[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
WORK INCENTIVES IN
SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY PROGRAMS
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SOCIAL SECURITY
and
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 23, 2011
__________
Serial No. 112-SS10 & 112-HR08
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means
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COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
DAVE CAMP, Michigan, Chairman
WALLY HERGER, California SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan
SAM JOHNSON, Texas CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York
KEVIN BRADY, Texas FORTNEY PETE STARK, California
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington
DEVIN NUNES, California JOHN LEWIS, Georgia
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts
GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky XAVIER BECERRA, California
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana MIKE THOMPSON, California
PETER J. ROSKAM, Illinois JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
TOM PRICE, Georgia RON KIND, Wisconsin
VERN BUCHANAN, Florida BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey
ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
AARON SCHOCK, Illinois JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
LYNN JENKINS, Kansas
ERIK PAULSEN, Minnesota
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas
RICK BERG, North Dakota
DIANE BLACK, Tennessee
TOM REED, New York
Jon Traub, Staff Director
Janice Mays, Minority Staff Director
______
Subcommittee on Social Security
SAM JOHNSON, Texas, Chairman
KEVIN BRADY, Texas XAVIER BECERRA, California,
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio Ranking
AARON SCHOCK, Illinois LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
RICK BERG, North Dakota SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska FORTNEY PETE STARK, California
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas
______
Subcommittee on Human Resources
GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky, Chairman
ERIK PAULSEN, Minnesota LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas, Ranking
RICK BERG, North Dakota JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington
TOM REED, New York JOHN LEWIS, Georgia
TOM PRICE, Georgia JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
DIANE BLACK, Tennessee
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana
Pursuant to clause 2(e)(4) of Rule XI of the Rules of the House, public
hearing records of the Committee on Ways and Means are also published
in electronic form. The printed hearing record remains the official
version. Because electronic submissions are used to prepare both
printed and electronic versions of the hearing record, the process of
converting between various electronic formats may introduce
unintentional errors or omissions. Such occurrences are inherent in the
current publication process and should diminish as the process is
further refined.
C O N T E N T S
__________
Page
Advisory of September 23, 2011, announcing the hearing........... 2
WITNESSES
Robert W. Williams, Associate Commissioner, Office of Employment
Support Programs, accompanied by Dr. Robert R. Weathers II,
Deputy Associate Commissioner, Office of Program Development
and Research, Social Security Administration................... 10
Daniel Bertoni, Director, Education, Workforce, and Income
Security Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office......... 23
Deb Russell, Manager, Outreach and Employee Services, Walgreen
Company, Deerfield, Illinois................................... 44
James Hanophy, Assistant Commissioner, Texas Department of
Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, Austin, Texas, on behalf
of the Council of State Administrators of Vocational
Rehabilitation................................................. 55
Cheryl Bates-Harris, Senior Disability Advocacy Specialist,
National Disability Rights Network, on behalf of the Consortium
for Citizens with Disabilities Employment and Training Task
Force.......................................................... 70
John Kregel, Professor, Special Education and Disability Policy,
Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia........... 88
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Arizona Bridge to Independent Living, statement.................. 270
Corporation for Enterprise Development, statement................ 278
Linda Landry, statement.......................................... 281
Health and Disability Advocates, statement....................... 283
National Association of Benefits and Work Incentives Specialists,
statement...................................................... 294
National Disability Rights Network, statement.................... 297
Oregon Department of Human Services Office of Vocational
Rehabilitation Services, statement............................. 300
Steve Kofahl, statement.......................................... 301
APSE, statement.................................................. 304
WORK INCENTIVES IN
SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY PROGRAMS
----------
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2011
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Ways and Means,
Subcommittee on Social Security,
Subcommittee on Human Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:05 a.m., in
room 1100, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Sam Johnson
(Chairman of the Subcommittee on Social Security), presiding.
[The advisory announcing the hearing follows:]
ADVISORY
FROM THE
COMMITTEE
ON WAYS
AND
MEANS
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SOCIAL SECURITY AND
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
CONTACT: (202) 225-1721
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 23, 2011
SS-10 & HR-08
Chairman Johnson and Chairman Davis
Announce a Joint Hearing on Work Incentives in
Social Security Disability Programs
U.S. Congressman Sam Johnson (R-TX), Chairman of the House
Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, and U.S.
Congressman Geoff Davis (R-KY), Chairman of the House Committee on Ways
and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources, announced today that the
Subcommittees will hold a joint oversight hearing on work incentives in
Social Security disability programs. The hearing will take place on
Friday, September 23, 2011, in room 1100, Longworth House Office
Building, beginning at 9 a.m.
In view of the limited time available to hear witnesses, oral
testimony at this hearing will be from invited witnesses only. However,
any individual or organization not scheduled for an oral appearance may
submit a written statement for consideration by the Committee and for
inclusion in the printed record of the hearing. A list of invited
witnesses will follow.
BACKGROUND:
The Social Security Administration (SSA) administers two programs,
Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security
Income (SSI), which together provide benefits each year to nearly 14
million beneficiaries unable to work because of severe disabling
conditions. The SSDI program pays benefits to those who have sufficient
past employment covered by Social Security to qualify. The SSI program
pays benefits to those who currently have limited income and assets,
regardless of prior work history.
After being awarded benefits based on an inability to work,
individuals may attempt to return to work and are offered a variety of
programs and supports provided by the SSA. In the most recent
beneficiary survey, 40 percent of beneficiaries were interested in
working, yet in 2009, only one half of 1 percent left the rolls to
return to work. The experience of a cohort of new SSDI beneficiaries
tracked over 10 years showed that nearly 30 percent worked at some
time, and 6.5 percent were able to sustain earnings sufficient to have
their benefits suspended.
The Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999
(P.L. 106-170) established the Ticket to Work and Self-Sufficiency
program, expanded the availability of health care coverage, and
provided for demonstration projects and studies. The Ticket to Work
program, administered by the SSA, increases choice in obtaining
rehabilitation and vocational services, and provides greater
opportunities for SSDI and SSI recipients to receive assistance to help
them return to work.
Services are furnished through the current system of State
Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) agencies or a ticket holder's choice of
an approved public or private sector, program-specific Employment
Network (EN) to assist them in entering or re-entering the workforce.
When the ticket program was implemented, the SSA automatically issued
tickets to most adult beneficiaries on the rolls, and has continued to
issue them to new beneficiaries. Through June of this year, according
to the SSA, of the approximately 12.7 million tickets that have been
issued since the program's inception, 290,189 or approximately 2.3
percent have been assigned to an EN or VR agency.
In July 2008, the SSA made major regulatory changes to the Ticket
to Work program in an effort to increase participation by ENs and
beneficiaries. These changes, however, have not been in place long
enough for an accurate assessment of their impact. However, a May 2011
Government Accountability Office (GAO) assessment concluded ``at this
time, the agency [SSA] still lacks critical management and oversight
mechanisms to assess whether the program is achieving its original
purpose, and ultimately, whether the program is viable.''
The Ticket to Work Act also authorized two programs now known as
the Work Incentive Planning and Assistance (WIPA) program and the
Protection and Advocacy for Beneficiaries of Social Security (PABSS)
program. Under the WIPA program, SSA funds community-based
organizations to assist beneficiaries in understanding and utilizing
SSA's complex work incentives policies. Under the PABSS program, SSA
funds protection and advocacy systems to provide assistance to help
beneficiaries secure, maintain, or regain employment. The authorization
for both programs will expire on September 30, 2011, but existing
funding permits WIPAs to continue providing services until June 30,
2012 and PABSS programs to continue serving their clients until
February 29, 2012.
SSA is also developing or conducting several demonstration projects
to test new work incentive policies for Social Security disability
beneficiaries, including a sliding scale benefit reduction. However,
because SSA's demonstration authority for disability insurance
beneficiaries expired in December 2005, SSA can continue demonstrations
already initiated, but cannot begin new projects. Reports issued by the
GAO in 2004 and 2008 raised concerns about SSA's management of its
demonstration projects. The President's FY 2012 budget included a
proposal to reauthorize for 5 years SSA's demonstration authority for
the DI program and require the Commissioner to conduct a demonstration
project testing alternative methods of treating work activity by DI
beneficiaries.
Last, past testimony before the Subcommittees has reported that
former beneficiaries have been overpaid tens of thousands of dollars
due to SSA's delays in terminating benefits, even if beneficiaries have
informed the agency that they are working. The threat of receiving
large overpayments, which must later be repaid, can be a significant
work disincentive for disability beneficiaries.
In announcing the hearing, Chairman Sam Johnson (R-TX) stated,
``Those receiving disability benefits who want to work are looking for
a hand up, not a hand out, to help them achieve a better life for
themselves and their families. Now, more than ever, how every taxpayer
dollar is spent matters. Programs that don't achieve results must be
changed or must end. This hearing will help us determine whether the
work incentive programs are getting those who can back to work and a
life of self sufficiency.''
Chairman Geoff Davis (R-KY) went on to add, ``Work lets individuals
build a better life for themselves and their families. We should help
individuals with disabilities who want to work to achieve that better
life. That starts with reviewing what we are doing now to assist
individuals with disabilities who want to work, and then holding SSA
and its work incentive programs more accountable for improving on and
achieving that critical goal.''
FOCUS OF THE HEARING:
The hearing will focus on the current work incentives in the SSDI
and SSI programs, their impact on the number of individuals exiting the
benefit roles, including the data and reports documenting such impact.
The Subcommittees will also examine recommended performance standards
to guide future evaluations of work incentives programs, with
particular focus on Ticket to Work, WIPA, PABSS, and Vocational
Rehabilitation Services. In addition, ongoing and proposed SSDI
demonstration projects will also be reviewed.
DETAILS FOR SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN COMMENTS:
Please Note: Any person(s) and/or organization(s) wishing to submit
for the hearing record must follow the appropriate link on the hearing
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noted above.
Chairman JOHNSON. Good morning. We had a late night last
night, and some of our guys haven't woken up yet.
But this hearing will come to order. I welcome and thank
Chairman Davis and Ranking Member Doggett and the Members of
the Subcommittee on Human Resources for joining us in this
joint hearing.
Our Nation's most vulnerable citizens are at the center of
a perfect storm. Record deficits, a still struggling economy,
and an unsustainable future spending path, driven by the aging
of Americans, all threaten the essential programs those with
disabilities count on. We have been warned by the Social
Security trustees that the disability insurance program will
soon be unable to pay full benefits beginning just 7 years from
now, in 2018. Those who depend on these critical benefits are
counting on us to act, and we will.
This Committee will soon hold hearings on the many
challenges facing Social Security disability. Today we turn to
the issue of helping those already receiving benefits who want
to work. To achieve that end, Social Security administers a
number of work-incentive programs. Congress established the
current State Vocational Rehabilitation Reimbursement program--
that is a mouthful, isn't it--in 1981 to encourage State
vocational rehabilitation agencies to provide services that
would result in work by disability beneficiaries. Last year,
Social Security paid over $100 million for these services.
In 1999, Congress passed the Ticket to Work and Work
Incentives Improvement Act to make it easier for beneficiaries
to return to work. The Ticket program allows beneficiaries to
choose a public- or private-sector service provider, known as
an employment network, to get the training and support they
need to find jobs, which, in turn, leads to benefit savings
because they leave the benefit rolls, theoretically.
Two grant programs were also created as part of the Ticket
legislation. One helps beneficiaries understand Social
Security's complex rules, and the other assists in the
resolution of potential disputes with employers. The
authorization for these two programs expires September 30,
though their funding continues until the next year.
