commissioner. the hearing is about two hours.

good morning everybody. senate will come to order. the title of today's hearing is keeping our promise to older adults and people with disabilities. the status of social security today. today we will hear from social security administration commissioner o'malley. we are grateful you are here. commissioner o'malley was confirmed last year. and i don't think i have to

remind anyone in this room or listening and how important this program called social security is. it will serve over 68 million americans this year. without social security benefits experts estimate about four in 10 older americans will have incomes below the poverty line. that means 640,000 pennsylvanians are lifted out of poverty solely because of social security. serves people with disabilities. in january of this year social security provided almost $12 billion disability benefits to 8.5 million beneficiaries. unfortunately, while our population has aged the demand for social security has increased support for social

security administration has diminished greatly. as a result the administration ssa has been drastically underfunded creating some real challenges. for overpayments and underpayments that added tremendous pressure on social security administration workforce. at the end of fiscal year 2022, the agency was at a 25 year staffing low with a new low expected at the end of this fiscal year. the employees are asked to take on more work of greater complexity. worked tirelessly to support ssa staff including field office staff for the dedication and an increasingly demanding environment. that means getting the training to do the job and do the job

well. providing employees the support they need. too that end, commissioner, i will be sending a letter today about support for the ssa workforce. including some challenges ssa employees in pennsylvania have encountered. in getting approval but reasonable accommodations. so, supporting the ssa workforce will also mean a better supporting social security beneficiaries. commissioner, i know in your first few months on the job you focused on your significant attention on listening to ssa staff and stakeholders. i am eager today to hear more about what you have learned. an endpoint to hear about your goals and plans to bring about change the social security administration. however, without adequate funding and legislative remedies, delivering on those

goals and fixing existing problems will be very difficult. in section i will continue to push for robust funding for ssa. which will support investments in technology, hiring, and retention. while we work to plan to improve the benefit delivery process it's critical we increase social security benefits across the board. that is why i support efforts in the senate that will increase benefits like repeal of the windfall elimination provision in the offset. they have dedicated their lives to public service. mostly pushing for passage of my swift act, which would increase benefits for widows and widowers. in addition today i'm introducing the boosting benefits along with hundreds of blumenthal, fetterman, welsh, gillibrand, and sanders. this legislation will change how

cost-of-living adjustments for social security benefits are calculated. ensuring benefit adjustments are robust and reflective of the true costs incurred by older adults. they must protect and strengthen social security's americans of every generation can continue to access this essential lifeline. look forward to working with commissioner o'malley to improve social security for all americans. it's good to have you here. bedrock for millions of americans in the aging committee's hearing in 1961. they, the social security administration has customer service issue. we have billions of dollars of payments overpayments, clawbacks

and other issues. there's a number of waiting times for all things we need to do better. it is we have an issue which penalizes retiring for choosing public service careers, weapons can cut benefits and half for public service like police officers who often supplement their service with a second career. we need to pass social security fairness act to eliminate these provisions it's not got 53 now 3 cosponsors. night republicans and is probably something if we get our financial house in order will be a top priority. you have other issues when it comes to web gpo overpayments already mentioned that. it took a one year for a hoosier the mother of a son with down syndrome another issue to get

disability case sorted out. along with a veterans issues, immigration, our office back home in indiana is constantly handling issues but a lot of times a social security it simply be able to talk to somebody on the phone. the presidents of budget blames the agency shortfalls for needing more money. it has a lot to do with looking at the processes. how it is run forward and throw throughmore money at it. between social security and medicare and medicaid they are the structural drivers of our current deficits. and everybody knows their importance. everyone 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. we were actually living within our means building may beat

rainy day funds. doing things that need to be reinvested back into making programs better. i think is probably the key thing that's going to make all this more complicated in the long run. i got here a little over five years ago. were structurally borrowing a trillion dollars a year which is 20 cents on every dollar. now that it's up to 30 cents on every dollar. the plug in figure to make all of that work is now a trillion dollars every six months. we cannot run the biggest business in the world that way. social security be one of the largest programs in it we need to make sure we are at least running it mechanically. i am looking forward to the discussion we have here today. ways to improve it.

without having a bigger problem down the road you'll echo there. or witnessed today mr. o'malley is nominated by president biden in july to leave the social security administration in december he was confirmed by the senate sworn into office on december 20. i think most people know his background he was governor of the state of maryland to terms. the mayor of the city of baltimore for two terms that are member of city council also assistant state's attorney all exemplary examples of public service prior to becoming commissioner. so we are grateful you're here today. and i will turn over to you and hope the apple receipts as you speak. >> mr. chairman, thank you very

much. it is an honor to be here. thank you for your leadership. thank you for your concern, your compassion, for the people among us who really need their neighbors to care about them. i think all of us on your panel would agree there probably is no more important program are countries ever created that expresses our compassion for our neighbors quite so much a social security. and the good news is for 88 years this program has operated pretty high level lifting a lot of seniors out of poverty. suffering from disabilities. it's my great honor steep learning curve the last 90 days. we have yet to get to the it's t

on my list. and the concerts, hard-working men and women who do such critical work. not just in the whole country. i've done town halls for employees in nine different regions. did that over 60 days in january. i set side-by-side with the work is on the copilot headset if you will in the tele- service centers. set aside on the other side of the glass are frontline workers were interviewing people. the most important to 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. a deep commitment to the mission of this agency. that has or monarch senator said to me is probably the most important asset that i have is the new leader of this agency.

very acutely on the front lines. in fewer staff in 27 days. intersection of people process and technology. less than 1% of its annual benefits payments this operating overhand has effectively been reduced by about 20% just over the last 10 years. the president's budget and the solid step in the right direction it is .96 of 1%. so what is the result of that? the result is we are in a

customer-service crisis with people waiting on average 38 minutes for the 800 number for the agent to answer the call for people with disabilities waiting nearly eight months on average for some states better than others. but on average eight months for a decision on their an apple app initial application for another seven months for alj if they have to appeal to an alj hearing. clearly we can and must do better. these are some of the things we are doing about it and already in motion. i put together an outstanding step. including our chief operating officer a new head of the office of general counsel. former commissioner returning as commissioner. we launched within 30 days a new performance management regiment

which we call security staff. so instead of having sleepy one year cadence associate with the budget to make needed process people and performance improvements we do it every two weeks, every two weeks, every two weeks. one of the blessed hour we locked the world went outside the door and focus on the data and the maps that tell us where we are doing a better job or not in serving the people of indiana or the commonwealth of pennsylvania or connecticut. one of those hours exclusively dedicated to field operations for 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 when the focus hours one of them as those hours all about fraud and another one is about the numerous often times now and comprehensible notices that we send to people the only part of which they can understand is the last line that says if you don't understand call our 800 number 39 minutes.

