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     The President's budget for Fiscal Year 2021, which begins on October 1, 2020,  would increase Social Security 's funding from $13.30 billion in the current fiscal year to $13.71 billion in fiscal year 2021, an increase which may not be enough to even cover inflation. It's certainly not enough to improve service. It assumes that Social Security's workyears (including Disability Determination Services employees) will decline slightly from 76,142 to 75,725.      Appropriations must be approved by Congress. The President's budget can be, at most, persuasive to some Republicans in Congress but few if any Democrats care what the President wants. The actual appropriations must be ironed out between the House and Senate and what the President wants doesn't matter that much. For that matter, this budget is far more the wish list of Mick Mulvaney, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, than of President Trump.

     From the portions of  the President's proposed budget concerning Social Security: ... Reduce improper payments caused by barriers for beneficiaries to report income and assets. The Budget proposes to reduce improper payments in disability programs by targeting administrative resources to the development of a uniform system of reporting in mySocialSecurity. This is in addition to instituting a holistic view that provides all ben eficiaries� data, including income and assets, in one electronic location, while simultaneously developing a network of automated processes across other IT platforms for work-related benefit payment adjust ments, work continuing disability reviews, redeter minations, and payments to Ticket to Work provid ers. In addition, future related legislative changes to address the root causes of these improper payments could include requiring suspension of benefits when beneficiaries negl...

     I've finally gotten around to the sort of list you've seen a lot of in the last couple of weeks -- the most important things that have happened in the Social Security world in the last decade. Below is my list but feel free to post your own list. I came up with eight and didn't want to pad it to make it ten. Constant administrative under-funding of the Social Security Administration accompanied by frequent shutdown threats and occasional actual shutdowns. Agency performance suffered as a result. Service has deteriorated to levels that would have once been thought unimaginable; After the number of Social Security disability claims soared in the 2000-2009 decade, the number of claims started declining in 2010. That decline is continuing. We think we know why claims soared from 2000-2009 -- primarily the aging of the baby boomer population -- but no one has a good handle on why the number of disability claims filed has gone down so much since then or why the declin...

     The Social Security portions of the Committee report (Social Security part begins at page 157) on the Fiscal Year 2020 appropriations bill covering the Social Security Administration that has been passed by Congress: The agreement includes an increase of $100,000,000 for SSA's base administrative expenses for additional hires and resources to improve public service at SSA field offices and direct service operations.  Continuing Disability Reviews . - The agreement directs SSA to include in its next continuing disability review (CDR) report to Congress an evaluation of its CDR prioritization models and a cost-benefit analysis of how it uses estimated savings in determining which beneficiaries receive a full-medical CDR . Additionally, the agreement requests in the fiscal year 2021 Congressional Justification, the process by which SSA intends to pace its CDR workload to properly manage Limitation on Administrative Expenses funding.   Disability Cas e Proces...