So where are we today? As we will soon hear, while there is
some progress to report, the results are disappointing, and
problems remain. A recent report by the GAO found Social
Security's oversight and management of the Ticket to Work
program isn't where it needs to be. For example, certain
employment networks were telling ticket holders how they could
work and keep their full benefits. This is simply unacceptable.
Other employment networks are increasingly splitting the Ticket
payment with beneficiaries while providing no direct services.
At the same time, I have seen for myself how beneficiaries
and employers benefit when the system works. While back home
this August, I visited the Walgreens distribution center in
Waxahachie, Texas. There, with the help of the Texas Department
of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, those with
disabilities, including former beneficiaries, work side by side
with other workers doing the same job for the same pay with the
same performance. I look forward to hearing more of their
inspiring stories today.
Despite these and other work incentives, the fact is less
than half of 1 percent of those receiving disability has left
the benefit rolls to work. Now more than ever, how every
taxpayer dollar is spent matters. Programs that don't achieve
results must be fixed, or they must end. The question we must
answer today is how work incentives can achieve the results
Congress and the taxpayers expect and those with disabilities
deserve.
I now recognize Mr. Doggett, the Ranking Member of the
Subcommittee on Human Resources, for his opening statement.
Mr. DOGGETT. Well, thank you very much, Chairman Johnson,
Chairman Davis. And to all of our witnesses this morning, we
look forward to hearing from you.
I think we all want a system here where any American who
wants to work can work, and recognize that our workforce needs
to provide a range of services or of functional levels so that
we can make reasonable accommodation, where necessary, to allow
those who have limitations and disabilities to participate to
the full extent of their disability. We must also recognize
that there are some people who have a disabling condition that
is so severe that they cannot participate in the workforce.
Those who are unable to work must have the guarantee of a
safety net that is more net than hole and that helps them live
in dignity.
As the recent U.S. census data indicates, we have an
increasing number of individuals with disabilities who are
poor. Nearly 30 percent of people who suffer from a disability
live in poverty today in the United States. And to some extent,
with reference to the Supplemental Security Income program,
that is because the payment is not overly generous. Last year,
the monthly benefit was a little less than $500 on the average,
which would carry you to just a little over half of the poverty
measure, according to the Congressional Research Service. The
majority of those who receive SSI have a disability that is
expected to last at least a year or result in death, and
renders them incapable of performing a substantial level of
work. So it is not surprising that those who are on SSI,
receiving those limited benefits, may have difficulty or it may
be impossible for them to move back into the workforce.
At the same time, when you look at the way the law is
written and the way it has been in effect since 1974, when
someone who relies on SSI does see improvement in their
condition, they want to begin to provide some type of
employment service, they face the limitation that after the
first $20 of income, their SSI benefit is reduced by $1 for
every $2 of earned income exceeding $65 a month until the
benefit level reaches zero. This income disregard used to
determine program eligibility of benefit levels, and it has not
been replaced since originally set up in 1974.
As Chairman Johnson mentioned, we have made some progress
through the Ticket to Work Act, but it is important to analyze
how that has worked here and what we can do to make it more
effective.
In my home State of Texas, which I share with Chairman
Johnson, one of the organizations working in this area is
Disability Rights Texas. They helped a 41-year-old Austinite
with spina bifida who receives SSI and had always assumed that
he wouldn't be able to work because he was afraid he would lose
his benefits. Although he had acknowledged that his disability
is very severe, and he had no work experience or training, he
nonetheless decided he would try to work. Disability Rights
Texas referred him to rehabilitative services and a customized
employment program that ultimately helped him receive a job
placement where he is experiencing some success and taking
pride in the value of his work.
Another example is a gentleman who lives in Maynard, Texas,
outside of Austin, who experiences a combination of both
physical and mental problems that severely affect him. The
administrative law judge who decided his case noted that he was
living in a car in the woods and would just sit there most of
the day and talk to himself and the animals. By the time he had
his disability determination hearing, he had been living in the
nonrunning vehicle for over 4 years and had undergone five
psychiatric hospitalizations. Now that he receives SSI
benefits, he has access to housing and regular medical and
psychiatric care.
A contrasting set of examples about why we need to continue
to strive to improve SSI, but why it will be necessary for some
individuals who are not able to become productive members of
our workforce.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding today's hearing, and we
look forward to cooperating with you in seeking improvements in
the program while maintaining this vital safety net. Thank you.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you.
I will now recognize the chairman of the Subcommittee on
Human Resources, Chairman Davis, for his opening statement.
Chairman DAVIS. Thank you, Chairman Johnson.
As my colleagues have discussed, today's hearing examines
the effectiveness of work incentives administered by the Social
Security Administration designed to help people with
disabilities go to work. Chairman Johnson and Ranking Member
Doggett focused on the effects, especially on individuals who
receive disability checks from the Social Security Disability
Insurance program.
As Chairman of the Human Resources Subcommittee, I want to
discuss the implications for people on the Supplemental
Security Income, or SSI program, which falls under our
Subcommittee's jurisdiction. This is our first hearing this
year specifically on the SSI Program, and I can't think of a
more appropriate topic than how we help people go back to work,
and whether those efforts are succeeding.
Since SSI first started paying benefits in 1974, this
means-tested cash assistance program has always encouraged work
and earnings by reducing benefits by only $1 for every $2 in
earnings. In other words, SSI, by design, tries to overcome
disincentives to work inherent in a benefit program for
disabled people with very low income. Even though SSI
recipients have less work experience than SSDI recipients, an
average of 5 percent leave the SSI rolls each year due to
income from work or other sources--this is 10 times the rate
for SSDI recipients. Still, 5 percent is a very low rate.
The key questions we have today are, do current programs
and policies actually promote work? And if not, what else
should we be doing? Our focus is on working-age, disabled
individuals, nearly 40 percent of whom have expressed an
interest in working. Disability applicants spend months and, in
most cases, years proving they are disabled enough to merit
benefit payments. Once they successfully prove they are too
disabled to work, we encourage them to try to work with the
goal of leaving the benefit rolls again. If it sounds
complicated and contradictory, that is because it is.
SSA manages a complex system of work incentives that
include various exemptions and exceptions and disregards that
are both difficult for beneficiaries to understand and for SSA
to efficiently administer. This confusing diagram up on the
screen in front of you displays just the SSI work incentives,
and it says it all. A similarly confusing chart exists for the
SSDI program. What this all suggests is we need more balance.
Balance for the beneficiary when it comes to easing the
transition to work while reducing complexity that has become an
obstacle to work. And balance for the Social Security
Administration in administering complex work incentives
efficiently and effectively. Ultimately, this involves a
balance of taxpayer dollars, too.
What is the right balance of incentives for individuals who
are unable to work due to disability and who receive cash
benefits, health coverage, and support for a range of
assistance and other programs? Is there more assistance that
would better help them work, or would more assistance make it
even harder for them to work if the benefits of not working
increasingly outweigh the benefits of working? The question is,
what is the right balance? This discussion is why today's
hearing is so important.
Encouraging work and self-sufficiency improves the well-
being of individuals and families regardless of their
disability status. We need to look deeper into these programs
to hold SSA, current work incentives, and ourselves accountable
for achieving this goal in a fiscally responsible manner. We
can't continue to just ``do more'' and ``spend more'' and hope
that it helps. We need to start by reviewing whether what we
are already doing is working to help beneficiaries so we can
ensure taxpayer resources are properly targeted.
We have an excellent panel of witnesses with us today to
discuss these complicated issues and more. We look forward to
all of their testimonies.
With that, I yield back.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. I appreciate your comments.
I will now recognize the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee
on Social Security Mr. Becerra for his comments.
Mr. BECERRA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, to both chairmen, for
holding this hearing today.
We are examining today some of the tools SSA has to assist
disabled Americans who receive benefits, but want to try to
return to work. I hope that this will be the starting point for
moving legislation to continue the Social Security services
that have allowed disabled Americans to live and work with
dignity.
Let us put things into perspective. Social Security's
disability programs; the Social Security Disability Insurance,
DI, program; and the Supplemental Security Income program, SSI,
are designed for people with severe work disabilities. In order
to qualify, Americans must suffer from a medical condition so
severe that, according to medical and vocational experts, it
essentially prevents them from doing any work at all.
Most Americans receiving DI or SSI benefits are quite sick.
About 1 out of every 5 men awarded DI benefits dies within 5
years of starting benefits, and about 1 in every 10 Americans
awarded DI benefits suffers from cancer. Yet only the very
sickest cancer patients qualify for benefits. In 2010, 1.6
million Americans were diagnosed with cancer, but fewer than 10
percent of them were awarded DI benefits because they had
cancer.
New beneficiaries are also likely to be older. Almost 6 of
every 10 Americans who are awarded benefits are 50 years or
older. Nevertheless, a small number of severely disabled
Americans courageously manage to work despite very serious
challenges, and many others want to try. We should encourage
work whenever possible, such as by providing support to workers
and employers without punishing those who are truly unable to
work.
This year's budget cuts imposed on the Social Security
Administration, nearly $1 billion below what Social Security
needs to do its job, will make it difficult for SSA to support
Americans with disabilities who are trying to return to work.
Americans who are attempting to work often need specialized
help that SSA can't provide. Congress has authorized some small
grants paid out of SSA's regular operating budget to help these
Americans secure the specialized support they need. We should
do all we can to ensure that these services continue their
successful record of helping disabled Americans return to work.
Counselors funded through the Work Incentives Planning and
Assistance program, or WIPA, help Americans understand and
properly use the incentives offered by SSA that encourage the
transition back to work. The Protection and Advocacy for
Beneficiaries of Social Security program, or PABSS, supports
the efforts of disabled Americans to stay on the job; for
example, by helping them obtain necessary accommodations like
assistive technology or adjusted work hours.
Mr. Chairman, I hope that we move quickly to extend and
reauthorize these two important programs that result in more
disabled Americans working with dignity. At the same time, we
must be careful that we do not do anything that puts Americans
with severe disabilities and illnesses in danger of losing
benefits they paid for with their contributions and tax
dollars.
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing the witnesses
today, and I am also hoping that at some point we are able to
try to move on a bipartisan basis in reauthorizing many of
these important programs, making the improvements where
possible.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman JOHNSON. It can only be bipartisan if you stay on
the committee.
Mr. BECERRA. That is a super idea.
Chairman JOHNSON. Before we move on, I want to remind
witnesses to please limit their oral statements to 5 minutes,
if possible. However, without objection, all the written
testimony will be made a part of the hearing record.
We have one panel today, and our witnesses who are seated
at the table are from the Social Security Administration.
Robert W. Williams, Associate Commissioner, Office of
Employment Support Programs, who is accompanied by Robert R.
Weathers II, Deputy Associate Commissioner, Office of Program
Development and Research; Dan Bertoni, Director of Education,
Workforce, and Income Security Issues, U.S. Government
Accountability Office; Deb Russell, Manager, Outreach and
Employee Services, Walgreens Company, Deerfield, Illinois;
James Hanophy, Assistant Commissioner, Texas Department of
Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, Austin, Texas, on behalf
of the Council of State Administrators of Vocational
Rehabilitation; Cheryl Bates-Harris, Senior Disability Advocacy
Specialist, National Disability Rights Network, on behalf of
the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Employment and
Training Task Force; John Kregel, Professor, Special Education
and Disability Policy, Virginia Commonwealth University,
Richmond, Virginia.