but i wanted to touch on one other intense areas of focus that we have been on. that has to do with the injustices that we have done to our neighbors when it comes to overpayment and underpayment. many of you probably saw television journalism piece done by 60 minutes highlighting the injustice that we do to americans. through no fault of their own we overpay them in clawback a rather brutal weight one 100% of their check if they do not call us back to work out a payment plan. so congress and the law requires a make every effort to recover those payments. but doing so without regard to the larger purpose of the program can cause gray's grave injustices. and we have to fix these so today i am announcing for your

committee mr. chairman symp newer forms. many came from our own employees on the front lines. first, instead of intercepting a one 100% of social security benefits when a claimant fails to respond to a demand for repayment that default setting will now be 10% of withholding which is what it has long been with regard to title 16. secondly we are going to shift the burden away from client to prove they were not at fault instead to a more neutral settings of the agency has the responsibility of putting forward if they believe there is some intention on the part of the claimants. third we are going to realign our periods for repayment which traditionally had been 36 months. but the veterans administration

for the 60 payment fourth and finally for now, we are going to make it easier for overpaid beneficiaries to request a waiver of the repayment. so the american people and conclusion work their whole lives during the benefits of social security. there's something else they already worked for. they've already paid for and they already earned. and that is a decent level of customer service to access those benefits. in the good news is if we were allowed once again from the same dollars that were not paid in a discretionary way and paychecks we were allowed to operate one point to percent we could restore customer service and all of your states. the presidents budget invest in social security for the people of our nation 9% increase over what we were allowed to spend. i hate to say appropriation because we've not had a

probation hearing in nine years. the presidents budget includes a 9% increase over what we had last year allowed to spend for operating expenses 15.4 billion. we look forward to working with u2's disdain funding increases so we get back to serving the people with the customer service they've already earned prey they've already paid for but are being denied. we can do so without adding a penny to the deficit, thank you so much. >> think of your opening statement. i'm going to jump ahead instead of asking my question i will turn to senator blumenthal. >> think it mr. chairman i really appreciate you taking me out of order for this really very important hearing. nothing is more vital or important as you know that social security to americans but to all americans not just recipients but to their

families. to their children. because when they are in poverty their children and family suffer as well. i really want to thank you for your attention to improving the system. i have a proposal the coast of the level of benefits. your focus on customer service certainly is viable. the overpayments the shock and brutality of efforts by the government to clawback overpayment is absolutely unacceptable. i hope you will be doing more, even more than what you have said you would be doing to this committee just now. because this kind of unfortunate and unfair treatment of americans they suffer the hardship of clawbacks and

retrieval of payments. i want to go to a nether topic that has concerned me i am hearing from constituents about the windfall elimination program offset. these two provisions are separate. both reduce social security benefits for workers and their eligible family members. if the worker receives or is entitled based on earnings from employment not covered by social security. with these provisions disproportionately affected public service employees including educators, police officers, firefighters and others but introduce social

security 2100 acts pretty would repeal these provisions among other changes that substantially benefit social security recipients giving them cost-of-living increases closing their burdens on people earning more than $400,000. so what concerns me is apart from appealing -- repealing is the failure of some local and state governments to disclose the effects of these two provisions on new employees. and i wonder whether you are familiar or heard information about disclosure of this information the windfall elimination and the government pension offset provision. where that you heard from recipients, claimants about

firefighters, police officers because the requirements aren't offset are predisposed when they come to work. >> i agree with you senator i'm sure it comes as a great shock to a lot of people put their lives on the line in public service jobs or other jobs as they approach retirement the social security they thought would be there is not going to be there. i have received some briefings on this. it is my understanding that over the years a number of states were historically allowed to sort of opt out. requiring payments of employees into social security. and now the dilemma as policy policymakers how we address that moving forward. what are the equities and the cost of addressing that. either in a perspective way or

more comprehensive way. i do not know entirely what the answer is. the what it takes in the future i would look forward to work with you that onset that a new center for. >> and want to thank you for your continuing public service very distinguished career in your service in this position. it's important to what any of us do you touch the lives of so many americans you also helped on my part and i'm sure my colleagues help improve the system. waiting 38 or 39 minutes it's intolerable. not the fault of hard working

people it's the lack of resources that you are providing. so thank you. >> think you senator blumenthal. we will turn next to thank you for being here today. per month will receive social security benefit when actually in dollars over the course of the year. over the large majority of that plan to be lower-than-expected due to federal taxes. only 10% of the beneficiaries pay tax. now over 40% are being taxed at the federal level.

as governor work hard to pass historic law i would phase out the state income tax on social security benefits over a period of time. due to the success of this nebraska law i introduce the act in a state sent under this plan a typical senior will receive about inner dollars a year on taxes this would create real really for seniors at a time of rising costs to control inflation. by passing this bill first step in boosting the ability of seniors in nebraska and across this country. moving onto the issues here you put forward a path with customer service for thank you very much for providing the data. i actually expect a governor to want to look at data. so i appreciate that very much commissioner. i noted with center blumenthal talked about 38 minute on the

whole time i took over as governor of nebraska and or economic assistance line that hold time was nearly 24 minutes were not quite as high but still not good customer service. i know you've got with that. you're new to the job. can you talk a little bit about what your plan to address the issues in regard to customer service like the whole time of 38 minutes? gemma goal specifically. >> on the steps are taken to get there? >> yes, sir. let me begin by saying the most important thing that we could do dothe most important thing thate could address is this yawning gap between the ever rising beneficiaries that 68 million number you cited was also what i cited during my confirmation just four months ago. but now it is 71 million.

so that number continues to go up but the staffing is declining to 27 year low. lester we had a spike but as you may have imagined one of your employees when you're governor was answering the call after somebody been on hold for an hour print 39 minutes is the average they are coming off that call hot. our attrition rate is about 24%. so many of the people hired leave a lot of the questions are not simple questions to answer so they require some training. this is were doing specifically on the call times. we had a number of leading actions as you know from a performance management governor yourself. there are leading actions to deflect people to address their concerns and more timely legitimate ways.

