These televisions providers give you a front row seat to democracy. Next, the Social Security administration is commissioner Martin Omalley testifies and addresses delays and weight times for beneficiaries and modernization efforts in this is his first appearance since becoming commissioner and the hearing is about two hours. Good morning everybody. Senate will come to order. The title of todays hearing is keeping our promise to older adults and people with good morning, everybody. The special committee on aging will come to order and the title of todays hearing is keeping our promise to older adults and people with disabilities, the status of Social Security today. Today, we will hear from the Social Security administration commissioner, Martin Omalley. We are grateful you are here. The commissioner was confirmed in december of last year. I dont think i have to remind anybody in this room or listening how important this program called Social Securitys. It will serve over 68 million americans this year and the majority of whom are retired americans and their families. Without Social Security benefits, experts estimate that about four in 10 Older Americans with incomes below the poverty line. That means millions of americans including 640,000 pennsylvanians are lifted out of poverty solely because of Social Security. Social security serves people with disabilities and in january of this year Social Security provided almost 12 billion in disability benefits to 8. 5 million beneficiaries. Unfortunately, while the population has aged and the demand for Social Security has increased, support for the Social Security administration has diminished greatly. As a result, the administration ssa has been drastically underfunded creating some real challenges for the agency from increased weight times for service and approval for disability benefits to overpayments and underpayments. That has added tremendous pressure to Social Security administration workforce. At the end of fiscal year 2022 the agency was at a 25 year staffing low and with a new low expected at the end of this fiscal year. Employees are being asked to take on more work of greater complexity. We should be working tirelessly to support staff including Field Office Staff for their dedication in an increasingly and demanding environment which means getting the training to do the job and doing it well and providing employees the support they need. Commissioner, i will send you a letter today with senator fetterman about support for the ssa workforce including some challenges that employees have encountered on getting approval for reasonable accommodations and supporting that workforce will also mean better supporting Social Security beneficiaries. I do know that in your first few months on the job, you focus on your significant attention on listening to ssa staff and stakeholders and i am eager today to hear more about what you have learned. I do want to hear about your goals and plans to bring about change and the Social Security administration. But without Adequate Funding and legislative remedies, delivering on those goals and fixing existing problems will be difficult. As such i will push for robust funding for ssa which supports investments in technology, hiring, and retention. While we work to improve the benefit delivery process, it is critical that we increase Social Security benefits across the board. I do support efforts in the senate that increases benefits like the repeal of the windfall elimination provision and the government pension offset which penalizes workers who have dedicated their lives to Public Service. I am also pushing for passage of the swift act which increases benefits for widows and widowers. In addition i am introducing the boosting benefits for seniors act along with senators blumenthal, fetterman, welsh, jello brand and sanders. This changes how cost of living adjustments for Social Security benefits are calculated making sure benefit adjustments are robust and reflective of the costs incurred by older adults and we must protect and strengthen Social Security so that americans of every generation can continue to access this essential lifeline. I do look forward to working with commissioner omalley to work to improve Social Security for all americans and i will turn for opening remarks. Thank you and it is good to have you here. Social security is obviously the bedrock for millions of americans and keep parts of the first aging committees hearing in 1961 and today the Social Security administration has a Customer Service issue and we have billions of dollars of payments and overpayments, call back and other issues with 800 number waiting times in all things we need to do better. It is a big business within the federal government. You do have an issue like web ppl which penalizes retirees for choosing Public Service careers and it could cut benefits and half for Public ServantsLike Police Officers who often supplement their service with a second career and we need to pass the Social Security fairness act to eliminate these provisions and it has 53 cosponsors, nine republicans. It is probably something if we get our financial house in order will be a top priority because it is a case of unfairness. You have other issues when it comes to gpl overpayments which was already mentioned and it took a year for the mother of a son with down syndrome and another to get disability cases sorted out along with Veterans Issues and immigration and our office back home in indiana is constantly handling issues and a lot of times Social Security is simply talking to somebody on the phone and the president s budget blames the shortfalls for needing more money and i think it has a lot to do with looking at the processes and how it is run before we throw more money at it. And between Social Security and medicare and medicaid, they are the structural drivers of our current deficits and Everybody Knows they are important and Everybody Knows they are in peril and not being there for future generations. Sadly, we lack the political will to do anything about it. Our debt, which is the underpinning of this, is out of control and if we were living in our means, building rainy day funds and doing things that need to be reinvested in the making good programs better, i think is probably the key thing that will make all of this more complicated in the long run and i got here a little over five years ago. Structurally we are borrowing 1 trillion a year which is . 20 on every dollar. That is now up to . 30 on every dour and the plugin figure to make all of that work is now 1 trillion every six months and we cant run the biggest business in the world that way and Social Security is one of the largest programs within it and we need to make sure we are running mechanically well and i am looking forward to the discussion we have here today about ways to improve it and i am looking forward for everybody as part of the federal government to acknowledge that we cant borrow money from our kids and grandkids without having an even bigger problem down the road. I yield back. Thank you and thank you for your opening remark x. We will see if this happens. But our witness today is Martin Omalley and the commissioner was nominated by President Biden in july to leave the Social Security administration in december and he was confirmed by the senate and sworn into office on december 20. I think most people know his background and he was governor of the state of maryland for two terms and mayor of the city of baltimore for two terms and a member of the city council and also an assistant states attorney and all exemplary examples of Public Service and prior to becoming commissioner. So we are grateful you are here today and i will turn it over to you. Thank you very much and it is an honor to be here. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your concern and compassion for people among us who really need their neighbors to care about them. I think all of us on the panel would agree that it probably is now more important of the program and our country has created that expresses our compassion for neighbors quite so much as Social Security and for 88 years this program has operated at a pretty high level listing a lot of seniors out of poverty and helping people suffering from disabilities. It is my great honor to be able to lead the men and women of this Agency Forward at a very tough time in their history. I have been on a learning curve for the last 90 days and i have visited all regions and have yet to get to that and next on my list and thank you for addressing the concerns who do critical work not just in their own region but for the full country and i have done town halls with employees in nine different regions and i did that over 16 days in january and i sat sidebyside with workers on the headset in the Teleservice Centers and set aside them on the other side of the glass as our frontline workers were interviewing people and the most important things i learned were these. Number one, there is a deep commitment among not only the Senior Executive service of Social Security but throughout the agency and a deep commitment to the commission of this agency and that as the former senator said to me is probably the most important asset that i have as the new leader of this agency and the second thing i learned is this. And i did see the symptoms of it acutely on the front lines. Social security is now serving more customers than ever before with fewer staff than they had in 27 days. It is true that our ability to serve our customers is the intersection of people, process and some policy and technology. All of these things come together and i was surprised to learn that Social Security operates on less than 1 of its annual benefit payments. This operating overhead has effectively been reduced by 20 just over the last 10 years and another words in 2018 when you looked at the overhead as the percentage it was 1. 2 and in the budget a solid step in the right direction it is a. 96 of 1 . So what is the result . It is we are in a Customer Service crisis with people waiting on average for the 800 number for an agent to answer calls and people with disability waiting eight months on average in some states better than others but on average eight months for a decision on their initial application and another for them if they have to appeal it to a hearing. Clearly, we can and must do better. I have been these are some of the things we are doing about it and i have put together an Outstanding New staff including dustin brown the chief operating officer and the new head of the office of General Council and the former commissioner returning as commissioner america. We have launched within 30 days a new regimen which we call the security so instead of having a oneyear cadence associated with the budget to make performance improvements, we do it every few weeks. And for one blessed our we focus on the data and maps that tell us whether we are doing a better job or not and serving the people of indiana or the commonwealth of pennsylvania or connecticut and one of those hours exclusively dedicated to Field Operations in the next one exclusively to the 800 number and so on. We tackle other pressing challenges including the wait times for initial disability determinations. That is one of the focused hours and thats all about fraud and the other one is about the numerous and notices that we send to people in the only part of which they understand as the last line if you dont understand call the 800 number and wait. But i did want to touch on an intense area of focus which has to do with the injustices that we have done to our neighbors when it comes to overpayments and underpayments. Many of you probably saw the Television Journalism piece done by 60 minutes highlighting the injustice that we do to americans when through no fault of our own we overpay them and then call back in a rather brutal way 100 of their check if they dont call us back to work out a payment plan. So congress and the law requires we make every effort to recover those payments, but doing so without regard to the larger purpose of the program could cause grave injustices in individuals and we have to fix the so today i am announcing before the committee some new reforms and many of them came from her own employees on the front lines and first instead of intercepting 100 of Social Security benefits when a claimant fails to respond to a demand for repayment, that setting will be 10 which is what it has long been with regard to title 16. Secondly, we will shift the burden away from asking the claimant to prove that they werent at fault but instead to a more neutral setting for the agency has the responsibility of putting forward if they believe there is intention on the part of the claimant or some fault. Third, we will realign a period for repayment which, traditionally, had been 36 months and we will realign it to what the Veterans Administration does and allow for a 60 month repayment window. Fourth and finally for now, we will make it easier for overpaid beneficiaries to request a waiver of the repayment. So the American People in conclusion work their whole lives but there is Something Else they have already worked for and they have already paid for and earned. That is a decent level of Customer Service to access those benefits. The good news is if we were allowed once again from the same fica dollars which want paid in the discretionary way in paychecks, if we were allowed operate at 1. 2 , we could the store restore Customer Service and do it quickly and the president s budget and best for the people of our nation and includes a 9 increase over what we were allowed to spend and i hesitate to say appropriation because we havent had that hearing in nine years. But the president s budget includes an increase over what we had last year and are allowed to spend for operating expenses and we look forward to working with you to sustain funding increases so we can get back to serving the people with the Customer Service they have already earned and paid for what they are being denied and we can do so without adding a penny to the deficit. Thank you. Thank you for your Opening Statement and i will jump ahead and i will turn it over. Thank you i appreciate it and i appreciate your taking me out of order for this important hearing and nothing is more vital and important as you will know to all americans and not just recipients but to their families and childrens because when they are in poverty, their children and family suffers. I do want to thank you for your attention to improving the system and i have a proposal that goes to the levels of benefits and you are focused on Customer Service and that is vital in the overpayments and brutality of efforts by the governments to call back overpayments is absolutely unacceptable and i do hope you will be doing more and even more than what you said you would be doing to this Committee Just now because this kind of, really unfortunate and unfair treatment of americans when through no fault of their own have suffered hardship of clawbacks and retrievals of payments that were the fault of the government for overpaying and i want to go to another topic that has concerned me because i am hearing from constituents about the Windfall Elimination Program and government pension offset and these two provisions are separate and both harmful provisions that reduce Social Security benefits for workers and their eligible family members if the worker receives or is entitled to a pension based on earnings from employment not covered by Social Security and i am sure you are familiar with these provisions that is proportionately affecting Public Service employees including educators, Police Officers and firefighters and others and i have introduced this act that would repeal these provisions among other changes that substantially benefit Social Security recipients giving them costof living increases and imposing