Mr. Williams, I understand you will be making a statement
on behalf of the Social Security Administration, and Mr.
Weathers is accompanying you to also answer questions. I
welcome you all, and thank you for being here. You may proceed,
Mr. Williams. You are recognized.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT W. WILLIAMS, ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER, OFFICE
OF EMPLOYMENT SUPPORT PROGRAMS, ACCOMPANIED BY ROBERT R.
WEATHERS II, DEPUTY ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER, OFFICE OF PROGRAM
DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH, SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
Mr. WILLIAMS. Good morning, Chairman Johnson, Chairman
Davis, Ranking Members, and Members of the Subcommittees. I am
pleased to have this opportunity to discuss the Social Security
Administration's employment support and self-sufficiency
efforts. I want to start by offering you an overview of my view
of where we need to take our programs.
I took this job a few months ago for two reasons. The first
is that my own life and career convince me that many more
Americans with significant disabilities can work and become
fully self-supporting if provided with the right opportunities
and support. Second, I think we have an opportunity to ``right-
size'' our expectations around the Ticket to Work program and
our other employment support programs.
We need to be realistic and strategic about the number of
beneficiaries who will become financially independent due to
work and earnings, even in the best of economies. We must also
ensure that the Ticket program and our other work incentives
provide a path to good jobs, good careers, and better self-
supporting futures. Frankly, it is the only way we can create a
tipping point that will enable more beneficiaries to actually
earn their way off of the disability rolls and to create
better, more secure lives for themselves and their families.
It is time to change our ``any job will do'' mentality of
job placement, where we focused on getting beneficiaries into
low-wage jobs that offer little in the way of either career
security or a better life. We need to focus less on the numbers
of beneficiaries who work just above the substantial gainful
activity level and focus instead on the quality of support
services we provide and, most importantly, the outcomes we
successfully support those beneficiaries to achieve and sustain
over time. If we truly want to produce positive outcomes for
the Vocational Rehabilitation, the Ticket, and Work Incentives
Planning Assistance programs, the best way of doing so is by
recognizing, supporting, reinforcing, and, yes, rewarding the
initiative and hard-won financial independence of these
American workers.
The Ticket program is not where we want it to be or where I
believe it can be in the future. Despite an unfavorable job
market, though, we are making progress, the Ticket regulations
we published in 2008 have significantly increased beneficiary
and employment network participation in the program. Building
on this momentum, we are improving the data we collect on
working beneficiaries. This is enabling us to focus on those
most likely to use the Ticket program and to support more
beneficiaries to become and remain self-sufficient. I believe
taking these steps will help make work truly work for more
Americans with significant disabilities and, thus, advance the
basic aims Congress set when it passed the Ticket to Work and
the Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999.
As you know, last year the Congress extended funding for
the WIPA and PABSS programs through the end of this month.
Unless those programs are reauthorized, the money for the WIPA
and PABSS programs will effectively run out on June 30, 2012,
and September 29, 2012, respectively.
Disseminating accurate information to beneficiaries with
disabilities about work-incentive programs in support of their
efforts to work and become self-supporting is critical, and we
will work with Congress to improve the effectiveness of the
program.
We are aware of a few concerns regarding the current
structure of WIPA grants. Findings from the most recent
evaluation of WIPA will be available shortly, and we look
forward to reviewing these new findings and working with
Congress to ensure the best approach going forward.
The Ticket Act also granted Social Security authority to
conduct demonstration projects to test how certain changes in
the program would affect beneficiary work and we have initiated
several projects. My colleague Bob Weathers will answer any
questions you may have about these projects.
In closing, we are firmly committed to assisting
beneficiaries with disabilities who want to work and become
self-supporting. To increase our success, we need to refocus
our efforts and promote real pathways that more beneficiaries
can pursue to gain and sustain financial independence.
Thank you for your interest in this matter. I am happy to
answer any questions you may have.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. I appreciate your comments.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Williams follows:]
Chairman JOHNSON. Mr. Bertoni, welcome. Please go ahead.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL BERTONI, DIRECTOR, EDUCATION, WORKFORCE,
AND INCOME SECURITY ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY
OFFICE
Mr. BERTONI. Mr. Chairmen, Ranking Members, Members of the
Subcommittee, good morning. I am pleased to discuss work
incentives for disability program beneficiaries; in particular,
SSA's Ticket to Work program. The Ticket program has been under
way for more than a decade and utilizes approved providers to
assist beneficiaries, known as ticket holders, in obtaining
employment and ultimately reducing their dependence on
benefits.
Our prior work and the work of others has questioned the
viability of the program due to low participation and costs
that are not offset by beneficiaries returning to work. In an
effort to attract more ticket holders and employment network
providers, SSA revised its regulations in 2008 to include
additional incentives for both groups. My testimony this
morning summarizes our May 2011 report and discusses trends in
ticket holder and employment network participation over time,
services provided by the various employment networks in SSA's
management and oversight of the Ticket program.
In summary, we found that beneficiaries assigning their
tickets to employment network providers have more than doubled
since 2008 to about 49,000; however, that number is relatively
small compared to 12 million eligible beneficiaries. And
despite increased enrollments, the extent to which
beneficiaries are returning to work and leaving the rolls is
unknown because SSA has not yet evaluated program outcomes as
required by law. Because such an evaluation is key to assessing
a program's effectiveness and long-term viability, we have
recommended that SSA prioritize and carry through with its
plans to study ticket holder exits from disability rolls.
Since 2008, employment network participation has also
increased to about 1,600 providers; however, the bulk of
activity in more than 70 percent of the $13 million SSA paid
out last year went to only 20 providers, and just 3 received
nearly a third of all payments. Our analysis show that
employment networks offer a range of services including
assistance with job search, retention, and transportation;
however, since 2008, an increasing number of providers are
specifically targeting beneficiaries who are already working or
don't need help finding work, and the largest are simply
passing a portion of the Ticket payment back to the ticket
holder, taking a substantial percentage for themselves and
providing no direct services. Such transactions essentially
result in a benefit subsidy to the ticket holder and fairly
easy money for providers.
We have recommended that SSA compile data and assess trends
in employment network service provisions to determine whether
they are consistent with the program's goal of helping
individuals find and retain sustainable employment and reduce
dependence on benefits.
Finally, we found that SSA lacks management tools for
evaluating providers and beneficiaries to ensure program
integrity and effectiveness. For example, SSA had not developed
clear guidance and performance measures or providers, which can
lead to confusion about program goals and cause them to send
mixed messages to beneficiaries about expected outcomes. In
fact, despite the program's stated purpose to reduce benefit
dependence, our investigator, posing as a brother of a
fictitious ticket holder, documented multiple providers
promoting indefinite part-time work and keeping ticket holders
below certain income thresholds so as not to jeopardize their
disability benefits. Similar information was conveyed on other
providers' Web sites and recorded phone messages.
We also found weaknesses in SSA's oversight of ticket
holders' timely progress toward employment due to the agency's
suspension of required progress reviews between 2005 and
November 2010. As a result, thousands of ticket holders have
been exempt, per program rules, from undergoing medical
continuing disability reviews, or CDRs, for many years,
regardless of whether they are actually moving toward self-
sustaining employment, intentionally resulting in improper
payments to individuals who are no longer medically eligible.
We have recommended that SSA develop program performance
measures consistent with the Ticket law and a strategy for
completing the backlog of required progress reviews, which SSA
estimates to be between 13,000 and 22,000 cases per month, over
the next year. Moreover, we have recommended that SSA
independently verify the information reported by beneficiaries
to more accurately assess timely progress toward sustained
employment.
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, this concludes
my statement. I am happy to answer any questions that you may
have. Thank you.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bertoni follows:]
Chairman JOHNSON. Ms. Russell, welcome. It is good to see
you again. Please proceed.
STATEMENT OF DEB RUSSELL, MANAGER, OUTREACH AND EMPLOYEE
SERVICES, WALGREEN COMPANY, DEERFIELD, ILLINOIS
Ms. RUSSELL. Thank you. Chairmen Johnson and Davis, Ranking
Members Becerra and Doggett, thank you for the opportunity to
testify today on behalf of our company.
My name is Deb Russell, and I am a corporate manager at
Walgreens. In this role I am responsible for our efforts to
include people with disabilities in our 20 distribution centers
that serve our 7,700 stores in all 50 States, the District of
Columbia and Puerto Rico. Overall, this division employs nearly
10,000 full-time employees.
Walgreens is committed to offering and enhancing employment
opportunities for people with disabilities. I realize that this
hearing is dedicated to individuals who are recipients of SSI
and SSDI, but it is difficult to speak about employing them
without speaking about our overall experience. And to qualify,
when we speak of people with disabilities, we are speaking
about people who have disclosed their disabilities to us.
Walgreens started intentionally recruiting people with
disabilities with the opening of our distribution center in
Anderson, South Carolina. Since the opening of that facility,
we have found that our model works in new as well as older
buildings and in our stores. However, the most rewarding
demonstration of our success is the high number of companies
who have toured our facilities and asked us for assistance in
the development of a strategy that will work for them.
Companies like Lowe's, Best Buy, AT&T and Procter & Gamble have
dedicated staff and time to learn about our inclusion and then
gone back and designed efforts that have brought them great
success as well.
We teach them about the factors we think made us successful
and seem to be universally true, which are that we need
partners, education, and high standards. We have learned that
we do not need to have all the answers, and, in fact, we have
found that companies who approach inclusive employment with
that requirement seem to struggle to get their initiatives off
the ground. We do not pretend to be perfect at this nor to have
all the answers, but we are always happy to share our story in
hopes that it will inspire others.
Our relationship with Social Security started in 2007. As
we discovered our success in Anderson, we looked for ways to
ensure we could sustain our efforts. The Ticket to Work seemed
like a good fit. The program has offered us a way to access
resources that sustain needed accommodations, like sign
language interpreters.
The Ticket to Work's outcome payment method is a good match
since we employ everyone in our distribution centers full time
and at a starting pay average of over $12 per hour.
We have three criteria for participating in this program.
We do not want a heavy administrative burden. We do not want to
compete with any other ENs to assign an employee's ticket and
therefore provide the supports needed, and we do not want to
have to manage mass inquiries from ticket holders. We also want
to avoid the real or perceived conflict of interest of being an
employer which requires our employees to achieve high standards
and for each month the employee remains with us.
Throughout our experience as an EN, multiple changes to the
program and the contract have made it more difficult for us to
maintain our status. Each round of changes seems to focus on
the services an EN will offer prior to employment, which is not
a good fit for us. And the changes usually require more
documentation and information that we do not have access to as
an employer. During this time both Maximus and the staff at the
Social Security Administration's Office of Employment Supports
have worked with us to be sure that they had the information
needed, but allow us to deliver it in the easiest way possible.
We have had 27 tickets assigned during our time as an EN.
The most we have had at one point in time was 16. And to date,
we have collected a little more than $300,000. We now have
seven tickets that have reached maximum reimbursement, meaning
they have worked for us long enough to no longer have their
ticket high value. We are sure that many more of our employees
have had tickets, but for many reasons have not surfaced
through our Ticket activities.
In addition to the Ticket program, we have interacted with
WIPA. In Anderson, the benefits person attended multiple new
employee benefit sessions to ensure he could provide thorough
information to our employees regarding the impact of earnings
and employee benefits on their public benefits. In all other
buildings, our human resources staff are familiar with where to
find their local WIPA contact information if an employee
expresses a concern.