everything we can do to drive up the numbers of people getting their services online. or applying online for social security card rather than calling the 800 number. those are examples of deflection. examples of call resolution are things that allow us to answer the call the first time instead of making a person call back. or perhaps sometimes process policy changes that allow the call taker to take after we've already identified they are who they are in with their mother's maiden name is in those sorts of things. so we can resolve whether it when it tax form so we can resolve that on the first call. there are a host of actions many experienced and learned of firsthand when is out there sitting side-by-side with people all over the country. each of those has diverting people from the call i'll give

you another one. lawyers claim advocates would call the 800 number again and this is a two for this is deflection and resolution. with call to make sure their entry their 1696 form was accepted by social security. and to be sure to be sure they would fax it in, and mail it in several times because there's no way for them to check on their own. other than to send lots of repeat notices which is wasteful. or they would call the 800 number picked up because the 800 number was so overwhelmed somebody well-intentioned said those lawyers can only check on status of three cases. so we have done two things. one is to make it possible for them online to see whether we have accepted their 1696 entry appearance form. the second is if they do happen to call the 800 number their secretaries are not limited to checking that status in three

cases. but they can ask for, five, six, seven, eight to the not calling back as soon as they hang up there on hold again. those are some of the things we are doing. we have struggled with underperforming system. it's a new system we went into during the pandemic and the closure. the shut down. that system has not yet performed as it was promised. we really do struggle with that. we also struggle with the attrition rate and trying to continue to provide a level of customer service with less than 1%. allstate operates on 22% as a percentage of its outlays for 22% overhead. excuse me i think it is 12%. liberty liberty 12% that we are less than 1%. less than 1% and it shows for

2018 we are one point to percent the customer service was better. there is a lot we are doing on process improvement and performance management. but it will not make up for that yawning gap. the good news is congress could address that. people party paid for the customer service the trust fund. and here is the other good news. if we are allowed to operate at one point to percent it would not only not add to the deficit but i asked the actuary how far would advance the so-called depletion date of 2034? the answer of that is 30 days. this is kind of a self-inflicted wound. people already paid for the customer service. they already paid for their benefits. there is nothing discretionary on their part about it. it is mandatory. we could get back to that very quickly. >> thank you very much. those are all steps that

demonstrate you've got the right idea about how we address and provide better customer service for seniors. i'd also add in there and we talked about this. the process to look at your process as well. spot on by looking at the deflection and career as governor. you get people to use the online services it is a win-win print once they get used if they enjoy it better it's better customer satisfaction it helps out providing service to people. >> i love for you to come up to a security staff meeting. >> are great. >> a great pre- >> you would enjoy it. what you did as governor, what i did as government senior executive services really responded to us for it every two weeks, every two weeks. not just look at the lagging indicators but the actions that drive us on there's a lot of principles in there as well pre- >> rate will follow up thank you.

>> commissioner and when to start on the question of funding. i think one of the graphics the charts you included staffing declines as a beneficiaries rise. and it says it all. as you made a reference to as wellin the testimony the president requested 15.4 billion ft. social security administration for fiscal year 2025 which is nearly 9% increase. for e years the administration has been chronically underfunded as i mentioned but ultimately this underfunding negatively impacts benefit and delivery. despite this we have heard extreme proposals from some congress would consider cutting social security. i will never support cuts to social security that's a fairly widespread view. we know it is a lifeline for americans of all walks of life.

this is a promise we have to deliver on. and i will continue to work to fulfill that promise. so i have two questions to interrelated questions. how would flat funding or even worse a cut or cuts impact the social security administration and ultimately beneficiaries? >> we are struggling as a big human resources organization. what we do is service. we are customer service for our agents and the 1200 field officers the hard-working men and women that process claims, it is all people. the technology granted for it some really, really old technology by the way is still green screens and cobol at the base of it. it puts me in mind back in governor days senator, if school

system and their budget is mostly all teachers in the classrooms if they have fewer teachers and the number of students is rising those classrooms are going to be larger. by way of analogy, if our staffing is fewer, our wait times are going to be higher in there going to be longer lines. sometimes people have really dire needs. so we have to get back in the president's budget takes an affirmative step in getting us back to the traditional one point to percent we operated on prior to 2018 where we had pretty high level of customer service. and it was not breaking the bank. it's something people already paid for. if we were to receive 15.4 billion proposed by the president that would allow us, we believe to reduce our 800

numbers hold times by 20 minutes. currently 39 on average in the last fiscal year we believe we can knock 20 minutes off of that. we would be able to reduce disability claim wait times to 215 days. we believe we can reduce the claims a backlog by 15%. another positive step in the right direction would allow us even better. we are trying to strip the highest number of beneficiaries ever with the lowest staff we've had in 27 years. that is not been offset by huge investments in new technology and those modernization things. 90% of the technology budget goes to keeping old systems functioning rather than doing the upgrades that we need too. >> and wanted to move to a second inquiry about the employees and morale those basic

concerns that i think everyone is expressed over a number of years. the employees do great work. and as you mentioned in my home state of pennsylvania, thousands of payments are processed each month. these payments of retired workers and their families people disabilities widowers and their children number beneficiaries grows in the staffing for ss a 25 year low. by the end of fiscal year 2024 without any changes staffing will be at the lowest level since 1972. increasing workloads with limited staff and evolution results and high level. burnout is causing problem for properworkers, applicants and beneficiaries. ssa used to be ranked on the best places to work and now it ranks at the bottom.

you made reference earlier to this but i want to highlight it again. how are you engaging ssa employees? you had a number of town halls engagements like that. what is your broad based plan to improve staff morale? i know i am over baby as soon as the commissioner is done. >> senator you hit the nail on the head. ten year sale we are able to operate one point to of our overhead rate is the best place the federal government. >> best to last will and from best to last. in fact we have been last for three years in a row. some people on the bed survey vote with their feet might not bothering to fill out the survey again. i have done nine town halls with employees all across the country. not the set remarks more of a mayoral style. when i felt and have seen out

there is a workforce that is exhausted. they are stressed. they are overworked. the managers feel this pressure intensely as well. the sense that people don't care that workloads are getting higher and none of their bosses listen. no one in washington listens. that morale problem leads to all sorts of problems. affecting the health of the workers and the workers aren't healthy. customers do not receive good service. so here's a few of the things we are doing. first and foremost i have been present and listening. that is important. some people in the town halls of said we have not had a commissioner for so long. some of the problems are things you've got to believe when you're on the front line that nobody in headquarters cares if they have not fixed this by now.

