How New Social Security Head Plans to Change Benefits

The nominee to be the next Commissioner of Social Security Administration, Martin O'Malley, said on Thursday during his Senate confirmation hearing that the agency faces a "crisis" as it looks to serve the nearly 70 million Americans who depend on it for benefits that in 2023 total $1.4 trillion.

O'Malley, a former governor of Maryland who had also served as mayor of Baltimore, was nominated in July by President Joe Biden to serve atop the Social Security Administration (SSA) to take over from the current interim head Kilolo Kijakazi.

Kijakazi has faced a number of crises at the helm of the agency. Over the last few weeks, for example, the SSA has been accused of sending benefits to the wrong recipients. Attempts to recoup an estimated $20 billion have caused anxieties among retirees. The agency has recouped $4.7 billion of overpayments but ended the fiscal year 2022 with $21.6 billion still outstanding. The agency has said that the overpayments amounted to 0.5 percent of overall Social Security payments.

On Thursday, O'Malley lauded the role SSA has played since its founding in the 1930s. The agency provides benefits to retirees, those who are grappling with disabilities and those survivors of workers who have passed away. For a lot of Americans, the payments they receive from the SSA constitute the majority of their monthly income.

"Social Security is the most far-reaching and important act of social and economic justice that the people of the United States of America have ever enacted for one another," he told Senators. "For tens of millions of Americans across their country, Social Security today is the difference between living with dignity or living in poverty."

But the former governor suggested that the agency was falling short of its mission.

"Today, for all of its historic strengths, we must acknowledge that Social Security faces a customer service crisis," O'Malley told legislators.

The agency is serving 50 percent more beneficiaries but on the same number of staffing it had two decades ago, he said. The implication for Americans who rely on the SSA is that they get stuck on hold when calling into the agency seeking support. Americans in need of disability benefits may be forced to "wait 220 days for an initial disability determination and perhaps as long as two years for the success of mandatory appeals," O'Malley told Senators.

"This is not the greatness of America. This is not acceptable," O'Malley said. "If someone wants a face-to-face meeting with a Social Security employee in a field office to claim their benefits, they should be able to get one."

He added: "If you're a person already living with a severe disability, you shouldn't have to be dragged through two years of so-called due process in order to receive the benefits for which you've already spent a lifetime working. We can and we must do better."

O'Malley suggested that he would bring his experience deploying data and technology to improve the performance of sprawling agencies to the SSA.

"Despite the challenges the agency faces, I have no doubt whatsoever that the dedicated, patriotic and hardworking men and women of the Social Security Administration of the United States of America are up to this moment," he said.

Asked about the controversy on the overpayments of benefits and subsequent confusion over the clawing back of benefits, he said he committed to fixing the issue.

"It breaks my heart. When I hear stories like the one that you just shared from Oregon, one suddenly finds she has to pay $9,000 back and this is somebody living on [supplemental security income]?", O'Malley said. "Timely, accurate, information shared by all is the key to more effectively serving people and to higher and better collaboration."

Newsweek reached out to the SSA for comment via email.

When Senators asked O'Malley about the possible insolvency of Social Security, he said he saw his role as a person who needed to give policymakers the best possible information to decide on how to make policies. Some analysis has suggested that could become insolvent in the next ten years.

"One aspect of the job is making sure that you get the best numbers that you can possibly get on the policy options before you in that solvency debate," O'Malley told Senators. "I'll make sure you get the evidence and the numbers you need to evaluate what's best for the people over the long haul."