As we continue to partner with the disability community, we
still hear from agencies and parents that loss of benefits is
an issue, but we do not hear this from our employees. We have
no knowledge of anyone terminating their employment with us due
to overpayments or the desire to maintain benefits as an
alternative to work. I admit that many of our employees need
assistance with wealth management and learning how to manage a
life that is no longer deep in poverty, but they are not
electing to stay home and collect a small check and stay
immersed in the system.
As we move our inclusion efforts into our stores, we do
anticipate benefits being more of an issue since the nature of
the retail industry is lower hourly pay combined with part-time
and sometimes irregular schedules. Many of our retail employees
will probably straddle employment and benefits, which is why we
will not expand our role of an EN for our store employees.
However, we will continue to offer information on local WIPA
services to hopefully alleviate doubts and issues that come
with remaining part of the benefits system while being
successful in a job.
For many of our employees with disabilities, Walgreens is
their first full-time job. We have seen the improvements in
their lives as they earn and receive recognition for a job well
done and build relationships with other team members.
I do not minimize the extraordinary challenges facing
people with disabilities who join the workforce, but the
toughest challenge of all is when people with disabilities are
seen as ``them'' and not as ``us.'' A job changes that. A job
is more than a paycheck. It is a source of dignity. The
workplace can be a fulfilling place, a place where people with
disabilities transform their lives from the margins to the
mainstream. At Walgreens, we feel fortunate to have made the
commitment to invest in employing people with disabilities,
people who make such an enormous contribution to our company,
our customers and their community.
Thank you for the opportunity to tell our stories. I would
be happy to answer any questions.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate that.
Thank you for letting us visit your center down there.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Russell follows:]
Chairman JOHNSON. Mr. Hanophy is from the great State of
Texas. Is your son the one that caused Texas A&M to leave the
Big 12 conference?
Mr. HANOPHY. I didn't want to mention that, but----
Chairman JOHNSON. Welcome. Please go ahead with your
testimony.
STATEMENT OF JAMES HANOPHY, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, TEXAS
DEPARTMENT OF ASSISTIVE AND REHABILITATIVE SERVICES, AUSTIN,
TEXAS, ON BEHALF OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE ADMINISTRATORS OF
VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION
Mr. HANOPHY. Good morning, Chairman Johnson, Chairman Davis
and Ranking Members. I am here representing the Council of
State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation to discuss
Ticket to Work and work incentives designed to help
beneficiaries with disabilities return to work.
The public vocational rehabilitation system serves over 1
million people with disabilities every year, and in 2010 helped
approximately 172,000 people become employed and taxpaying
citizens. On average, the typical VR consumer will pay back
through their taxes the cost of their VR services in just 2 to
4 years.
The VR program has a longstanding partnership with Social
Security. Social Security reimburses the VR agencies for the
cost of services provided to the beneficiary only after that
individual has achieved earnings above substantial gainful
activity, which is approximately $1,000 a month for 9 months of
any 12-month period. The reimbursements earned from Social
Security enable VR agencies to serve more consumers and in some
States serve consumers on their waiting list.
CSAVR is grateful to Social Security for initiating
positive changes in the new Ticket to Work regulations, such as
Partnership Plus that redefines the relationship between SSA
beneficiaries who want to work, VR agencies, and ENs. This, in
my opinion, creates a five-way win. VR and the EN win because
we are able to help a beneficiary go to work in a coordinated
way with funding supports. The taxpayers win as people become
less reliant on benefits and more self-supporting. The business
wins because they are able to hire a qualified applicant who
has been screened and will be well supported. And most of all,
the beneficiary wins because they are able to go to work in a
job that meets their talents, interests, and receive the work
supports they may need.
VR agencies and ENs are developing innovative arrangements
to provide services to meet the needs of beneficiaries. In
Texas, the VR program offers incentive payments called
Employment Advancement Payments to EN providers for services
from the EN if a beneficiary reaches and maintains substantial
gainful activity. Partnership Plus also funds ongoing supports
for ENs who provide embedded training within the Texas VR
within our business customers where we do preemployment
training.
In Connecticut, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, as well as many
other States, VR programs and ENs are working creatively to
streamline processes, coordinate services, and leverage funding
to increase successes for beneficiaries. These arrangements are
as different as the States themselves, which adds to the value
of Partnership Plus.
In Connecticut, the VR program is also working with
Walgreens, who is an EN, to meet their business needs.
Walgreens built a state-of-the-art distribution center where
now currently 45 percent of the employees are people with
disabilities.
In addition to highlighting the Partnership Plus successes,
these examples also illustrate the success the VR program has
had in developing a dual-customer approach, whereby VR works
for both a person with a disability and a business as
customers. The VR National Employment Team consists of VR
agencies that have developed a network of business partners
committed to hiring qualified applicants who have disabilities,
resulting in more full-time jobs with benefits and career
opportunities for SSA beneficiaries. An example of this is the
partnership with Walgreens and Texas, where one-third of the
people hired at the distribution center in full-time jobs with
benefits are SSA beneficiaries.
We would also like to offer some suggestions for program
improvements. People who come on the disability rolls earlier
stay longer, cost more, and lose out on work opportunities.
Social Security might explore an option of paying more for
outcome payments or offering bonus payments for serving younger
beneficiaries.
Also, while not inherently part of the Ticket, we urge the
Committee and SSA to aggressively explore an early intervention
model for applicants for SSI and SSDI benefits. CSAVR has
developed a risk-free early intervention proposal that might
help applicants try to work first. This is attached to our
written testimony. This completely voluntary program would not
stop the disability application process; however, before
eligibility for benefits is determined, an applicant would be
provided immediate access to temporary cash assistance,
immediate access to health care, and immediate access to
vocational services designed to help a person go to work. The
proposal would suspend the Social Security disability
application once employment above SGA is found. However, if
employment fails, the work effort would not be considered as
evidence against the participant in their application for
disability benefits. We believe a pilot targeted to a select
number of States with a sample of applicants would cost little
and inform us greatly about the potential.
Last, it is important to keep in mind the effort to help
SSA beneficiaries return to work is more than just a matter of
having a ticket. SSA funds the Work Incentive Planning and
Assistance project, or WIPA, and we cannot stress strongly
enough how important benefits planning is to helping SSA
beneficiaries understand the various work incentives in SSI and
SSDI. CSAVR respectfully requests the Committee to reauthorize
the WIPA program in a timely fashion and provide the resources
needed to ensure this critical service is available to
beneficiaries. The WIPA project is a proven benefit that works
and deserves our full support.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I will
answer any questions you have.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hanophy follows:]
Chairman JOHNSON. Ms. Bates-Harris, welcome. Please
proceed.
STATEMENT OF CHERYL BATES-HARRIS, SENIOR DISABILITY ADVOCACY
SPECIALIST, NATIONAL DISABILITY RIGHTS NETWORK, ON BEHALF OF
THE CONSORTIUM FOR CITIZENS WITH DISABILITIES EMPLOYMENT AND
TRAINING TASK FORCE
Ms. BATES-HARRIS. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman
Johnson, Chairman Davis, and other distinguished Members of the
Committee for this opportunity to testify today regarding work
incentives in the Social Security disability programs. As
indicated, I am representing the CCD, Consortium for Citizens
with Disabilities Employment and Training Task Force. The CCD
Employment and Training Task Force believes that meaningful
employment represents one of the best opportunities for people
with disabilities as they work toward becoming a productive and
fully included member of society.
Social Security work programs are among the many critical
avenues for Social Security beneficiaries to gain access to
employment. We support improvements to Social Security to make
it more effective in serving those that rely on it; however, we
stand firm in our belief that changes to the Social Security
system should not be made in the hothouse environment of
deficit reduction.
Considerable attention is being given to the plight of
long-term umemployed, and it is important that policymakers
understand that millions of people with disabilities are
disconnected from the workplace and do not fall within the
traditional definitions of long-term unemployment. Therefore,
these critical services are essential to ensure their
participation and return to employment.
Employment of individuals with disabilities requires a
comprehensive approach that addresses all aspects of the
service system to ensure that the vision of integrated
competitive employment is fostered and promoted. Ongoing staff
development, among systems staff and service providers, is
vital so that they not only embrace the vision, but have the
technical knowledge to implement it. A holistic approach
requires addressing a wide range of other issues: outreach to
and engagement with employers, service monitoring and quality
assurance, engagement of individuals and families, and the
availability of benefits counseling and protection and advocacy
support which will allow community employment, transportation,
interagency collaboration, just to name a few.
Over the past decade, Congress has focused most of its
attention only on the Ticket to Work program. Revised
regulations and things have drastically changed the program, so
I am not going to talk so much about the Ticket as much as the
supports of the two critical programs that are soon to expire.
The first is, of course, the Protection and Advocacy for
Beneficiaries of Social Security. It is the responsibility of
these programs to provide information and advice about
obtaining vocational rehabilitation and employment services,
information and referral services to beneficiaries on work
incentives, advocacy, and, most importantly, legal services
that a beneficiary needs to secure, maintain, or regain
employment, including the investigation and remedy of
complaints of employment discrimination and other civil and
legal rights violations. Despite the extensive set of duties
and growing demand for services, the PABSS program has been
funded at the same level, and its authorization expires at the
end of the fiscal year.
The WIPA programs inform beneficiaries on the impact that
employment will have on disability income and medical coverage,
and addresses many of the fears that individuals have about
going to work at the risk of losing health coverage. Authority,
again, for these grants will expire.
More needs to be done to ensure that individuals and
families are aware of the availability of these critical
services, and that consistently provides the message that
encourages employment in the community rather than simply the
preservation of benefits. So we believe that it is really
important to address those.
Some of the other issues that we also think are critically
important to continue are the expanded use of the employment
networks; the Medicaid Infrastructure grants, the Partnership
Plus model. The Social Security Administration's revised Ticket
regulations improved the overall effectiveness of the program,
and it is important that these things continue.
The Ticket program is poised to benefit from data-matching
advances.
And one area that has slipped due to staffing shortages is
the process of earnings reported by beneficiaries. When
beneficiaries get overpayment notices, it is shocking to
beneficiaries when they receive these notices and assume that
the information has been processed properly.
The rest of my testimony is written and can be submitted
for the record, and I am happy to answer any questions that you
have.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, ma'am. It will be entered into
the record.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bates-Harris follows:]
Chairman JOHNSON. Dr. Kregel, please go ahead.
STATEMENT OF JOHN KREGEL, PROFESSOR, SPECIAL EDUCATION AND
DISABILITY POLICY, VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY, RICHMOND,
VIRGINIA
Mr. KREGEL. Thank you, Chairman Johnson, Chairman Davis.
Thank you very much for this opportunity. I will focus my
comments today on the Work Incentives Planning and Assistance,
or WIPA, program.
Individuals with disabilities who receive SSI and SSDI are
frequently viewed as unemployable when in reality millions of
beneficiaries have clear goals to work and reduce their
reliance on disability benefits. Of the 13 million current SSA
beneficiaries, it is estimated that 2.7 million see themselves
working in the near future, and an additional 2.6 million have
also been employed or looked for work in the past 12 months.
These 5.3 million individuals should be the primary focus of
SSA's employment and return-to-work initiatives.
So why aren't more people working? First, disincentives in
our SSA program rules often penalize beneficiaries who attempt
to work. Most depend on their SSA benefits to meet their basic
needs and would tremendously benefit from working.