so, we are fixing some of those things. and what we do we let people know we had succeeded hired employees respond to the engaged survey we did right off the bat. and there is one more thing we are working on and that has to do with people ask for a reasonable accommodation, because they have a sick child. or they have some conditions that requires that reasonable accommodation. that should not linger and take a year to resolve it. so we are doing some on that score as well for a meet regularly every month with the labor management council but encourage the regional commissioners to do the same thing. because the best ideas i have a receipt from proven customer services always game for the people in the front lines during the work. and now we have a system that actually listens to them and implements these changes. >> over to cut you off there

just because we are over. ranking member? >> i'm going to defer to senator scott. >> thank you chair. thank you ranking member. commissioner, thank you for being here. thank you for taking my call. come up with some proposals. with the governor's so as a governing up to solve all the problems. it sounds like you're really focused on service problems which is outstanding you're doing that. be able to get that done makes a difference so thanks for doing that. i just want to talk about the fact it goes bankrupt and at 34. what one thing that surprised me president biden's fourth budget. there is nothing in the budget

that actually protects social security from the standpoint of it did not reduce what is going to go bankrupt. which surprised me. so i cannot imagine if you walked in as governor i do not know what the pension plan was. so aren't you surprised there's nothing in the budget to deal with the solvency issue of social security? >> when i was elected governor the system was very challenge. it was facing unsustainable and immediate unsustainable future. we had to fix that. people were not happy about it. but we fixed it. the depletion of that as the actuaries collect to distinguish it from bankruptcy that is now estimated to be happening in 2034. that would be the point men and

women of our congress act as your predecessors did about a month before the last depletion of that in 1982 it is true that social security would only have 77% of the dollars that it needs to meet full benefits. i am not terribly surprised because i also know, in terms of a proposal from the president i know he has been very clear about his policy position. i also know he has consistently stated his desire to see those who earn more than $400,000 to start to pay into social security. and i also know from going to the confirmation process and working with many of you that there are a lot of ideas out there. there are some who told me we

should try to do this right now. there are others who said there is no way in the political dynamics of an election year things get solved right now. we need to do it after the next election. fortunately i no longer have a political job. cooks are not going to get it done for. >> those calculations are not mind to make it. they are yours to make. we have great actuaries. anyway we can be of help as you think about this will be very responsive and able to do so. >> i'm sure you did not read it. medicare and social security i cannot imagine without reading bill not suggesting you sign off on the bill but i you probably agree with that. it's on a hard run, is it? >> you support efforts of their

spending? >> that would be a policy call. >> you think we should do that? >> i think we should do whatever it takes to secure attachment for the security of the bend, women, and children. would you allocate -- if you had to choose social security trust line $80 billion again that is a policy choice. i would advocate, what i would suggest is you don't even have to choose because people have already paid for the one point to percent we need in customer service. they paid it in fica and it is starting there. we just seem to be allowed to use the trust fund. at if we did the senator would only completion event by 30

days. if 50000 employees. how many are working at office versus working from home? >> it depends on the job and it depends on the function it. i did make an announcement about adjustments to a telework policy. can i go into that? >> you say where it was before covid awareness now? >> it is an interesting story. to encapsulate it, he encouraged social security to make their workloads, the processing workloads portable. it was not because saw a pandemic was about to shut us down. it's because he wanted to reduce carbon footprint impact on climate and all the sorts of things but social security

responded. they make workloads affordable they could be done at the office, or at home. in think that they did. when a new administration came in they put an end to that policy by this it everyone has to work at a worksite five days a week. and about a year later the pandemic kit and they said everybody go back to work at home. we have had a lot of whiplash. ever since the pandemic ended however, all of the field offices have been open five days a week. nine -- five, five days a week. the employees did three and the office and then to teleworking. under the week the managers had to manage that. some of that work involves what they call adjudication. the follow-up, the process you have got to process those cases. i would of course be in headquarters four days a week

when dad telework. everyone else three days of telework. i'm sorry three days on-site, two days in telework. that also affected all of the headquarters in the nine different regions. the computer programmers number two and 32 days on-site three of telework. we hope that's going to be a better and more effective balance. >> thank you. >> think you'd send her scott was turned to senator warnock. before senator warnock's question i am going to have to be out for a period of time about a half an hour. between now and then senators will be able to answer questions and i will be back. but i think after senator warnock will go to senator vance. and then senator fetterman and somewhere between their senator braun will be back and ask his questions. >> thank you so very much a chair casey for holding this

important hearing. and commissioner o'malley is great to see you again. i have known you a long time versus mayor o'malley minister for the church in baltimore. thank you for your lifelong commitment to service. my office frequently hears about benefit overpayments and subsequent callbacks for energy talked about that in your open statement. i think it is always important that we center the people as we discussed policy and that human face of the issue. a few years ago a savannah resident got a letter from the social security administration, informing her she owed the agency $58000 in overpayments through no fault of her own. she was not aware of it until she got the notice years later. she could not afford to pay that amount back the agency reduce

your monthly benefits to the point where she could no longer afford her rent. that's the human cost of the the humanface of these policy id issues that need to be resolved. you said one of your priorities is to address overpayments and i note you have addressed that to some degree in your opening statement. we think about the question how does the agency plan to address this? if were to out when the top two or three things that need to be done right now. >> yes, sir. this is on the top. on january 2 i sense now hear this sort of welcome back after the new year's holiday to the command staff. the top priority 1800 number it

takes a disability and thirdly to address the injustice we do. who through no fault of their own wine themselves of having one 100% of the benefits that they live on intercepted. until they can make other payment arrangements. before i had even been confirmed there was an outstanding person assigned to untangle this problem. as you said on real people her name is leanne. she has done an outstanding job to help us to a deep dive and help us get our hands around the universe of people what are the root causes? and what can we do right now so our obedience to the congressional mandate is not run contrary to the whole purpose of the act itself which is to keep

seniors put under a bridge through no fault of their own. the top things we are doing because today i'm able to announce we are no longer going to have that quad back cruelty of intercepting one 100% of the payment of people do not respond to the notice to call us and work out other terms. the second thing we are going to do is shift the burden from asking the claimant to prove they did not contribute to it instead to a neutral position we have a reason that says they were at fault. we should have to produce that reason not them. the third thing we are going to do actually tomorrow. third just as the va makes mistakes has a 60 month period to recoup that overpayments. we had been offered on 36 months we're going to extend that to 60.

and finally were going to make it easier for people who have received an overpayment to file for a waiver and have that issue resolved. we are looking to do more as well for them not able to announce that now for a lot of this involves training and changes of system so people walk into the 1210 field offices with an overpayment they are properly managed. those things will all have a big impact on some of the people who find themselves in the positions. >> that is good to hear the ways in which your focus on this. and we will remain vigilant alongside these efforts. people like denise and others should not be penalized for the situation they did not create. i have just five seconds so i will end. thank you so much for. >> thank you and think if your leadership and friendship to the years.

