or wait times will be back to prepandemic levels by the end of this calendar year and that through the late summer and fall, they will decrease incrementally. What measures are being implemented to catch up on the backlog. We have search teams in place across the department of volunteers and we have called back retirees. We have kept people from their new employees that are working on passports. Search teams across the department and across the network and world are working to make sure that we can stay within our Service Standards for 10 to 13 weeks. And we recognize that we work very hard to publicize those standards so that people can plan to travel. People Pay Attention, unfortunately people do not Pay Attention until they have a trip planned. We are working, again, across the network. We see roughly 23,000 people per week. Weve extended those hours, this is for emergency appointments. Weve included Weekend Hours as well. I am out of time, but if there is ever something that we need to be doing, i would like to know because this is really a hot button in tennessee. Im sure it is across the country. Thank you. Mister chairman . The gentleman yields back his time. The gentlewoman from dallas texas is recognized. Thank you mister chairman, and much like my colleague, a lot has already been said. A lot that i can reiterate. I think that this is probably one of the times that it is more bipartisan, and our work is being comprised by a lot of the same issues. I do want to say that we are having to work overtime because of specifically, i got a text message from my chief right before the weekend, saying that he was going to have someone work over the weekend because last week alone, we had 30 passport cases that came in. We are overwhelmed with passports, much like it has been said. We have been told that when people call the Passport Office, they are told to call your congress person. So it feels as though we are doing the heavy lifting. And i dont want to beat up on you but i want to be real in the setting because this is what oversight is about. And while i can appreciate advertising and telling people that this is the timeframe that it is taking, we have emergencies that are arising as well. Because i am in dallas, my constituents do not have to travel far, because we do have a location that can help them in the same day. That has definitely proven to be really beneficial to my constituents, and i do want to say that they really do appreciate the help. I know that they would send you the type of love that i am about to read from one of my constituents, sean. Because i want people to understand it is not just summer vacations, even though those are spiking as well, it is other opportunities, sean contacted us frantically. He contacted my office, he contacted me directly, he contacted another elected official, because he really needed help with the passport. But ultimately, he emailed me back in east and my passport application had encountered unexpected delays, which left me and certain about receiving it in time for a great academic achievement of my life. An internship in oxford. Oxford university. He was about to miss this. Because he couldnt get his passport. That is not something that everyone gets an opportunity to do. And so, im excited that we were able to help him, he was excited that we were able to help him, but i do want you to understand, truly the depth of the issues that exist as it relates to passports. I will move on to Social Security, because something that really has not been highlighted is something that was sent by one of my colleagues from across the aisle. I feel as though he was saying that the quiet part was out loud, he started talking about Social Security. And he started talking about Life Expectancy. And he talked about the fact that basically, most people would die before they would ever get to Social Security. That is to summarize it, do you remember that questioning . Okay. So right, now he has a problem with Social Security, because right now, most people will live to see Social Security. Essentially we want to say we are offering Social Security on paper, but we dont ever want to have to see a pay out for that, is what i got out of that questioning. That is unfortunate. And im curious to know if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are expressing this faux outrage about this. Because when we look at the cuts that have been taken. In fact that particular colleague was upset because there were not cuts to Social Security. If i understand your testimony to be correct, you have testified that youve never been fully funded. Or at least for the last 14 years . That is correct, 14 years we have not received you have not even been fully funded, and that particular colleague was upset about the fact that there is no negotiation that will take place about cutting the funding even more. But this does have real life consequences. I do have a constituent, we are working on her case right now. She is the mother of three small children. She reached out to our District Office for help because she has been unable to work since august of 2020, after an illness attacked her muscles and nervous system. Shes also unable to drive and some days even struggles to move. She applied for disability, but is still waiting to hear back to get approved. Because she has not heard, back she reached out to various Community Organizations throughout my district to see if they could help her with grant and utilities. They shouldnt be the story of america. But i am alarmed when i hear people say the quiet part out loud. It seems like what we want to do is say that we will fight against you all, because that is what we need to do for our constituents. But at the end of the day, that means that we are saving money because we are not giving money to people so i hope that my colleagues take this seriously, as we are about to endure a fight as it relates to the