Unfortunately, beneficiaries are repeatedly told that
employment will quickly lead to loss of their benefits. This is
absolutely not the case. Yet fear of losing benefits leads them
to unnecessarily choose not to work or to needlessly restrict
their work hours and earnings.
Second, while many beneficiaries would willingly forgo
their cash benefits for the possibility of increasing their
income through employment, they still fear potential loss of
their corresponding Medicaid or Medicare coverage. Many
beneficiaries possess serious chronic health conditions that
would make the loss of health care coverage catastrophic to
them personally.
Third, beneficiaries fear potential overpayments or sudden
benefit termination. Local Social Security offices, facing
enormous pressures while attempting to respond to the large
increases in program applications, simply lack the personnel
and time necessary to accurately administer the work-incentives
provisions. The result is an abundance of disruptive
overpayments and a sudden loss of benefits that often lead
beneficiaries to abandon their hopes for long-term employment.
To address these problems, SSA has established the Work
Incentives Planning and Assistance, or WIPA, program. The WIPA
program is an employment support that is designed to enable SSA
beneficiaries to pursue their goals of personal employment and
economic self-sufficiency. WIPA services refer to efforts by a
rigorously trained community work incentive counselor to
provide accurate and complete information to SSA beneficiaries
to enable them to obtain employment, return to work, and reduce
dependence on SSI and SSDI.
Currently the WIPA initiative is comprised of 102 projects
providing benefits to SSA beneficiaries in all 50 States and
territories. Collectively the projects employ 500 rigorously
trained Community Work Incentive Coordinators, many of whom are
themselves individuals with disabilities. Since their inception
in 2000, WIPA programs have provided work-incentive counseling
services to over 450,000 SSI, concurrent and SSDI
beneficiaries, including 60,000 persons served over the past
year.
So what do they do? In Dallas, a 40-year-old gentleman
named Danny secured a heart transplant after a 6-year battle
with heart disease. He thought he could never work again
without losing his $1,800-per-month SSDI check. After working
with the WIPA project for 3 months, he is working 15 hours per
week and is earning over $1,500 a month for a heavy equipment
sales company. In November, his $1,800 check will go to zero,
saving SSA $20,000 per year for hopefully many years to come.
Jay in Louisville is a young man with developmental
disabilities, who receives SSI and has a Medicaid waiver for
personal and employment supports. His father contacted a CWIC
when Jay began working with a new supported employment
provider. The family has received work incentive counseling and
information that have allowed them to feel comfortable in
letting Jay go to work for the University of Louisville in a
job that provides him earnings at a level of over $1,000 per
month. Each month he works results in a savings of $400 to SSA.
Given his age, these savings will compound over the next
several decades. If his earnings increase, the savings to SSA
will increase as well.
In Los Angeles, Michael received a termination letter on
his benefits. The letter also stated that he had an overpayment
of $79,000, money he was ordered to pay back to the Social
Security Administration. The CWIC assigned to this beneficiary
thoroughly reviewed his case and discovered the client was
incorrectly terminated. Due to the CWIC's diligence, attention
to detail, and excellent rapport with SSA Claims
Representatives and community partners, both issues were
resolved. The beneficiary received reentitlement to his SSDI
check, and the alleged $79,000 overpayment was cleared.
Services provided by WIPA projects lead to increased
employment, improved earnings, and reduced dependence on
disability benefits. These outcomes lead to significant
reductions in the overall amount of general funds and trust
fund payments to beneficiaries. These savings are large enough
to offset the cost of the program and could be expected to
compound steadily over time as individuals leave the disability
rolls after receiving WIPA services and remain in the workforce
for many years to come.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate the opportunity
to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kregel follows:]
Chairman JOHNSON. I thank all of you for your testimony. We
will now turn to questions. And as is customary for each round
of questions, I will limit my time to 5 minutes and ask my
colleagues and my companion chairman here to limit your time to
5 minutes as well.
Mr. Bertoni, GAO found employment networks paid by Social
Security who were essentially coaching ticket holders to work
part time so they wouldn't lose their benefits even though the
goal of Ticket to Work is to get individuals back to work and
off disability. I understand you have taped conversations to
prove this. I would appreciate it if you would play a couple of
these conversations for us and then tell me, one, how
widespread it is; two, what Social Security has done to address
it; and three, what this says about Social Security's ability
to manage this or other work-incentive programs.
Mr. BERTONI. Sure. Let me quickly preface this by saying
that in interviewing the employment networks, 15 of 25 of them
told us that SSA had not articulated any specific outcomes for
them, nor had they provided performance goals. So in an
environment like that, you really run the risk of, number one,
confusion in terms of how you explain the rules; lack of
consistency across the various profiles in terms of how those
rules are applied; and last, it is an opportunity for a
potential abuse. So any one of those things could be coming
into play with these recordings. It just shows that when you
have that type of environment, that these types of things can
happen. So if you want to roll those tapes, that would be
great.
[Tape played.]
Mr. BERTONI. It looks like they just went with two calls.
Your question was, how pervasive? We don't know how
pervasive this is. What we did is we followed the money. We
went with the top 20 providers, and we talked to an additional
5 providers. We had three lines of questioning. We had lines
for shared payment approaches. We had calls for employer-driven
approaches, and we had calls for vendors that we didn't know
what they were doing. Based on the descriptions of their Web
sites, and interviews that we had, and documents that we looked
at, we really couldn't discern what the services that were
being offered, so we felt that we had to call these individuals
and sort of get behind that information.
We made eight calls to different providers. We had multiple
no answers, no contacts where we couldn't get through. But
three of those eight resulted in these conversations where it
appeared that there was some real coaching going on.
SSA doesn't have a good sense of this either. We do know
there are other Web sites and other providers that are
promoting this type of activity, but we don't have a good sense
of the universe or what is going on amongst the 1,600
providers. But SSA could do that. They could get behind that.
You asked actions they can take and are taking. They do a
secret shopper program. They have a secret shopper program. You
could systematically do exactly what we did: sample or go
through the entire range of employment networks, the larger
providers, and sort of get a sense of the extent to which this
is happening.
I think one of the primary things that has to happen here
is they really need to establish performance metrics that are
designed to move employment networks toward pushing employment
that is beyond part-time work. Until you establish that metric
and you hold these folks accountable, again, you have
opportunity for confusion, inconsistent application, and
perhaps abuse.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. My time has expired. I
appreciate you all looking at that. Thank you so much.
Mr. Williams, would you care to respond?
Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, I would.
Chairman JOHNSON. Go ahead.
Mr. WILLIAMS. We have established clear performance
standards and expectations that coaching people to limit their
earnings is completely unacceptable, and we are weeding out
those that do. We have instituted a contract process that will
enable us to terminate bad actors and have done so already.
Additionally, we will submit a response for the record.
[The information follows:]
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Bertoni, are you guys on top of most of the States in
the country?
Mr. BERTONI. In terms of----
Chairman JOHNSON. Looking at this program.
Mr. BERTONI. The distribution of the 25 providers gave us
some good geographic distribution, but I don't know if we
covered--we certainly didn't cover every State.
Chairman JOHNSON. Well, no two States are alike, I presume.
Mr. BERTONI. No. But the rules of the program should be
alike, and they should be applied very consistently.
Chairman JOHNSON. Agreed. Okay. Thank you for your
comments. And I have extended my time.
I recognize Chairman Davis. And thank you for having your
Subcommittee join us today.
Chairman DAVIS. It is a privilege, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bertoni, I want to follow on the line of having SSA get
necessary program information. Do we know how much taxpayers
have spent on the Ticket to Work program since it started,
including amounts paid to employment networks?
Mr. BERTONI. Sure. I can give you recent information from
our reporting period a little bit before that. When we
reported, it was about $34 million in administrative costs and
about $13 million paid out in Ticket dollars to ticket holders.
In 2007, that amount--Ticket payments were about $3.8 million.
By 2008, they were $5.6 million. By 2009, they were up to
$12.6, and partial-year 2010 were $13 million. So that is about
$41.5 million in Ticket payments.
This year here, though, we have a real rapid increase in
these payments. We see that is a pretty significant increase
post-2008, primarily driven by the rapid increase in
beneficiaries from 22,000 to 49,000. So this program has
grown--well, the numbers are relatively small. It has grown
quickly in terms of the payments. And when you look at the
potential eligible beneficiaries, there are 12 million people
out there who have a ticket who could come forward at some
point in the near future. So this program is poised to grow,
and it could be significantly, based on the numbers that could
take up the tickets.
Chairman DAVIS. It sounds like a disproportionately high
amount of administrative costs for the current payout. Do we
know what aspects of the Ticket program are working?
Mr. BERTONI. I think, as SSA and others have said, I think
they have done a very good job of increasing the number of
employment networks and are doing a significant job in
increasing the number of folks who are taking up tickets and
using them.
Chairman DAVIS. I guess maybe a bigger question is, in my
mind, getting people into a program is not necessarily a
definition of effectiveness. Would you rate the Ticket program
as effective? And do you believe that SSA is adequately
collecting and analyzing proper information to be able to
answer these sorts of questions?
Mr. BERTONI. To date, no. I think the front part of that is
getting folks in the program is important. You have to work
with something. But there is a management aspect to this, and
from that standpoint, I think they have not been effective in
many ways in terms of vetting and approving the employment
networks to ensure they are qualified; in terms of monitoring
individual ticket holders; certainly establishing performance
measures to hold employment networks accountable; and also to
evaluate and reevaluate the program, determine what is working
and what isn't, what are the trends in service provisions, and
what are the outcomes that are coming out of this program. That
is what is not happening, and that is what we don't know, and
that is what SSA does not know to date.
Chairman DAVIS. Dr. Weathers, do you have anything to add?
Mr. WEATHERS. Yes. We do have an independent evaluator,
Mathematica. They have been doing an evaluation of the Ticket
program since its inception. Many of their earlier reports--
they have already produced five reports--were used in order for
us to change the program in 2008 with the new regulations.
Since 2008, we have been collecting data on outcomes of
ticket beneficiaries, and we just completed a national
beneficiary survey. Mathematica is conducting an analysis of
that national beneficiary survey so we will be able to measure
outcomes of ticket beneficiaries since the new regulations went
into place in 2008. But it does take time for a new program and
new rules to be communicated to the public and to
beneficiaries, and we need to wait a period of time before we
can effectively evaluate how the new rules are working.
Chairman DAVIS. Okay. Dr. Kregel, as an academic, do you
think Dr. Bertoni's findings are acceptable, and what do you
recommend we do to hold Ticket to Work and other work-incentive
programs accountable?
Mr. KREGEL. I think that it is important to set performance
standards for each of these programs. Looking at, for example,
the Ticket program, it is important to ask, in the absence of
this program, would these people still return to work? And if
you look at the examples that have been cited that effectively
indicate that individuals are assigning their ticket with an
EN, they are working, but the EN is not providing them any
service, then it is very reasonable to say, in the absence of
this program, wouldn't this person have gone to work anyway? So
the notion is, if the program is not there, would these
individuals return to work? Would it result in savings to the
government, savings to SSA? And that is the question that needs
to be addressed going forward.
Chairman DAVIS. I will just leave you with a thought. And
perhaps those of you on the panel that feel so moved, but
specifically from Dr. Weathers and Mr. Bertoni, I would
appreciate just a response in writing for the sake of time.
It seems that there are compelling disincentives for people
to want to go to work, particularly what I have seen in the
eastern portion of my district, an outright racket with
attorneys who are advertising on the radio for benefits, that
make outrageous fees, and, you know, really want to discourage
folks from going back to work and the benefits of that.