it is good to see you and thank you for your service so much for. >> thank you and thank you for your leadership and friendship to the years. it is good to see you and thank you for your service commissioner o'malley. i want to think of the chair and ranking member for hosting the committee. i think almost all of us in our chamber support social security and we want to be solvent, healthy for future generations. i wanted to ask a couple of questions. what is the wait time? they have a lot of his constituents folks are calling the 800 number. they are waiting a lot longer than they used to. the call time and 2023's 38 minutes. that's according to an analysis my staff tracked down. i wondered sort of what is driving that? it seems like a pretty significant wait times in just a couple of years and obviously that's time wasted for a lot of people.

just curious what's driving that urge you have a sense of what's causing that? >> yes, sir. the agency started to move to a new integrated phone system shortly before the pandemic. when the pandemic shut they stopped engines and said whoa, we just need to be able to shut down all the field offices immediately because a lot of people to call the field office. where you through time ranges three -- five minutes. they needed to have an 800 number up and going right away. it's a lot of shift. the long and short of it is the 800 system to what we are promised. especially when it comes to the

business intelligence in the center of that system that allows calls to be shifted. people to remain in line to allow the sort of things constituents in ohio would expect from any other 800 number. a call back if we are too busy and those things. so we have struggled with that. additionally, the system is never provided us with the sort of a management intelligence that allows us to be able to better manage the workload, the peak times and distribute them effectively across our 24 different call centers in different time zones across the country. >> is there a plan to transition away from the 800 number system or to better bolster it and make it more responsive? how we think about responding to the issue? >> we are open to anything that will alleviate this problem as soon as we can. i was on the phone just two days

ago with the ceo of verizon. who is the company that we contracted with for this 800 number. i am hoping to get some word back from them within the next 24 hours. having very direct language expressed to them the failure of their business intelligence to deliver as promised. other approaches one of which we are using of call center service. that one seems to have a promising results and ultimately as you can appreciate what we need to head is to a system with modern customer relations management. when he gets a call from mr. o'malley they're able to have the street in front of them seeing what my concerns are,

when i called before it not to have to asked me name, address, social security and number. all sorts of those things. those are some of the challenges we have had. having said that and having our last security staff meeting we had produced occult wait time to 31 minutes. it's better than 39 minutes. >> my limited time here. we would love to work with your staff to try to address that issue if you have particular ideas bring them to us we would like to be helpful. with that i will yield back to the ranking member and appreciate being here. , good to see you again. you it enjoyed a strong bipartisan vote to bring you on, correct? >> thank you.

>> that is a testament to your career and how serious you take this job. >> thank you. >> 25 years ago i was a graduate student at the kennedy school. we were tasked with policy analysis exercises. they charged us to evaluate and implement a program to privatize social security. i was like that's kind of crazy. i thought social security was very sacred i turned out to be the only student there. i wrote things i refuse to entertain this. we have to keep this in that kind of position. they gave me a failing mark. one of the notes i remember would fire you. and you deserve to be. and one other things we also

talked about is social security has been the stability of that. and i believe it's very stable as well too. and it was clear some kind of actual where real kinds of adjustments or minor changes that extend liquidity is that accurate? >> yes, sir, it is. it has been remarkably simple program in one sense. >> this is this whole kind of, the sky is falling it's a bankrupt or anything like that. it's not going bankrupt. at worst if congress were unable to act there would be a big but that's not going bankrupt or. >> as long as americans work it will not go bankrupt. >> i agree. it is so critical to millions and millions of americans. it would be so small kind of adjustments like that and not

with decades and decades of stability and financial security. a better performing economy and more job creation and rising wages. >> that is where we are at. i find it strange it almost makes me giggle we had members of the other side were more concerned about time calls. they already have caught in terms of customer service i think that was unwitting. i haven't talked to a single member that said they think they should cut social security. >> i agree.

just like you all across pennsylvania i've never run into a recipient that said we are getting too much and we need to think about we could cut back and tighten our belt and i just want to acknowledge that i would hope and a bipartisan level we would want to protect that and strengthen it and address it and not turn it into a political football and address it in ways making those relatively minor kind of changes to allow social security to be secure and a fully funded for decades and decades down. even my professor from wyoming mentioned the same thing it's often difficult to address that because it is utilized more as a political football. is that a same a statement? >> i was smiling because i remember him and he always makes

me smile. the challenges that face social security in terms of the longer-term solvency are things that this congress has the ability to address and of the good news is this program has the support of 80% of the american people at a time of putting polarized politics and that's an enormous consensus. >> if 80% support that, i'm willing to bet it's 99.999% of people that are recipients that support the program as well and millions depend on not. so again, thank you. >> thank you, senator. there's been a lot of talk about what to do with national security and you made a clear statement no one wants to cut to benefits. let's go to the other hand and make it solvent. talk about the impact and how much would we need to keep it

solvent because it does go broke here before we know it it's 2034? >> yes sir. >> can be specific on what it's going to take to make it solvent. >> let me be very clear it's not projected to go broke. as you said, 23%. >> to avoid a 523% cut that is currently scheduled 2034, congress would need to make some changes in order to extend it. >> would you be specific on what that would be so we could hear it? >> yes, sir. what has been proposed as once people make $400,000, pay into social security.

>> what percentage would that be if that group started paying what would they have to pay into, what percentage of that income would it be to get it solvent? >> senator i came here mostly to talk about the customer service things. if there's any other tool in addition to just paying more into the system. >> one of your colleagues, senator cassidy from louisiana talks about differences on the actuarial stuff, and i'm certainly willing to dive deep into that with any member that wants to carry the person better able to do that is our actuary. but anyway, back to the question. on those styles members of this body have been putting forward bills. some people suggest you should

count investment income as part of that. some have proposed that people should start paying into social security not just when they hit 400,000 but 250,000 so those are the policy decisions for senator kennedy your colleague says those are the big dials that can be considered. here's something i learned that i did not know before when i asked about the depletion of that last time. i said what did they get wrong, how is it tip o'neill, ronald reagan, howard baker and all these people and the actuaries thought that they were creating 75 years of adequate funding even accounting for the baby boomers. i said did you not know people my age -- know we knew that it was calculated. there were two things we missed.

