out of more than 1500 aljs at ssa. in that year alone he decided 1375 cases, and awarded benefits in 1371. with an approval rate of 99.7. he denied only for cases but he was outgunned only by frederick mcgrath of atlanta, georgia, decided 3200 cases and charles bridges of harrisburg, pennsylvania, who approved 1855 cases. many of judge towards peers question how it was possible to decide so many cases when most others struggled to finish a third. when asked by fellow alj how he was deciding such a high volume of cases, judge daugherty responded, you're just going to have to learn which corners to cut. to cut those corners our investigation found that judge daugherty focus on cases from one attorney, eric c. conn of the conn law firm. self-described multimillion at the mr. collins law office is located in stand of kentucky this practice focus almost entirely on client is seeking sources could disability benefits, early on mr. conn became known for his aggressive marketing, with billboards throughout the stand bill and e

and greg hall, and chief alj charlie andrus and to some degree, although much more minor, alj doherty spent it may seem odd you that i've asked you to name folks but it's early has been our expense that sunshine can go a long way. and if other agencies are operating like this, if other events like this are occurring within the system, having people know that your name will be listed in washington, d.c. in a hearing to provide maybe some relief to folks in your situation you are calling out these kinds of egregious problems and not getting any answer. want to transition from what was happening internally, because obviously not only has this hearing and all of the attention not led to a change of kind of atmosphere for you within the agency, it seems like there continues to be pushed back from the agency on what needs to be done. but i want to just transition for a moment because i think it was you, ms. griffith, who talked about filing and inspector general complaint in 2009 and never hearing -- i want to make sure we have this right. you filed the complaint in 2009 and did not hear fr

would other alj's called? >> no sir. >> would the thing judge daugherty would do this and what you think was going on? i'm not asking you to speculate. what is your common sense tell you? >> common sense told us and the talk in the office was that he was paid to do so. >> i would ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the list of rfc forms and noting that they all show for on demonstrated ability. >> without objection. >> ms. hicks i have one other set of questions for you. in 2000 limits on the details with mr. conn and judge daugherty became public and an article which you afford to related to. two. what was the reaction inside the law office at that time? >> chaos. >> described that. >> everyone was in a panic. there wasn't a lot of work done at all. i remember that david damien came to visit our office. no one spoke to to him in the left and went to the subway next story. we had emploes there and eric conn told me to go and get them because they'll have to come out of the subway. he didn't want any

alj dorrty and khan. when such example in may of 2007 i sent an e-mail to greg requesting justification on the hearing request date of fully favorable dispositions. i discussed the serious evidence which would substantial the overt favoritism of the claimant and management's continuous sweeping things under the rug with regards to dorrty and khan. in that e-mail, i directly warned my managers and i quote, the cairn situation is going to bite this office in the butt one day. i further requested minuting -- management to open the eyes and change the way it was handled before it became an outside issue. instead of any corrective action being taken, the situation only escaladed. i continued reporting to management for several years thereafter before i took my concerns out of the office. as a result of my multidisclosure i have suffered tremendously. and make my life as miserable as possible for the last seven years. knowing that a private investigators was hired to follow me has been very traumatizing. i stil

alj is tasked with representing the government, the agency management breathing down to meet of alj's monthly quotas of deciding cases, this would bring needed races to the decision-making and a sure that they consider all of the medical evidence in the file. reform has long been a recommendation by social and it isdvisories, also supported by the ministry of law judges. his is one area where congress can find common ground. we also need to make sure that these alj's have the tools to render the proper decisions. the validityidding testing, like the minnesota personality inventory is ridiculous. these tests determine if an individual is malingering or lying about their symptoms. ssa found that they are alone in not using the mmpi. agencies, private disability insurance, and the medical community at large. i hope today's findings encourage others to take a hard look at this program and support much-needed reforms for this program that last used included almost 11 million americans with billions of dollars from the american taxpayers. i would hope that if you are if you are seeing manip