I would be interested just as an adjunct in this, in order
to make Ticket to Work work, what are some things that might be
able to be done to curtail the program from an inappropriate
perspective; wanting to help people, but at the same time
avoiding folks profiteering off the backs of these folks in
need?
[The information follows:]
Chairman DAVIS. With that, I thank the chairman for his
additional indulgence, and I yield back.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. I appreciate your comments.
Mr. Becerra, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BECERRA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you all for your testimony and your work.
Mr. Bertoni, I want to focus in on some of the things that
you have been saying, because you are going to get most of the
attention here. I want to see if I can get ahold of a threshold
question. We are talking about folks who qualify for SSI or
SSDI benefits. We are talking about folks who have proven to
have a health condition that is severe enough that they would
qualify to receive some form of assistance, disability
assistance. No one is questioning that the folks that we are
talking about are disabled in some form that are interested in
trying to work.
Mr. BERTONI. Correct.
Mr. BECERRA. So having said that, as I listen to those
tapes, my sense was that we may have to work on these
employment networks.
Mr. Bertoni, do you have anything to share with us that
shows that beneficiaries were trying to game the system?
Mr. BERTONI. No. I think the--our recommendations in my
introduction was that it is between the agency and the
employment networks where the guidance needs to be clarified,
and these networks need to be educated as to what you can't say
and what you can say, and how best to screen and counsel folks
to get them back to work.
Mr. BECERRA. So you have given us some good guidance on how
to zero in to try to make these programs work better, because I
don't hear anyone saying here that beneficiaries are trying to
game the system, get benefits that they don't deserve, or game
the system by saying they are working or working enough and
then keep both benefits and salaries.
Mr. BERTONI. No. In fact, if you listen to the tapes, you
go to the Web sites, or you read any of SSA's materials that
they put out, that is what is said: You can work. You can work
part time. It is acceptable. But there is a ``for a period of
time'' in there, of course. But I think these folks are reading
this as, I can do this.
Mr. BECERRA. So now I want to get the question to you in
just a second, but first I want to ask Ms. Russell a question.
The chairman and I were just chatting about the work that
Walgreens is doing, which seems to be tremendously helpful to a
lot of these folks who are receiving these disability benefits
that are trying to work. So I want to make sure we don't paint
with a broad brush all these employment networks, because there
seem to be some that are trying to do this the right way. And I
would hate for folks who are trying to really connect someone
who is receiving these disability benefits with a job, all of a
sudden I feel like, gosh, I am getting bashed over the head for
trying to do this, and I am also investing some pretty
significant resources to make it work.
Have you found a particular formula that helps you succeed
so that you don't find that your folks on the other end of the
phone doing something like this?
Ms. RUSSELL. Yeah. I think that our formula for success
overall mirrors our formula for success with the Ticket
program, and that is that education is key. Our individuals,
our staff people who are involved in the Ticket program, are
well educated on what parameters within our role as an employer
and our role as an employment network they need to operate
within. They are provided a lot of information about what they
can and can't say, what they can and can't do. We maintain a
lot of the control at corporate, which prevents us from having
to worry about things happening out in the field that would be
inappropriate.
Mr. BECERRA. I will ask Mr. Williams and Dr. Weathers, I
know you have some budgetary issues, staffing issues, but I
suspect that there are some employment networks that are out
there that produce well and most folks that, say, are doing the
right thing. I am not sure if it is a matter of getting the
best practices from some of these folks or somehow doing things
because I know you are shy of money. But I think there has got
to be a way, short of making very expensive investments, to try
to make this program work.
I think what Mr. Bertoni had pointed out through these
taped phone conversations is that either the employment network
folks are trying to help these folks maintain as much of an
income as possible, or they are trying to avoid having to bring
them on full time. Either way I think we need to figure that
out.
Mr. Bertoni, let me ask you this: SSA just took a massive
hit in its budget. It is receiving $1 billion less than it said
it needed just to try to keep pace with an already growing
caseload. What you are suggesting that they do is program
integrity isn't cheap, and it is not free. They would have to
hire more folks or put more investments up front with people
who are already steeped with work in order to try to up front
catch some of this gaming activity. Is that correct?
Mr. BERTONI. There is no question with more resources you
can do more. I guess the position we have is this program has
been around since 1999. It has been growing, expanding. There
were some new initiatives in play. And there is some blame to
be laid at the agency's management doorstep in terms of what
could have been done in prior years.
Luckily, we are here at a time when the program is not
huge. Five years from now, we could have a bigger problem on
our hands. These are issues that need to be addressed. And
within the resources they have, I think they can leverage some
of that to do better. If they had more resources, could they do
more? Absolutely.
Mr. BECERRA. Thank you for that. And I just hope that what
SSA does is takes some of this information, perhaps talks to
some of those who have shown some good practices, and try to
quickly take advantage of those best practices so that we can
move the program forward, you know, make it work better,
because I think what we are showing is that there are a lot of
Americans who are receiving disability benefits who would love
nothing more than to be able to go to work as much as possible.
So thank you all for your testimony.
Mr. WILLIAMS. If I might, sir, I agree we need to do more
to identify what is working, and a prime way we need to do this
is to learn more about the over 5,000 people that have left the
rolls with the support of an employment network. That, to me,
is where to start.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Brady, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Both of you, thanks for
holding this hearing.
Ticket to Work is a great concept, it makes great sense not
just for taxpayers, but for those with disabilities that, as
technology progresses, it allows them to move back into the
workforce. It makes sense. My frustration is that after 15
years, we don't know if this works.
Dr. Weathers, a simple question. A decade and a half, what
percentage of those using Ticket to Work have now gone on to
full-time, sustained employment? What percentage?
Mr. WEATHERS. A very, very small percentage. We are
currently conducting an evaluation of the percentage of people
who have returned to sustained full-time employment since the
new regulations were in place in 2008. We needed a 3-year
period in order to track.
Mr. BRADY. Do you have numbers prior to that?
Mr. WEATHERS. We do have numbers prior to that, yes,
between 2001 and 2006, and the numbers were very, very small.
And that is what inspired the impetus behind changing the
regulations in 2008.
Mr. BRADY. What was that percentage? I am not trying to pin
you down. I am trying to figure out what we can do to make this
really work.
Mr. WEATHERS. I can provide that number for the record for
you.
Mr. BRADY. Bigger than a bread box; 5 percent, 10 percent?
Mr. WEATHERS. No. I would say around 5 to 10 percent is the
ballpark. But I can provide you with a more precise number for
that.
[The information follows:]
Mr. BRADY. What do you expect the new numbers to be?
Mr. WEATHERS. I would hope that we could get it up much
higher than that.
Mr. BRADY. What do you think it ought to be?
Mr. WEATHERS. I would hope that we could make it work for
everybody that is using a ticket. But I think if we could get
50 percent, that would be a pretty good number.
Mr. BRADY. My frustration, this is a great concept. This
ought to be working. After 15 years, it isn't. So my
frustration is, you know, Mr. Williams talked sincerely about
having performance standards clearly lined out. Mr. Bertoni
said 15 out of 20 of the employment networks say they don't
have it. Clearly there is gaming of this system. It seems to me
we need a fresh start on this program. You know, 5 percent, 10
percent, 20 percent just aren't the numbers I think anyone was
hoping for when, in a bipartisan way, we put this program
together.
Let me ask the panelists, if we could start with a fresh--I
don't mean end it--if we could start with a blank page and
redesign this, knowing what the technologies are today, knowing
what the common disabilities are today, what would you do
differently? How would we start with a fresh slate and recreate
a program that really did help people get back to sustainable
work? Any panelists?
Ms. BATES-HARRIS. I would like to say something. As a
representative of the National Disability Rights Network, I
feel compelled to remind people that people on Social Security
benefits are among the most disabled people in this country,
and many of them want to return to work. And unfortunately, as
my boss would say, discrimination is our business, and business
is good. And sometimes you can get all the perfect services in
place, but discrimination is alive and well, and people do not
get employed.
Mr. BRADY. I understand.
What do you believe is an acceptable rate? What do you
think our goal ought to be? Five percent?
Mr. KREGEL. I would like to answer that directly. The
evaluation that Dr. Weathers talks about has identified that
currently in this country, there are about 2.6 million SSA
beneficiaries who indicate that they would like to work, and
they see themselves working in the foreseeable future.
Mr. BRADY. How many, Doctor----
Mr. KREGEL. 2.6 million.
Mr. BRADY [continuing]. Would like to go back to work?
Mr. KREGEL. Would like to go back to work, and who have
either worked during the past year or have taken action toward
working in the past year, such as applied for a job, taken a
training course or something like that.
What should the number be? Well, the programs should first
focus on those 2.6 million people, and then we can look at
other people whose health conditions may improve. And then we
move our services toward those individuals as well.
In terms of starting over with the Ticket program, I think
that it is important to keep in mind that 12 years have passed,
and not only has the situation changed for SSA beneficiaries,
but the situation has also changed in terms of how employment
services are designed and delivered to people with disabilities
generally. And I think that to start all over, it would be
important to incorporate some of the cutting-edge best
practices that have been described to you by Mr. Hanophy and
described to you in terms of the Walgreens operation. These are
the kinds of things--employer partnerships, working in
collaboration with public and private enterprises that really
need to be included in the redesign of the Ticket program. By
incorporating the resources out there, we can get a lot farther
along in terms of who we are serving.
The other thing that needs to be done, as Mr. Hanophy
pointed out, is to look at people who have been on the rolls
for a very short period of time, and that includes transition-
age youth. Returning to work for someone who has been on the
rolls for 22 years and is now 45 years old is a different
challenge than for someone who is 22 years old. We don't want
these individuals locked into lifelong dependency on Federal
benefits. So targeting the Ticket program to transition-age
youth and involving private-public partnerships with business,
I think, are the major areas that we can explore in terms of
redesigning the program for more effective services.
Mr. BRADY. Well, thank you. Again, this is such an
important program. For those who want to go back to work, there
has got to be a smarter, better way to do this.
Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you.
The gentleman's time has expired. Mrs. Black, you are
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. BLACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I thank you, panel, for being here today.
Mr. Bertoni, I want to go to what we heard on the audio in
reference to the misinformation that is being given by those
who should know the correct information. Is it your opinion
that we are just not training those who are working in the
offices, that they don't know the information? Or how do we get
such misinformation being given out?
Mr. BERTONI. I don't know what the extent of training is. I
would defer to the SSA on that. I would say that over time, and
with the changes to the regulations--basically the regulations,
it is a couple key things. Number one, they lowered the bar at
which employment networks could be paid, so that made part-time
earnings attractive to both ticket holders as well as
employment networks. They were trying to entice more
individuals on both sides of the equation into the program.
Another thing the regulations did was to make it acceptable
for employment networks to directly pay the ticket holders from
the Ticket money, so that essentially increased the value of
the shared payment model.
And thirdly, it also allowed for those whose medical
improvement was expected to participate in the program.
So we have sort of a convergence of folks here who could,
in fact, benefit from part-time work and early payments.
So we see this new guidance come out. We see these are
allowable things. And the firewall between SSA and the field,
the employment networks, is there. And someone has to work
through this firewall to communicate even with those changes
that are acceptable, what are the ultimate end goals for this
program. Yes, part time should be the start for many. It might
be it for many. But certainly if we can get people into part-
time work, and for those that can move up to more substantive
employment, that should be the end goal, because that is the
stated purpose of the program. I am not sure everybody knows
that.