of the duration and at the depth of the recession they probably should have calculated. at the other thing they missed was changes to the tax cut that happened after their bipartisan fix in 1982, which by the way only happened about a month before because human beings work against deadlines i suppose. he said what they didn't calculate was the changes to the tax code would move a lot of the earned income out of that bracket that they were asked at 90% of the income. they said it in 1982 but over the course of time it shrink to just 82% because of the concentration of wealth among the highest three or 4% of earners. so those are the two reasons it was moved up but it can be moved

out again. so, raising revenue and a variety of ways it might be done. what about the concept of means testing. do you have an opinion on that? >> one of the beauties of social security is everybody that pays in receives a benefit. i, again i have to do a double pump on this because i'm no longer running for office, never running for office again so this is not, these policy calls are not my calls, they are yours. >> let's go to another one that is probably in almost any federal program, $60 billion a year in fraud in a program that is what social security would be. last year alone i think it was

2.7 billion on urinary catheters. i can't imagine how there can be that much fraud on one item that's part of 60 billion. what is the figure of fraud that would be part of social security and beyond fraud, what percentage would there be for payments made to the wrong beneficiary, for the wrong amount? tell us a little about that. >> on "the new york times" in fact just last weekend about fraud and hacking into the system, using false identities and taking over your -- >> is there a number out there? >> it was approximately $34 million after the first three years and 34 million by this particular type of fraud. the larger number in the reports i don't have in front of me that

looks of fraud across the board of the agencies but in this particular instance of people using fake identities and diverting payments it was 34 million for the first three years and we stopped 23 million of that. of the eight meetings we have in regular rotation for the security, one of them explicitly focused on fraud. i'm glad to be able to report to you by the way we closed for our administrations into seated at the table as the independent office of inspector general because her feedback without diminishing her independence is important to us. when i read that in the context, i thought to myself was nobody

mapping this, so we are greatly dialing up our ability to recognize anomalies on the map. >> we would like your office to get back to kind of a category highest and best of your ability to do with how much fraud would be a part of national security, it's an alarming amount in terms of what it was. i see ways that you can do it where you are not up against the actuarial table and social security, but in so many different ways it's like the extended unemployment benefits. somehow you have reports of 50 million to 150 billion being spiked in a special program.

we can't take that when we are running now to trillion dollar deficits. social security is the biggest problem we have. >> i would be glad to get back to you. i'm slipping through my folder here through the last stat that i would be glad to get back to you with a high-level view of what the most common types. >> i ran a business for 37 years. if we ever had any irregularities that would have been in the category of, somebody gets fired you either fix it immediately but they would have been some type of awareness that you couldn't do it in the first place and if it does get to be part and parcel they pay the price big time and not to mention there might be liability involved to boot.

here is something that struck me on the signatures which is an efficiency tool you can do on almost anything and it's part of a biden directive shortly after getting elected in 21. the chairman casey and i had to write a letter to the social security administration. we did that back on december 13th and ironically, we did it here today from the social security administration. >> it wasn't ironic, it was causal. >> stuff like that is low hanging fruit. i imagine being a governor and i know for me coming from the real world of running a business, some of this stuff is just astounding that it can happen. and your general opinion, why aren't we being alert to stuff in the vietcong in a split second and other places state

governments, the private sector? how can we -- and i know billions are now kind of chump change but it's a big figure. for the amount of time it took back on the e-signature, social security has been a bit behind and joining the world where the signatures are commonly in business. we are making substantial progress. the initial letters and drafts sent back to you i think were sufficiently responsive to the question. >> so i made them dig deeper and i think that you can see with the pie chart i was just on the phone with the commissioner texting hannah earlier today about the remaining item that we need his help on to allow us to

do this rather than the signatures, so we are making progress and also removing requirements that no longer make sense for actual signatures when we can do that stuff over the phone. this is stuff that we missed when it comes to waste fraud and abuse. i remember after the attacks of 9/11 i was talking to a national security professional about how we miss things and he said you know if we only knew what we already knew and did something about it. when i was the mayor we started doing something that hadn't been done before. we asked can you show me the top earners of overtime and can you rank them from greatest to least? we couldn't do that in public. they were individual people and they said you want what?

we want you to rank. things that had never been done. what are the addresses that we go to? >> you are forced to do that as a mayor because if you are letting stuff like that ago, people will run you down at a ballgame or some other place you're going to be held accountable. here i'm worried about the fact that we've lost that. chair casey will be back shortly and we may take a recess we may still do that at 11:30. to fix it it is about an $18 billion a year fix, 180 billion. that's kind of the inherent unfairness in the way that's kind of come down. sadly we are in the position where that would be difficult to fix for the fact we are going through a couple trillion dollars each year, but the overpayment part of it, if there is one thing i try to get to the bottom of right away it would be

to fix that because you mentioned earlier in your statement i would rather than just give a pass on that because they are already dealing with the unfairness now, they are getting benefits equal to what others are, what can we do to prevent the overpayments in the first place to either call them back which is installed on top of injury. >> we've done a lot of unpacking on this to figure out what the causes are both in title 16 where is the leading cause of the financial accounts and wages and to support maintenance entitled to the retirees and disabled and its relationship and dependency is the leading cause, substantial activity and earning above that as another one and computations i suppose

is a larger bucket where the calculations would fall. the reason we discover these things have to do with of the annual earnings adjustments and frankly not to sound like a broken record but when you have fewer staff, sadly it takes us longer to catch up and do the notices and address them. so that's part of this. we just put forward ranks on the payroll information exchange. so our ability with the large national company like quick facts to be able to immediately identify a person's earnings so that will mitigate some of

these. >> that would have been the most basic thing for anybody that is offering services of some sort. i know in our business of a phone call went over a minute, we felt that was a phone call may be lost to a competitor and a since there is no competition in this case if you got i think you said 1.2% from where it is currently, what would that do in terms of fixing because that symbolic feature is when you're having to burn half-an-hour just to have a phone conversation. >> yes sir. we believe with the budget of 15.4 billion, we believe we can reduce the number by 20 minutes. i believe that we could get it down even further. in fact in the pages that i provided you, we believe if we

were able to operate again like they had before at 1.2%, we could get that down to five. in the field offices it is three to five minutes if you combine the field office the standard would we be whenever you are over a minute the call goes somewhere else and in our case it would be to a competitor where you pay the ultimate price you figured out how not to let that happen. so, the government, and you know where it's gone, it's got to get back down to where basic questions and any government agency don't have to hang on the phone for more than a few minutes. >> yes, sir. our expectations are consumer expectations that also apply to the government and if we can't

do the basics of answering the phone, it's harder for people to trust us on larger things like their retirement or the solvency fix that you all have to do in a bipartisan way. i like to believe that as we fix the customer service crisis, that that will put some more oxygen and trust in the room when it comes to the longer-term -- >> we are almost to the point we are going to recess. i want to venture onto a different subject. mayor, governor, you know how it works in jobs like that. currently, our biggest issue is not just social security, it's medicare, medicaid, the fact we are borrowing 30 cents on every dollar that we spend currently. we've never been the history of the country raised more than roughly 18% of the gdp in federal revenues.

