T he first members of the huge baby boom generation are beginning to file applications for Social Security retirement benefits. Those not old enough to file for retirement are in their disability-prone years, and record numbers are applying for disability benefits at Social Security offices like the ones in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene.

However, while faced with these growing workloads, the SSA is being starved of the funding and front-line employees needed to provide the high level of service that American workers have paid for, expect and deserve. Both applicants and taxpayers are being seriously harmed.

Social Security will collect $150 billion more in taxes than it will pay out in benefits this year, so why isn’t there enough money to properly run the programs? The reason is that the agency’s annual administrative budget must be authorized as part of the Labor-Health and Human Services spending bill, and the president has vetoed the bill passed by Congress for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Eastern Washington’s U.S. Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Doc Hastings are the only members of the state’s congressional delegation who voted against the bill and to sustain the president’s veto. The 435-member House was just two votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto.

Nearly everyone is affected by some part of the Labor-HHS bill, as it covers medical research, vaccinations and disease prevention, veterans’ care, maternal and infant health care, programs for the elderly – everything “from womb to tomb.” President Bush claims that this critical funding for health care, disease prevention and other priorities in Congress’ budget is “excessive.”

Without the Labor-HHS bill, SSA is struggling to operate under a continuing resolution, which limits spending to last year’s levels. Congress and the president have approved a total of about $2 billion less than the Social Security commissioner has requested in the last seven years.

Employees who retire are not being replaced, and SSA is on track to lose about 4,000 positions in just two years. Agency staffing will soon drop to the lowest levels since 1972 in the face of rapidly-expanding workloads. More field offices are being closed, and hours of operation are being reduced in others.

The public is being steered toward self-service via the Internet, an option that is not practical for many of our aged and disabled clients who cannot fend for themselves in navigating our complex programs and processes. They want and need the help of trained SSA employees like me.

Continuing Disability reviews, which save taxpayers more than $10 for every $1 invested, have been cut back. So have Supplemental Security Income eligibility reviews, which save $7 for every $1 spent to do them. This is penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Service deterioration affects access to service by telephone. It is getting much more difficult to get through on the agency’s toll-free number, and more than half of the callers to SSA field offices now get a busy signal. It is projected in the upcoming year the Spokane District (Spokane and Coeur d’ Alene) will be understaffed seven to eight bodies, and without the requested budget here in the Spokane/CDA area we will be impacted dramatically. Backlogs will occur and phones will go unanswered as other parts of the nation are already experiencing.

The greatest hardships are suffered by applicants for disability benefits. Backlogs for hearing requests, many filed by veterans, have nearly doubled in the last seven years. An applicant approved for benefits after a hearing will have waited about two years on average from the date of filing a claim before finally receiving the benefits that are due, with two-thirds of that time spent waiting for a hearing.

Applicants wait 516 days for a hearing if their hearing request is one of the 4,603 cases pending in the Spokane Office of Hearings and Appeals. This is clearly unacceptable. Too many applicants lose their life savings, their homes, and their families while they wait. Some die before their claims are finally approved.

All of our members of Congress should support the Labor-HHS bill and full funding for SSA, so that the aged and disabled, as well as taxpayers, can be well served.