Mrs. BLACK. Well, thank you. I think you are right. And
obviously, the people that were taking these phone calls did
not know that. But you also made mention that you thought they
should develop program performance measures. How would you see
those performance measures? What would be in those?
Mr. BERTONI. I would hate to be too prescriptive here,
because any one that I threw out, the people would come behind
me and tell me I had a bad measure.
I guess right now I believe there is one measure for the
program. That is the number of ticket holders with an assigned
ticket. To me, that is the start. You have found the person.
You have given them the ticket. They have assigned it to an
employment network.
But the outcome measures are not there. We have outputs,
but not outcomes. Really, the number of folks who have moved
on, who have transitioned to sustainable, long-term employment
that has allowed them to reduce dependency and benefits, part
of that should be in the equation when you are evaluating how
effective an employment network is.
Mrs. BLACK. And I know I am going to run out of time very
quickly here. So, Dr. Weathers, do you agree that this is a
good recommendation? And if so, what do you all plan on doing
to initiate those kinds of measures that will help to show what
kinds of outcomes are there?
Mr. WEATHERS. Bob Williams' office is responsible for
putting together a report card, and I think he could say a word
or two about what they are doing.
Mr. WILLIAMS. We have, in fact, initiated such benchmarks,
including one that will hold ENs responsible for moving some
beneficiaries into jobs that pay at least twice the poverty
level. It is not enough to get someone off benefits if doing so
makes them worse off than they are now.
Mrs. BLACK. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, if I may ask in writing, Ms. Russell, could
you tell us about some of the barriers that you have found in
working with the program? I congratulate you for doing what you
have done.
And then, Ms. Bates-Harris, you talked about
discrimination. And if I could have you in writing tell us a
little bit more about where those discrimination factors are
and how you think we might overcome those. I appreciate that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman JOHNSON. You are welcome.
Could you two respond that way, in writing, please? Thank
you.
[The information follows:]
Chairman JOHNSON. Mr. Stark, you are recognized.
Mr. STARK. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you
for this hearing. And I thank the witnesses for enlightening
us.
I must take this opportunity to thank SSA, and in
particular their San Jose office, which services our office
nearby for the numerous inquiries we get. We just get wonderful
service from them. And I am afraid they are going to need help.
The number of inquiries is growing. The number of the elderly
people is growing. And the money to fund that growth in service
has got to come from somewhere. I don't think there is an SSA
fairy that is going to sprinkle that dust on you and allow you
to hire the people or pay them for overtime. So as we see more
people with more severe health problems, I hope that we can
find the additional funding to let you continue to provide that
good service.
I want to make sure that you have cleared your phone
messages with the PATRIOT Act. And I didn't notice that you had
inquired about the offers for half-price Viagra that Sam and I
keep getting. And are those legitimate offers or not? If you
could look into that for us, and we would appreciate it very
much.
The one question that I wanted to direct to Ms. Bates-
Harris is the question of the disregards. We have disregards
for beneficiaries' income in determining their eligibility. And
it is my understanding that those were set about the time that
I came to Congress. And the average benefit was under $500, and
SSI benefits were reduced for income that exceeded $65 a month,
and if a recipient earned as little as $20 a month from any
source, the disregards came into effect. Do you think that it
is time that we have a modest change in that and bring those
disregards from the seventies up to standards of today, that
that would just be a fair and proper thing to do?
Ms. BATES-HARRIS. Absolutely, positively. The $20 general
income disregard and the $65 earned income disregard have
remained static, and, in fact, people have basically lost money
on that with the cost of inflation. So we really believe that
they should be indexed and increased just the same as how the
SGA and the other factors in the Social Security program are
indexed.
Mr. STARK. Thank you.
I want to thank all of you for your work in this area. It
is important to our seniors, to our people with disabilities,
and that is a growing population. Thank you for your service.
Thank you for your testimony today.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Stark.
Mr. Reed, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. REED. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Maybe it is because I was up late last night and then I had
to listen to that. That angers me. That angers me, that tape,
and it angers me on multiple levels. But most importantly it
angers me because there is a good mission that you are trying
to accomplish with these programs and with SSA and the disabled
Americans across the country. And we applaud that. I support
that. I don't think you are going to get any opposition up here
on both sides of the aisle from that mission. But when you hear
stuff like that and the people that are abusing the system at
the cost of the true people that are disabled and doing the
right thing day in and day out, I want to know, what is the
result of that? Are those two individuals that were taped, are
they still involved in this process? Have they been terminated,
out of this program? Yes or no?
Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes.
Mr. REED. Excellent. And I hope that continues, because
that oversight needs to be done because that type of behavior
needs to end.
Mr. WILLIAMS. It will.
Mr. REED. What I would like to ask--and I am also getting a
little tired of the mantra of, we need more funding in order to
accomplish the mission. The harsh reality of our country and
our fiscal resources are we don't have the funding. I would
love to be able to give you all the funding you needed, but I
think the harsh reality of our world today and our Nation today
is that we don't have those unlimited pots any longer.
So I am looking to you, Dr. Weathers and Mr. Williams, to
tell me, what is your plan to deal with the reality of the
situation where more funding is just not going to be on the
table? When I ran my businesses, and I hit hard times, I had to
make tough choices. I had to reprioritize my mission and my
goals. I had to reallocate employees to areas that were
critical objectives of my business in order to accomplish the
mission. Do you have that plan in place?
Mr. WEATHERS. We recognize these are lean times.
Commissioner Astrue has said that we are going to have to make
difficult choices about service delivery. Mr. Williams and I
aren't involved in our day-to-day operations and budget
process, but we would be happy to submit to the record more
information on your question.
Mr. REED. I would appreciate that. And also, what that new
mission plan or that business plan, if you would, for SSA going
forward in the reality of these times would be.
[The information follows:]
Mr. REED. And that gets to my last question. I am hearing,
as I read this testimony and hear this testimony and look at
the evidence, I feel there is a big issue here of duplication
of services. And I know there was a hearing here on this
Subcommittee before looking at the benefits planning services
or grants to community organizations, work incentives planning,
protection advocacy for beneficiaries of Social Security, the
laundry list of programs that are out there. Is that an example
of efficiency? Would anyone like to----
Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes. Both the WIPA and the Protection and
Advocacy programs serve distinct functions. One focuses on
providing information and assistance on using our complex work
incentives, and the other on legal assistance. Whether there
are efficiencies to be had by a better cooperation and
coordination. In that area we would be glad to explore.
Mr. REED. I would be glad to be a partner in that effort.
With that, I yield back, Chairman.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you.
Mr. Paulsen, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. PAULSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, also for holding this
hearing and for all the witnesses being here.
Let me switch gears a little bit. Dr. Kregel, the Social
Security inspector general was rather critical of WIPAs in
their recent report for not having adequate performance
measures. And when reviewing the data provided on all WIPAs,
there are a lot of process measures that are in there. How
quickly was the beneficiary contacted? Were they informed about
possible options, et cetera?
But what there aren't so much in there are these outcome
measures or performance measures, like did the beneficiary
attempt to return to work or actually return to work? Isn't
that what this is all about? If you go back to maybe what Mr.
Brady was asking about earlier, about how would you redesign
this with a blank piece of paper, et cetera, tell us a little
bit about that. How much does the WIPA program cost to date?
How many people have obtained work as a result of it, and how
would we redesign it and look on those performance measures?
Mr. KREGEL. The WIPA program costs $23 million per year to
fund the 102 projects, including the Minnesota Work Incentive
Connection, which is really recognized as one of the top
programs in the country. They estimate that they save $1.7
million per year as a result of the $300,000 funding level that
they receive to do their ongoing work.
But you are absolutely right. Performance measures to date
have focused on the process, what are we doing. And outcome
measures really need to be the focus of what we look at going
forward, particularly in light of whether or not this program
should be continued for an extended period of time. This would
include whether individuals are working at a level that would
result in reduced benefits, or working at a level that would
result in terminated benefits? Are they working at all? Or do
they have access to the health insurance so that they continue
to meet their complex health care needs?
But also there needs to be savings, return on investment
from the moneys that are invested in the WIPA program or any of
the other programs. That would be increasing the number of
individuals exiting the rolls, reduction in the cost of
disability payments, reduction in the cost of public health
care benefits and reduction in the number and amount of benefit
overpayments, something that hasn't been talked about today,
but another area where the WIPA program and several of these
other programs can make a huge difference looking at the
billion-dollar problem that exists in the area of overpayments
today.
Mr. PAULSEN. Why are not some of these standard measures
when reviewing WIPA in general? For that matter, for any of
these work incentives?
Mr. KREGEL. I think that the focus has been, as these
programs have evolved, to look at how effective is the process,
with the assumption that the process will lead to the outcomes.
But now these are more mature programs. There is information
that exists, for example, that says that the WIPA program will
generate a 3-for-1 return on investment if you look at the
resources that are devoted to this effort and the savings in
benefits payments and that type of thing. But this has only
been done with very recent information and it really needs to
be looked at on a broad scale to make sure that we are not
paying for an outcome that might have occurred anyway, given
the nature of the situation.
So these things are long overdue, and I know that these
benchmarks are being established by SSA, and they are looking
at that going forward.
Mr. PAULSEN. Dr. Weathers or Mr. Williams, can you follow
up on that a little bit?
Mr. WEATHERS. I can follow up.
We are going to be releasing a report on the WIPAs looking
at the outcomes of the beneficiaries that they serve within the
next few weeks. We just received the final report last week,
and we are reviewing it, and we are happy to submit it for the
record. But I do think that it shows some positive outcomes in
terms of employment for beneficiaries who are served by the
WIPA organizations.
[The information follows:]
Mr. WILLIAMS. We have established in the grantees'
contracts that went into effect this July many of the outcome
measures that John mentioned. We are not where we need to be
at. It is going to take a constant push for a culture change,
because, frankly, the perception is that working full time and
being financially independent cannot and does not work for
people with significant disabilities. We know that many young
people on SSI who go to college either never finish, or, if
they do, they do not go to work. That is a national tragedy,
but, likewise, a huge opportunity to, as I say, right-size what
this program is about and what we need to be held accountable
for achieving.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you.
Dr. McDermott, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I may be the only one on the dais, maybe in the room, who
has actually sat in hearings with people applying for SSI. As a
psychiatrist, I used to see them frequently in Seattle. And as
I listen to this discussion, I keep thinking about SSI
patients. And I don't know that people--if you have never
talked to someone who is on SSI and spent some time with them
and realized what their life is about, it is important to
realize what this system is.
You have to have a disability that is going to keep you off
the rolls for a year, that you are going to be unable to work
for a year, or die. Those are the sort of end points of the
assessment. So you don't get on easily. If you get on SSI, it
means you have never had any connection to the workforce or any
substantial connection to the workforce. So you are really at
the bottom of the working population in this country, if you
can be considered that at all.
Then we designed the program in 1974, and we haven't
upgraded it. I mean, tell me nothing has changed in cost since
1984, right? If you get $65 of income from earnings and $20
from any other source--your brother gives you $20--$85 you now
have on top of your $499 on SSI--that is the average--you start
to lose $2 for every $1 that you earn. Now, you tell me what
the incentive is to go out for a job and know that for every
hour you work or every 2 you work or 3 hours you work, you are
going to lose the pay for 2 of those hours. It is a program
that is designed poorly and needs to be reformed from the
basics of the way it works.