economic growth goes down a little bit. cut taxes you take a little bit away from the treasury. economic growth goes up. given the fact that we've got 50 years of data that this place can't pay for more than 18% of itself of the gdp, and we are currently up 25%, what kind of confidence does that give you the entirety of it with social security at the centerpiece is going to be there for future generations. >> the good news about social security is it doesn't contribute to the deficit. so, that's why the ability to close this gap between the declining staff and rising beneficiaries, the dollars are already there and it doesn't contribute to the deficit people already paid it in. if you're at the point of cutting benefits or borrowing

money, or having to do it through the general fund, then would you agree? >> it would also be true i would imagine any fix would require the infusion of general funds. the good news on the phone calls and getting people's disability determinations done before they die, that we could do with 1.2% to the deficit. >> i would call that low hanging fruit. >> yes, sir. we need your help picking that fruit. >> i think we will have a short recess until the chairman gets back.

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sorry for the delay. we had to go to a briefing. i know that the ranking member just finished a couple of minutes ago. so, i will be the last question are unless we have someone else. i wanted to go back to be an issue that you have referenced, and i appreciate your comments about this, the issue of overpayments. in december as i made reference to earlier with my staff, 78 opening cases with constituents that needed help responding to overpayment notice. i sent a letter with senator wyden and brown to make sure the

overpayments related to covid-19 checks, which as you know should be held harmless from calculating asset income limits. and i'm grateful today for your announcement and the changes you're planning to make with response to the overpayments. it's important that the burden is lifted. it's a heavy burden as you know. at the same time they should be working to prevent overpayments in the future and as well as underpayments and the challenges facing both workers and beneficiaries. here's how to communicate the policy changes to both ssa employees as well as to beneficiaries. >> we do them and a number of different ways. as you know it's been nine years since social security has even had a budget or appropriations

hearing. so your attention to this issue and concern for people across the commonwealth in pennsylvania. we will be doing a lot of calls with managers in fact to someone yesterday with 375 managers through the research, the house so that they could understand how to implement it in these new policies. sixty minutes in a way as awful as that was for many of us to watch, they did communications. it might be accurate 98% of the time, but in agency this large when you are wrong to present of the time that can create a lot of damage and especially if you are one of those people that thought maybe didn't seem to notice, may be thought it was a scam. so we are going to be doing for

things right away and look to do others. we are no longer going to do that brutal sort of 100% clawback the beneficiaries benefits. second we will shift the burden of proof and not ask the claimant to do it. third, we are going to allow repayment plans since the va does and sometimes they make mistakes. a 60 month period of time instead of 36 that we had been and finally we are going to make it easier for the beneficiaries to request the waiver the payment because the social security administration, congress has empowered it to be able to waive certain payments if they dispute the purpose of the act mainly and it puts an elderly person out of their home, that would certainly defeat the purpose of the act, or if it is contrary to equity

and good conscience. we look forward to putting forth other guidance to the field in order to allow these decisions to be made in a much more immediate and human compassionate face-to-face interaction in the field rather than allowing it to linger for months and months until we catch up with it. let's also be very clear that part of the reason for the growing, we haven't seen, and this is interesting in the research and impacting we haven't seen greater numbers of people affected, but we have seen the amount of those overpayments go up as the staffing has declined, which kind of makes sense if it takes us longer to catch it, then it's going to be more months it takes up to create an even greater hardship for somebody on their monthly benefit one month to the

next. >> in terms of the beneficiary, how will they receive information about these changes? >> we are going to be changing the notices, the notices are across the board are hard to understand. they are not exactly plain language. it's like mad libs. there's all sorts of language that's hard to track. so that's the most important thing we can do is the clarity of the language. in the notice to people and that's the primary means. it's interesting also, i found it interesting 92% of people go to the trouble to sit on hold for 39 minutes in order to repay and work out a payment plan. and i've listened on the other side when people say i told you i did to 200 a month and i can only afford a hundred and people have the ability to make those

adjustments but the notice is probably going to be the primary way that we improve communication. >> so they would see that when? >> the new notices if memory serves me correctly, we need a couple of months in order to effectuate the change to the notices. however, in the meantime, we are doing kind of a manual workaround for notices and open payments especially in those instances where it has defaulted because of a lack of response and that 100 present we are taking those old and tending to them manually and also doing something else with this deal that has allowed us to be able to better analyze and focus on those instances where there's

huge amounts of by a very tiny number of people that we can also address. some of those if it's in fraud we are not going to address that if there is no fault we will do so more quickly. >> is there any way to expedite that? you should have heard what they initially told me. [laughter] >> we are expediting. there's the changes that have to happen in the field offices for some of this there's also the processing centers and the separate sort of debt management people. the notices were difficult given the legacy systems, but they are moving fast and the manual workaround that we are going to do immediately was because of that delay.

i was not going to wait and have seniors suffer hardship and not to mention all of the anxiety and other emotional trauma while we untangle our notice issues so those are going to be done through a manual workaround. >> to move to another issue related to communications and challenges within the agency, i don't know if this is new to you but there's often confusion and inconsistencies when it comes to eligibility service and delivery rules and beneficiaries and employees. ranking member and i sent a letter to you in december regarding the acceptance of these signatures, and we appreciate your response for that.

we request physical signatures which is an unnecessary hurdle for many beneficiaries to prevent them from accessing benefits. i know the updating procedures who interact with beneficiaries is time-consuming you just made reference in trying to expedite things, but keeping funding and the resulting stuffing challenges in mind, i want to discuss some of the ways to improve communications between employees and beneficiaries. so, how would you address the need for ongoing training to ensure accurate information is being delivered to beneficiaries? just on the training planned. >> i traveled all around the country and i shared with you earlier -- let me apologize for the length of time it took to get back. the initial drafts were not what i would consider to be

responsive. i hope through that pie chart you see we've made substantial progress and then there's some of those red parts that part of this is not only allowing the but we don't need a signature at all and it can be done but let me go to training. you would have thought someone would have put a banner outside that said town hall about the poor training. the training really took remote in the recession and the agency has not recovered from that. there were some times when we did a training really well and it was the same time we had the top morale and there were young people coming in learning things like benefits administrator on

the floor next to them present their at the office that they could turn to. i certainly did as a young lawyer in my profession to ask them how to do this. a lot of that fell by the wayside and then with the rising beneficiaries and the declining staff, many of the most experienced people were told that training stuff is all great, but there's all these people and waiting lines out of the doors we've got to handle so we cannibalized our entry in order to throw it out to the customer service crisis and ever rising number of customers. one of the lessons i believe we've learned that we were able to do thanks to the better budget, we hired a lot of people, but we lost a lot of them in the first year.