budget. And if we really do want to prioritize and the solution is funding so that we can modernize. We need funding to increase overtime to support our backlogs. It sounds like we all know what the solution is, fully fund agencies, thank you for your agency to the United States of america. This is not like statement, i expect others to come. Part of the discussion is that there is a misnomer that i think we get wrong, it is not unusual for reports to be heard in this city, about some of the largest buildings that have federal employees almost exclusively. But federal employees, it has been reported that some 17 of employees only 17 , at one time or another, reported to one of the major buildings here in washington d. C. That were government workers. Those are the kinds of things that fueled the questions about when you go back to work, what is that percent, and i do recognize, or at least i think i do, is state department does need to be on the job for each passport. Thats hard to do over the phone. But i would just say that that is what fuels some of the conversations on our side, about not being at work. Because the reality is, some of the companies that own these badges offer those feedback. Some people in the city have complained about, and we held a hearing, about the city of washington, they need to get federal workers back to work. Because they are having problems economically, and not only in the small business, but they need to do their job. I would like to provide some feedback, if i can, there was a conversation that we had, ambassador, where there was a conversation about online systems that were tried and evidently successful. Now, being looked at in making that an online system. Good gosh, it seems to me if it worked, and got 12,000 people that said thank you, that would be enough for the management of the organization to help us out, because primarily, the people that we run across in waco, texas, and across Central Texas already have passports. It seems like they would be awesome candidates for that. Next point, the good number of Companies Across this country, i can say american express, i can see american airlines, they had people who when you log on, they have a system that says call you back rather than waiting online. May we call you back, sometimes the time is not advantages or something that you complained for. But can you be called back between 47 and 52 minutes . Some of these same Companies Offer an opportunity for you to go online and actually engage a person who texts, it may be regular email, but they text back and forth where you can see the conversation, ask a question, get the answer, and ask for information. Its seemingly to me is a more effective way not to somebody that is not computer literate. But someone who chooses to do this. And it seems like to me there are other tough six, which could be expended from all three of your agencies. Next point, if i were to count these out i would probably get 15 of them, i admit. It is just feedback from watching the process. People generally said, lets say ten weeks later, many of the times, maybe most, maybe all the passport arrived by fedex or u. P. S. The day before. But pending that it may have taken three phone calls that are bound to be a burden off of that process that you have of someone answering the phone. It seems like to me either could be the identification of a cell phone address that you would have that would be available to where you could engage someone, and say this Passport Office, you presented your passport on the 20 sir be advised that it will be about seven weeks. We are not trying to engage we are trying to keep you informed. And as that passport is being worked or maybe put in, maybe a week before you would get that to them. So a number of our calls, once again, this is texas, i dont know everything, well repeat questions. Are you sure you got it . Is it going to come back . They have this plane that is this friday. Are they supposed to cancel the flight . They have three children with them. What do they do with the one child if i mean, you can imagine the enormous questions that evolve from that. My point is that if we i think if you took into account some things that i think would be market based or that others do, i think your satisfaction would go up and i think your call volume would reduce. I think even if you just texted back, were called back, i would text back to each Congressional Office and say please advise your constituents. They would have a better contact. I am saying something in my opinion needs to be done that would reduce frustration and calls. I have gone past my time, im sure i will get time again in just a minute. But i want to just provide that feedback myself. Im sorry . The gentlewoman from vermont is recognized. Thank you mister chair. Thank you all for being here. Im sure you are feeling a little weary. I want to just start by saying, you just cant get blood from a stone. That is what im getting from this hearing. In 2017, President Trump issued an executive order to freeze hiring across the government to reduce the federal workforce. I was one of his very first actions after taking office. Although this order lasted just under three months some federal agencies experienced much longer hiring freezes at the state department, the hiring freeze lasted for 16 months. So miss bitter, how many people did the state department lose during the Trump Administration from policies to reduce the size of the federal work force, including hiring freezes . Thank you for the question. I will zoom out a little bit and answer. What happened was that absolutely, we were recovering when the pandemic hit from those hiring freezes. Then we instituted more hiring freezes putting aside 25 below where we had been in 2017. To give you a sense, i will get these numbers wrong, but at the beginning of the last administration, i think there were probably around 1450 people doing this work, and by the time we were able to get to hiring, there were around 1100. Okay, so you said 25 . 