And I think that a lot of this performance stuff we are
looking for--I mean, I can give you all kinds of cases from
Missouri and Illinois and New Mexico. You know, there are
endless problems. And I would like for Ms. Harris to talk a
little bit about what you see out there. Give us a picture so
everybody on this Committee can understand who these SSI people
are as human beings.
Ms. BATES-HARRIS. Well, first of all, they are individuals
who are very poor because the program is means-tested. So they
can basically have no or very, very limited resources. They are
significantly disabled or impaired and, as you indicated, with
very little work history, which means that either their
disability has been so prevalent over their lifetime that they
have been unable to enter the workforce or possibly even
benefit from the education system and have not obtained the
necessary skills required for jobs.
So we are talking about people who need a lot of support
and need a lot of assistance, and who are extremely dependent
on the income supports from the Social Security program to have
a place to live and to be able to put food on their table. And
to those individuals, the thought of returning to work and
risking the benefits because the work incentives are
complicated, or they don't understand them, or people have told
them if they go back to work, they are going to lose their
Medicaid, or if they go back to work, they are going to lose
their cash benefit, these are individuals who are in a very,
very precarious situation and who very much need the services
and supports that are offered by both the WIPA, the PABSS
program, and other community programs out there that will help
them improve their quality of life.
Mr. KREGEL. May I follow up to that as well?
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Yes.
Mr. KREGEL. I agree entirely with your analysis of the SSI
program. And you wonder what makes these people want to go to
work. Well, the answer basically is that the mean benefit is
$500, and 71 percent of the SSI population live below the
poverty level, 71 percent. So the situation is these are
individuals who are at risk of not having food on the table.
They are at risk of not having shelter over their heads. And
they are courageous enough, some of them, to go ahead and try
to increase their income, even though the rules are stacked
against them, out of sheer economic necessity in many, many
situations.
I agree entirely with your comments in terms of the
disincentives within the SSI Program. I just think that we need
to understand that the reason that people take some of these
courageous steps is out of sheer economic need to meet the
basic needs, including food and shelter.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. The bottom line being if you keep them poor
enough and hungry enough, they will ultimately finally find
some way to get out of it; is that what you are saying?
Mr. KREGEL. The situation is that also their health is
impacted by living in poverty the way that they are, and they
look at extensive health care costs.
So I think anything that can be done so that when SSI
beneficiaries work that they are not penalized for working is a
very, very sound approach in terms of moving forward. It is the
best way to go.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you.
Mr. Berg, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BERG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I come from a State where, quite frankly, we are looking
for employees. We have got around a 3 percent unemployment
rate. And I am just sitting here. And again, the big problem as
I see it is in 2018, we are broke. So we have kind of been
dancing around a lot of these questions. But it seems to me
that that is really the number one thing that we need to focus
on.
Having said that, if there are 2.6 million people who would
like to work, it seems like that is almost 25 percent of the
people that would like some sort of work. And if in 2018,
according to the numbers that we are given, we would only be
able to fund 84 percent. Well, quite frankly, if half the
people that wanted to work found work and became self-
sufficient from an income standpoint, that would certainly push
that 2018 date out.
So I guess--and I appreciate the concern of not wanting
people to coach to the program, but, quite frankly, I don't
think anyone really needs any coaching to look at the program
and realize that if you make more than $1,000, you are going to
lose all your benefits. It is not that complicated for anyone
that is on the program. So it seems to me that there are really
some fundamental flaws in the program that need to, quite
frankly, encourage people and partner with people getting on
their own rather than creating some sort of barrier. When they
figure it out, they are making $2, $3 an hour for the extra
work. So, I mean, that is kind of one of the big chunks.
We are running out of time here, and it appears to me that,
obviously, what we have heard from the employers, that is one--
I mean, there are two ways of doing this, from my perspective.
We could take from the employers and kind of work an
environment where we have work and opportunities, or it seems
like we can also just push people from the bottom up. I would
like to hear from Mr. Hanophy about how can we encourage
employers to--are there barriers there? Are there things that
we can do that would encourage employers to say, here is a real
opportunity to bring a valuable person into my company long
term?
Mr. HANOPHY. Sure. Thank you.
Essentially there are three parts to that. Number one is
what we identified earlier, which is the dual customer; in
other words, knowing the business and knowing your applicant,
the person with a disability. That means understanding what the
business needs, but understanding how they operate, how the
jobs operate, the work culture. Once you are able to do that,
you are able to have a discussion with this business about your
ability to bring them a qualified applicant.
Study after study shows that the reason why people get
hired is because they can do the job. And so this isn't about
charity. This is about helping them find an applicant who can
do the job. So the key for the providers is to provide the
supports and also do the screening and make sure these
applicants are qualified.
Number two is helping a business increase their access to
an applicant pool of people with disabilities. The term we
prefer to use is ``multiple portals.'' We have had examples
with Walgreens and several other companies where by providing a
little bit more training on the front end or a little better
adjustment on the front end, we are able to help--we call it
embedded training, for lack of a better term, where an
applicant with a disability can hear the noise, smell the dust,
be a part of the work environment, but learn at a pace to where
they will be able to get up to speed to eventually be hired by
that employer. So different portals of entry.
And then the third piece is support. Companies very often
are very interested in supporting people with disabilities, but
don't know how. We hear the term ``reasonable accommodations.''
I prefer to use the term ``adjustments,'' because a reasonable
accommodation is nothing more than a commonsense adjustment to
help somebody go to work. My favorite example is, if your job
requires you to reach something on the top shelf, and you can't
get that thing on the top shelf, let us move it down. And it
doesn't matter if you are 4 feet 11 or you are in a wheelchair.
Let us just move it down and move on.
And providing supports about how to help folks with
significant disabilities adjust to work tasks. This is where
the Partnership Plus model, I think, has been effective in
partnering with Social Security in being able to provide some
of those longer-term supports.
The bottom line is know your business and know your
individual with a disability.
Mr. BERG. Thank you.
Ms. Russell, I would like to ask you a kind of similar
question. If from a business-down approach you are going to
develop or increase it, are there barriers that are out there?
Or what changes would you like to see?
Ms. RUSSELL. I think the barrier we experience is trying to
locate the talent. And that is, as Mr. Hanophy just described,
something that we have been able to find in Texas with their
assistance is being able to locate the individuals who have the
skills that match what we are requiring. It is unfortunate that
we have a lot of situations where a week goes by, and I see
that we have hired 50 new workers, and not one of them is
identified as somebody with a disability. It is 50
opportunities that our partners have passed on by not being
able to help us find the individuals with disabilities who have
the skills to do our jobs. So it is all about a talent pool and
finding the talent, developing the talent, and then being able
to match it to the business' needs.
Mr. BERG. Thank you, all.
I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman JOHNSON. Mr. Crowley, would you care to question?
You are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. CROWLEY. Thank you, sir. Let me thank you and Chairman
Davis for holding this hearing today. I want to thank the
witnesses for their testimony.
My office frequently hears from our constituency about
navigating the Social Security benefits, the disability system,
and, quite frankly, it is one of the most frustrating things
about our office, I think. I think I speak for both sides of
the aisle in this because they are repeated, and, over a period
of time, one of the most time-consuming aspects of the office.
I am not complaining about that. That is what we do. That is
why we are here to help them navigate.
But, Ms. Bates-Harris, if I could ask you to just comment.
Obviously not everyone can work. There are some people in this
world who, by no fault of their own, simply just do not have
the wherewithal for various reasons to work. Is that correct?
Ms. BATES-HARRIS. My philosophical--because my original
work in the field came from the Rehab Act, and the premise of
the Rehab Act is that all individuals, regardless of the
significance of disability, are capable of engaging in an
employment outcome if they are given the proper services and
supports, my gut reaction is to say that everyone can work. But
unfortunately all the resources and supports are not in place,
so there are individuals who cannot work.
Mr. CROWLEY. In the perfect world--just clarify this for
me. There are some people in this country who do not have the
ability to work. Those individuals do exist. Am I not correct?
Ms. BATES-HARRIS. Yes, they do.
Mr. CROWLEY. So in a perfect world, if the Ticket to Work
program worked perfectly, there would still be a need for SSI
and SSDI benefits; is that not correct?
Ms. BATES-HARRIS. Absolutely, positively.
Mr. CROWLEY. That is an important point just to note. I
appreciate the recording of that was played as well, understand
that that could be disturbing, as many of the things in life
are disturbing to all of us, I think. But also, when people are
asked a question and are answering to the best of their ability
and following the guidelines of the law, I think that also
needs to be taken into consideration regardless of the
characterization of how that question is asked.
One of the questions my office often gets from constituents
is, can I still work while receiving disability benefits? Ms.
Bates-Harris, in your written testimony you mentioned the
importance of the Work Incentives Planning Assistance program,
which supports benefits counselors in the community to answer
just those types of questions. What kind of impact will our
constituents see if this program is not reauthorized,
particularly once the funding begins to run out?
Ms. BATES-HARRIS. I think that it would have a devastating
impact on those people who are motivated and want to return to
work, because we would fall back onto the old beliefs that if
you go back to work, you are going to immediately lose your
benefits, you are going to lose access to your health care, and
you are going to lose access to the other supports.
I think it has been a very slow process getting the public
and people with disabilities to understand that, yes, there is
going to be an impact on your benefits, but depending on
whether you are getting SSI or SSDI, the impact is not
immediate. If people understand what is going to happen and how
it is going to happen, then it allows them to plan their lives
and plan their return to work and make the adjustments that
they need to be successful in it. And without it, people would
simply give up and not even try.
Mr. CROWLEY. You mentioned the Affordable Care Act and the
opportunity it gives disabled individuals to receive health
care without having to rely upon public assistance. What are
some of the several beneficial provisions included in this law
which would be lost if the law were to be repealed?
Ms. BATES-HARRIS. I am sorry, would you repeat the
question?
Mr. CROWLEY. You mentioned the Affordable Care Act in your
written statement, and the opportunities it gives to the
disabled individual to receive health care without having to
rely upon public assistance. If that were to be repealed, which
many of my colleagues on the other side would like to see
happen, what would be the fallout from that? Do you understand?
Ms. BATES-HARRIS. I do understand the question. And I am
sorry, I am a little tired, I traveled late last night.
I think, you know, the biggest issue right now is that
people with disabilities face a lot of discrimination in
insurance and insurance coverages and what will be covered; for
instance, assistive technology and durable medical equipment
and things like that. And without access to health care, and
without access to the services and supports they need, which
are very different for different people, they would not be able
to maintain the health status that they have, and would not be
able to basically, you know, maintain their level of wellness,
so to speak, to enable them to continue to work. And I am not
sure that I answered your question.
Mr. CROWLEY. I think you answered the question just fine.
And given that you got in late last night, we were up late last
night.
Ms. BATES-HARRIS. I know. We were on the same schedule.
Mr. CROWLEY. Just for the record, I am not picking on you.
I was going to move on to someone else after that anyway, but I
ran out of time.
Ms. BATES-HARRIS. Sorry.
Mr. CROWLEY. Thank you, ma'am.
Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you all for your testimony.
Thank you, Mr. Crowley.
I appreciate you all being here. Chairman Davis and I are
interested in improving the system, if we can, and helping the
people out there that need help.
Again, thank you all for being here today, for your
testimony. I look forward to working with you and all my
colleagues to make sure work incentives achieve the results
Congress and the taxpayers expect, and those with disabilities
deserve.
With that, the Committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:17 a.m., the Subcommittees were
adjourned.]
[Questions for the Record follow:]