Government Shutdown and Social Security

As another government shutdown looms, we wanted to touch base on what this means for Social Security. While several federal services will be temporarily halted, much of Social Security’s disability process will continue to function, uninterrupted. We want to highlight the following key points from  Social Security’s Contingency Plan :

• Individuals who are already receiving Social Security and Supplemental Income benefits will continue to receive benefits. 
• New and pending applications for disability will continue to be processed by SSA at all administrative levels (initial, reconsideration, hearings, and the Appeals Council).
  • Of note, while SSA has encouraged DDS to continue its normal processing of their portion of disability claims (with the promise that SSA will reimburse DDS once funding is authorized), because DDS employees are state employees, SSA cannot guarantee whether or not DDS will furlough the employees who are needed to process disability determinations; however, in prior shutdowns, application processing did continue uninterrupted.
• Administrative Law Judges, decision writers, and support staff “necessary to conduct hearings” will all continue to work, allowing hearings and the subsequent decision writing to continue without disruption.
• SSA will continue to take post-entitlement actions including processing changes of address, SSI living arrangement changes, direct deposit updates, death inputs, and the processing of remittances for overpayments and administrative fees.

Some activities  will be halted  during the shutdown including:

• Processing overpayments
• Correcting earnings records
• Enrolling appointed representatives for e-folder access
• Processing bias complaints from claimants and representatives
• Conducting quality assurance reviews other than those related to allowances
• Processing FOIA requests
• Responding to requests from third parties for queries

Regarding  federal court cases , prior shutdowns have yielded uneven results, with courts handling processing of their cases differently. The Department of Justice has instructed its civil litigators to “request that active cases, except for those in which a delay would compromise to a significant degree the safety of human life or the protection of property, be postponed until funding is available,” but ultimately, the decision will be up to the courts. We encourage our members with active federal court caseloads to monitor filings in each federal court case, check courts’ web sites for information, and call court clerks as needed.

As for  representative fees , when the prior shutdown was looming, NOSSCR received the following statement from SSA: “In the event of a lapse in appropriations, we will continue to process benefit payments as well as the associated representative fees, if applicable. Our contingency plan includes “application for benefits” as part of the continued activities under Operations Frontline Activities which would include the eligibility determination and benefit payment effectuation, including associated representative fees for agreements that are in place and payable under the Social Security Act.”

NOSSCR continues to actively monitor the situation and will immediately provide any updates to our membership.