25 deficit when we were able to begin hiring again. Okay, significant. How did staff effect the state departments ability to serve constituents . Just briefly. Thank you, so i am speaking just with respect to Passport Services. In addition to having much reduced staff, last year we got, we received Unprecedented Demand from Passport Services. 22 million passport books and cards. This year we are experiencing, it will probably be 15 above that. Weve been able to grow ourself by 10 , but again, this accounts for the wait times better longer than we would like. Is the staff attrition youve experienced easily reversible at this point . It takes a while to hire for National Security positions. All the people that work for us, the passport is the most important document that any american will hold, and probably the most important document in the world for citizenship. People go through rigorous screening to be able to work for us. And even when we begin hiring, it does take time to bring people on board. I imagine that losing significant staff also impacts institutional knowledge, would you say . That is fair. And we dont just experience that in the departments and the state government, that is true for any organization. You lose institutional knowledge, you lose key relationships, and it impacts the work on a daytoday basis. In any work setting. At this point, i ask unanimous consent insert into the record the New York Times article that stated, quote, President Trumps politicized nation of normally neutral positions, and frequent criticism of his own bureaucracy, hurts the publics faith in government. The morale of employees will remain, and the prospects that a new generation will even enter public service, and quote. The Trump Administrations hiring negatively effective Employee Welfare and morale for years, even after it was lifted the damage had been done. The Trump Administrations misguided efforts to shrink federal agencies caused a mass exodus of knowledge as we were talking about, and no help from the agencies responsible for helping regular americans, providing disability benefits, supplemental security income and access to lifesaving care, it goes on and on. And as weve heard so much in this hearing around passports and visas, one of the most Critical Issues in Social Security faces these significant number of people waiting for months, even years, for a decision on their disability application or appeal. What do you agree with that . That is correct. There are people waiting every seven months. Seven months for initial decision . What is the root cause of your Customer Service challenges . Mostly staffing. So like i said when i started, you cant get blood from a stone. We have american suffering because we have starved government of the resources that it needs to take care of our constituents. And then we sit here wringing our hands wondering why we are in need of constituents. We have to pay for the staff to do this work. We need to make sure that the staff have the resources necessary to meet constituent needs and this is not rocket science. If you starve agencies, they cant do the work. Thank you, i yield back. The gentlewoman yields back her time, the gentleman from california, mr. Garcia i want to thank all of you for your service, i know that it is very hard work and i know the constituents reach out to the federal government, not just in our district but across the country every single day. Ive been in congress for six months, and i have seen the hard work that our federal employees are doing every single day. Right before i took this job i was mayor of california for eight years with 6000 hardworking municipal employees who i respected and uplifted through very difficult times, including during the pandemic. I think it is important to remember, most folks are in government or working in government because they want to help people. I think that it is very important to recognize that yes, theres a lot of work to do in all of our departments, but we have hardworking people behind those desks and on the phones. Now in the community, working to make the country a better place, and provide best services possible. Under sometimes very difficult budget conditions. I personally have just been very impressed with the level of feedback that we have received from working with a lot of the agencies across the federal government, the passport and the issues that were brought up that we are all aware of. The response in helping us facilitate some of these difficult cases has been phenomenal in our office with passports. Yes, there is a huge challenge, we are aware with the emails and calls every day. But the response of those folks on the ground working with their office have been really something great to see. I think the team that are working on it, the passport team, and the team that is theyre helping us through our process, i do want to take this moment to give a shout out to both brian bravo and isaac monroe on 19 District Office that are working on the passport issue, and all these issues every single day. And the countless residents that are contacting us that we can assist. Whether it is for passports, to help with medicare and Social Security issues, or other issues or constituents are facing. I think it is important, something i recognized as mayor, it was all about the budget and ensuring that our agencies have enough to do the job that we are asking them to do. Now, the federal government is on a completely different scale. And i am learning that every single day. But i also, think it is important as we talk about cuts, and even some of the tax i heard earlier about some of our agencies, the hardworking folks and the, that we have also been under the last few years, weve been trying to clean up it must by former President Donald Trump and his sabotage efforts. We