Lawmakers who are part of the legislative subcommittee which oversees Social Security are asking for an investigation into the procedure by which disability payments are authorized. At the center of the controversy is an administrative law judge from Huntington, West Virginia named David B. Daugherty, who in fiscal year 2010 awarded benefits to a whopping 99.7% of the claimants on his case load.
Ora Williams has worked her entire adult life. She raised six children on the income provided by her production job. Unfortunately, she has little to show for it. Her savings, pension and retirements have all been depleted by a year-long fight to receive disability benefits.
Like most of us, Ora trusted that the money which was being withdrawn from every pay check would be there one day when she needed it. She counted on the fact that Social Security would provide exactly that: security. However, it hasn’t worked out that way.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has been dealing with a significant bottleneck in the hearing process for disability cases for the majority of the last decade. The greatest apparent culprit is the economy, with fewer available dollars translating to reduced staffing and budget cuts.
Each year for nearly a decade, the President’s Budget has fallen dramatically short of what has been requested by the commissioner of the SSA. During most of the same period, the number of pending disability cases has soared to more than three-quarters of a million per year.
June has been named the official ALS Awareness Month by the ALS Association. ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but is better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The more familiar term was coined after Major League Baseball player Lou Gehrig’s very public battle with the disease. Gehrig contracted the disease at the age of 36, which ended his career in the Major Leagues and ultimately took his life two years later.
It’s not every day someone is convicted of committing fraud against two major government programs at the same time. In Fort Smith, Arkansas, a woman named Carolyn Faye Summerhill pled guilty and was convicted of fraud against both the Social Security Administration and the Food and Drug Administration’s WIC program. She will be sentenced at a later date, but will face up to 10 years in prison in addition to being forced to pay back over $200,000 to the SSA, the WIC program, as well as several banks.