if we are able to start to hire again, and keep in mind right now we are in a freeze. if we are allowed, you should be able to pass the president's budget which would be a huge step in the right direction and to throw them at the income and through the door. this agency that would have been workforce optimization all the time, you and i would call it whack a mole shifting people from one thing to another to deal with the latest spike and backlog in the urgent problem that we need to have dedicated trainers and the job is to train

and we have to be able to realize after the six months with a cohort of the new hires, they are going to more than make up for the dividend lost. not only an outgrowth in the resources. the greater amount ultimately the root cause but also be have been trying to serve more people coming through the doors with fewer staff then we had in 27 years and for all the clever tricks and process improvements, those are singles only congress can hit the homerun like we had

every year before 2018. you made reference to the technology. we all have stories about government agencies didn't have the technology they needed to help with the problems. it's alarming for a lot of americans to hear how we integrated the technologies and so many agencies. what you hope to be able to do on the technology alone. >> it is amazing how much data the social security administration has collected on all of us from our very first paycheck. it is phenomenal that it continues to operate even though the base of it is a very

ancient. it's a bit like the layers of jerusalem built upon each. there's a lot of clever people in the fields that have some background in coding and product and technology term product and they built some clever things. in birmingham, there was a tool that was developed locally that takes the average processing time for medicare only applications that would take a technician usually eight minutes to do and they automated fat on an excel spreadsheet and they are able to do it in seven seconds. you multiplying that when it comes to going through voluminous medical records and what we call the part of the disability case folder, we've

developed a tool called imagine, and imagine allows the technician or rather the person making the disability determination, it alerts them to what pages the need of the listing is for the doctors evaluation and he's been able to come. to past cases to say this one is 80% likelihood of being allowed compared to other cases. so there's really the innovation is happening. a lot of it happens out in the field when it comes to the larger things we've got to get out of the straitjacket. 90% of it goes to maintenance of those ancient systems, and only 10% goes to developing new systems or what i would even call modernization.

so other agencies particularly the va has three times the technology budget even though we serve more than the va does, so it's people, process and technology, and we've been shortstaffed on all of those were short funded on all of those. i miss spoke earlier when i was talking about the comparison to other insurance agencies looking at the budget as a percentage of outlays, it was 19.4% as the overhead to benefit. liberty mutual is 22.8%. i'm sorry, 23.6%. a social security traditionally had been 1.2 or below. without increasing the deficit, if we were allowed to operate again at 1.2%, we could bring

customer service back, and the good news is people have already paid for it. >> to the last question, would the committee historically focused on fraud and scam and issues of reports to educate folks around the country about the newest scam and the newest iteration of that fraudulent behavior i think it is one of the best things the committee does to be able to update and every time i think they learned, everything about what the bad guys are doing, we know that older adults are at particular risk to social security scam, identity theft. of course it affects everyone in the country. recently my office engagement --

was lost in the mail and the family now regularly, this mother regularly monitors her daughter's credit card or credit i should say to ensure no one is using her social security number. if the cards were lost or stolen. how is ssa supporting individuals whose cards have been stolen and whether the steps of the agency have taken to the identity theft? >> identity theft as you know when it comes to scaling the social security benefits, there was an article in "the new york

times" that happened just last week that the challenge and all fraud cases staying inside of the radios for the bad guys they are always changing and suggesting and coming up with new tactics and strategies and we need to become more nimble than the bad guys and that is what we are endeavoring to do. the challenge we face is we want people to be able to access their benefits. we wanted them to be able to go online, but we also need to make sure that their identity is confirmed. recommendations for spenders every agency needs to make, and every agency is making those trade-offs about making sure that it's good for the consumer and that it can be used.

the banks are probably better and more nimble than we are at this point. we need to learn from them and that's why every two weeks we locked the door, it's the only one that's not public and with the people there at the table with us, we look at all sorts of magnets and tactics and strategies and ask ourselves are we doing any better than we were before at detecting and preventing this. it has been the agencies. i've heard it said that there are huge numbers of social security numbers that are available on the black market and the agency has been very known to issue new security guards. i certainly look forward to working with you especially where children are concerned because i'm not sure that the rationale of something messing up your earnings by giving a 6-year-old a new card are really

in play here. >> i appreciate that. we are tight on time and i know you've all been patient and with our fluctuating schedule. i will make some closing comments and we will wrap up. as we heard from the commissioner today the services provided by the social security administration testifies to every single american and social security is the most successful antipoverty program to date. the benefits from this program allow tens of millions of americans including older adults and people with disabilities and children to live in dignity. we should be protecting and strengthening social security for those receiving benefits and for future generations who should not be talking about the cuts as so many around here seem to talk about year after year.

adults can receive the benefit increases that they need for strengthening benefits into the and thesocial security administn needs additional funding i think that is an understatement to support the agency operations. this is absolutely critical that the social security administration has been starved for resources impacting both employer or nile as well as customer service. so as a politician you can't gripe about customer service but don't support the funding for social security. you can blow hot air about what the government is not doing and then not support the funding. when you do that you lack integrity and you are throwing sand in the eyes of the people, trying to confuse them. if you want to the service to be better you've got to support the funding. i said that to my fellow

senators. this administration's social security administration has lacked the leadership necessary to keep the agency on track and accountable to the promises that we have made and the basic promise made to the american people. i think the formality has been a breath of fresh air with his leadership and experience in his determination to make change. i was glad to hear the commissioner has been visiting dedicated workers in the field office and engaging with unions and advocates. his hands on all in approach is something we didn't have in the previous administration. that is also an understatement i want to elaborate. we must ensure the workers are supporters that can provide the high-quality service americans deserve. we look forward to working with of the commissioner on a whole host of friends to improve the

customer service and address overpayments. ranking member braun will submit closing remarks for the record. i want to thank the commissioner for his time today and for his public service, his willingness to step up and serve again after serving so in such a distinguished passion in his previous roles in public service. for the record if any senators have additional questions or statements to be added, the hearing record will be open until wednesday, march 27. thank you all for participating. we are adjourned.

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