>> this was one of many e-mails int i began to actually send alj's would start complaining. >> and on the record determination can only be made positively. is that correct? clark's correct. 2.5his e-mail was sent years after the e-mail from jennifer griffith which we had discussed. did you see him assign cases after management was made aware of the problem? >> yes. ?> was there ever any follow-up >> yes. i had talked with the judge on several occasions. had e-mailed on several occasions and told the judge if he did not take care of the problem he would take it outside of the office. >> you actually worked for a long. of time. what did you actually do for him? were you his miss everything? >> i started as a claims taker. when i left, i was doing managerial duties. >> were you the most senior employee? >> yes. workedthe time that you in the office, how important would you say he was to the success of the law firm? >> very successful. very important. >> when did you grow concerned about the relationship? >> when i first moved to the hearing department and noticed that he was the only one

did they alj's get monetary awards? >> no, never. >> going back to this action that was taken against ms. carver. did judge daugherty know what you are doing? >> i believe judge daugherty did not. i think he was out of the office. he had left and i believe he had retired. >> okay. when my staff -- when both staffs interviewed you both psi staffs i guess and may be the chairman staff. in any offense event when the staffs talked to you you said that there was no plan to have ms. carver followed and yet that within a month or two after the decision was made to follow her. was it not? >> you talk to my staff or our staff again excuse me, are staffs in june of 2012? >> yes. >> when did you suggest that she be video to? wasn't that in early 2012? >> yes. >> so in early 2012 when you participated in this game you told our staffs just a few months later that there was no plan to have her followed or videotaped? >> i remember talking about it and from what we were talking about i thought the question was whether i was directly p

but that is totally ignored by the aljs and the trial bar when, in fact, they go to try to secure somebodyrs? >> i think this one judge we looked at assigned over $5 billion worth of claims -- >> wow. >> -- just in the last four or five years. and we don't know which one of those might have been real versus not. what we do know is this one judge, it appears, didn't actually look at the cases and just decided them on the record without hearing the testimony from either the attorney the individual or social security or reading actually the full file on the individual's claim. >> senator, last night on "60 minutes" you said we have so many scalawags in the system. i hadn't heard that word in a very long time. we have so many scalawags in the system that people who really need the help will not be able to get it, that we will run out of money. what can we do to prevent this from happening? >> there are a couple things. first of all, the problems are acute. probably in less than 18 mos, the social security system will run out of money and that means the people who are truly disabled will take a

. >> the you knew all these other judges, or how many aljs? >> it varies between five and eight others think so you get complaint after complaint after complaint. you knew they were true. you told them he had to stop it how many times come at least three times. he didn't stop it. in fact, you said trenton. >> that was the last. >> oops. >> the last time -- >> you are suspicious of it and you have gotten all these complaints from your colleagues, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011 from your own staff. and you're sitting here and saying, well, you'd enough power to do anything about it but you did have power to make recommendation and you didn't do that spend i did in 2011, senator. >> after it hit the papers. >> before it hits the paper. >> you knew there was something going on by then. >> i can't recall that. spent i think your staff recalled it. so 2011 when something is just about ready to pop, now you decide you're going to take some kind of action. i find this incredible. and your invocation of the term judicial independence, i find to be, frank

about we designed the system that incentivized attorneys to take advantage of it and overwork the alj'samount of people there to handle the claims. >> brian: senator, finally, nobody has more respect on the hill either party when it comes to budgetary things than you. when we get to october 17 and 18 and don't raise the debt ceiling, do you believe america goes into default? >> no, not at all. default is not paying interest on the notes you have outstanding or not redeeming bonds that are due. we have plenty of money. we've got over 80% of the money to run this government that's coming in every day. we can handle that. would we be slow in paying some of our other bills? you bet. but we're not about to default on our obligation, international obligations for our debt. >> steve: all right. tom coburn, senator from the great state of oklahoma. thank you very much for joining us this morning. >> you bet. >> steve: thank you very much for trying to get some oversight on this disability thing 'cause it is jaw dropping. >> brian: hopefully the president calls you. >> elisabeth: thank you. >> s