look at the state department, which we have been discussing. We have extremists within the Trump Administration constantly attacking the state department and pushing back any sort of Additional Support there as agencies. Im personally proud of the biden and harris administration, the work they have done to rebuild their support or agencies. Theres a lot more work to do, and more support that is needed. But there have been Good Progress made. I want to note an executive order prioritizing Customer Service for those that rely on the services, within the biden and harris administration. I want to quote that order. It is delivering excellent, equitable, and secure federal services and customer experience. And i think that says it all. I commend both the president and Vice President for leading an administration that is focused on people. I want to make a quick note with remaining time i have. Another great example of this is the national personal Record Center, which is for the National Archives. Theyve done a Great Program for Service Personnel record requests. You guys have been involved in that. Can you just summarize for us in this last minute, the administrations investments as well as those from congress wouldve helped the personal Record Center address the records backlog. Thank you for your question. Yes, congress generously appropriated covid relief funds for us, which we used to hire additional staff, contractors, prior to the pandemic our workforce do not have laptops. We had the funding to buy laptops. We also made Technology Improvements to support the electronic records. The vas electronic we are not able to ingest those into our system using Electronic Delivery Services instead of paper. I think its about a 50 reduction of backlog instead of requests, approximately. So i commend you and your team overall for the work that is happening there. And finally, i want to thank all of our employees across all of our agencies for their hard work. And we will continue to invest not just in the departments but also in them, and we will look at them in a competitive marketplace so they are being paid the fair wage they deserve. Thank you. The gentleman yields back his time. I want to thank our witnesses and this committee for their feedback to us that authorized and set up this hearing. I want to thank our witnesses have taken time to include us in their business decisionmaking. I want to thank them for their time to come forward for this subcommittee. I hope he will take seriously every Single Member who spoke today throughout the highs and lows of the personal attacks that were made. But you think the truth of the matter is that we need to continue to work together. For me, these specific agencies have been discussed on a regular basis by members of this body. Much of the discussion has been by people who were not here today because theyre not part of this committee. But that does not take away or diminish the need for us to be engaged with you, to speak with you, and to work with you. I believe you will hear the Ranking Member say in a minute that he wishes to do exactly that. So before we are able to offer our thanks to you also, i think it is important before you leave as our guests to say to you, we would like to gain a perspective on the ideas that you heard today. Because i think you only received a bit of information, and to find out how we can transmit to our colleagues and call back. I believe that we do owe that to this body. We will write to all of our members and tell them what we have done. We will also give them best wishes for the information you provide back about how he would like to take todays hearing. The gentleman is recognized. Thank you very much, mister chairman. Its been several hours, we all go through together. I want to thank you again, as ive said before, for convening this hearing and i want to thank the members of this body who found it important enough to raise the issue. I really want to thank the three witnesses who have been here, as i said before, for several hours. Secretary bitter, Deputy Commissioner poised, and director elevens, the information you have shared regarding the state department, the npr sea and Social Security will, i hope, go a long way to provide direction for a movie frozen is we revisit these issues. Allow me, if i might, just to summarize what im walking away with here. Its clear to me that policy such as the hiring freeze that weve heard about over and over again contributed, to some extent, to this whole issue of a Customer Service crisis. Weve got fewer people, you tend to do less work. And if youre doing more work, you dont have those people for long. Because they get burnt out. I think my colleague said something about getting blood out of iraq. Weve just got to recognize that workers have limits. Theyre going to do all that they can do, and should, do and we will hold them to that. But because we have an ever growing population in this country, it is just booming. Weve got to at some point realize that we cannot allocate the previous amount of resources to a mountain thats growing, crying out for help. We know that staff attrition, no matter how much we target it, cannot be quickly reversed. It takes a minute, as ive heard from some of you today, to allocate resources and deal with Social Security backup in the state department. Whether its training a new person to be a passport adjudicator, or a disability claimant examiner. It takes a minute, and so while we are looking at attrition, and while we certainly believe that we will find a way to fund what we are doing, the real truth of the matter is that it will take us a little bit of time to dig out of this hole. I think i heard you say earlier that it will be the end of the calendar year until we get back to prepandemic levels. So thats the reality, and thats on us to be able to share it with our colleagues here. There is no magic wand or silver bullet. Theres going to just be a lot of good, determined effort, i hope, in supporting our federal workforce. I do know that the Biden Harris Administration are committed to ensuring that agencies that serve the public are indeed funded by investing in them, and the workers and technologies. All of which will put customers first. And providing resources that these agencies need for what we should call optimal Staffing Levels. And to acquire updated technology to improve how the government can deliver those services to our constituents. This has to be priority number one. I said earlier that the National Archives is a good example of how leadership in congress can prioritize improving Government Services by championing investment from the technology Modernization Fund, to help eliminate the veterans records request backlogs. To have that done by the end of the year. And i know vets all over this country who hear this. They hopefully will know there is some real help on the way. The other thing for me is that ive never considered telework to be the problem. Ive always considered it to be a bridge to get to where we want to be. And because of the pandemic, which weve sort of over talked about and referenced, there were delays and backlogs that brought about the need to telework. We were teleworking here in the United States congress for Committee Hearings for well over a year, and i understand its not ideal. But it does not necessarily equate to poorer quality, if and when its done right, and over seeing in the sort of way that makes sense. In fact, telework in many instances is a solution that will increase backlogs and fasttrack to some continuity of work. We know that those backlogs, as we said earlier, our attributable to a number of things, medical records, as we spoke about earlier. And probably three or four other things that i cant think of as they come up to date. Not to mention the Little Things that break up continuity at work, like emergencies and inclement weather, and all sorts of other things. So theres a lot to be taken into consideration. I am going to certainly continue to urge my colleagues on this committee, on both sides of the aisle, to follow the path that we are on. It is a path of bipartisanship, and hopefully trying to find a way to deal with an issue that affects all of us. It does not mean any member of this congress cannot express themselves, its just that at the end of the day, we are searching for consensus. Because most people not on the left, or the right, most are in the middle. Were trying to govern from there, and to govern effectively. Weve got to make sure that everyones heard, but at the end of the day, there is real progress. That there is a real effort to alleviate these problems that constituents are crying out about. You heard over and over again from members of congress about how they are approached at church and Community Hearings my constituents who just feel like they are helpless. That agencies dont hear, them that they are put on hold, and nobody cares. Thats a painful thing, when you dont have the ability to correct that yourself. If everybody was a member of congress, when we would fix the problem, but we should not be the ones that have to rattle the cage is to bring about good service for the people who need it most. So mister chairman, i am going to conclude there. I do have and would ask you now that two statements be entered into the record. A statement from a Social Security administration, it flew American Federation of government that develop this. And i also have a statement about the passport backlogs from the National Federation of federal employees, that represent about 110,000 individuals. Afg represents about three quarters of 1 Million People, and as i said once on the floor, federal workers are everywhere. And not just in washington d. C. Thank you very much, mister chairman. I will yield back. I want to thank again the witnesses for participating today. I want to thank you very much. We all have our own sayings, youve heard them today. I spent 16 years vigorously in the Freedom Press system. We had saying that by and large was, either it works, or doesnt work. If its working, here okay. But if its not working, youve got to continue to do Something Different bienvenue inaudible . voix de linterprete . And i think today, you have an merci opportunity to pour votre receive patience feedback. I think its dont vous avez fait important for you preuve, to listen to chers collegues us, and, ces we are quelques minutes nous waiting to hear back avions des difficultes from you techniques. I would merci a lequipe. Nous like to avons dautres engage each inaudible . Of you individually on the feedback from what puisque nos membres you heard habituels sont revenus. Today. I je vais think this mentionner que came from both sides of madame khalid est etait the aisle. La pour with inaudible , madame turnbull. Bienvenue. That said, without objection, all chers members will have collegues, nous etudions aujourdhui five legislative larticle par days article du projet de loi c280, loi modifiant la loi sur la faillite et linsolvabilite et la loi sur les arrangements avec les creanciers des compagnies fiducie reputee fruits et legumes perissables . The conformement a lordre de renvoi well be donne en forwarded to the response 2023, and that le comite tienne this time. The subcommittee stands adjourned, thank you very much. Former special counsel, john durham testified on his investigation of the fbis probe on alleged links between the fbi investigation of trump the Trump Campaign and russian operatives. Mr. Durham released a final report last month, with his findings. You can watch the house judiciary hearing tonight at eight eastern on cspan two. Cspan now, our free mobile video app, or online at cspan. Org. Cspans campaign 2024 coverages your front row seat to the president ial election. 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