Social Security Administration Title II programs for elderly beneficiaries

¶ … Social Security Administration (SSA) that pertains to elderly citizens of United States. This program falls under Title II systems and deals specifically with retirement, survivors and disability insurance including other social security benefits for the elderly.

The social security administration started its functions as social security board under Roosevelt administration in 1935. The main function was to oversee the smooth functioning of the new program that targeted retirement, survivors and disability benefits. However the board had no furniture, no funds and no staff.

Under Harry Truman's reorganization plan in 1946, the SSB was renamed as Social security administration.

The program had been under Federal Security Agency for some time before it was removed from there and placed under the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1953. This also saw the end of FSA.

SSA has been at the center of attention for years for a variety of reasons. It has been criticized for being redundant and at the same time for possible corruption. In 1980, Congress ordered the SSA to carefully review the eligibility of recipients of benefits because it was concerned that the program was being misused. Those who were only temporarily handicapped did not qualify for the benefits once they had recovered and for this reason, their condition had to be periodically checked. In the first few months of Reagan administration the program underwent strict scrutiny and it was felt that budget would get a boost once the ineligible recipients were taken off the program. In this review, some 495,000 people were taken off the program but the resentment against the administration started growing. Many came to know that people who genuinely deserved benefits were taken off simply so the government could boost up the budget. Courts were flooded with appeals and some 200,000 cases won against the SSA. Such heavy number of rulings against the SSA gave the program a shady reputation. Many states stopped the review and refused to cooperate with the federal government.

In 1986 5.7 million new social security cards were issued by SSA. It received and posted 230 million earnings reports for 124 million workers

and also processed 6 million applications for benefits. This not being enough, SSA made benefit payments to 41.8 million persons. The most important function of SSA is retirement and survivors' insurance. Under this program employed workers are taxed on their earnings and employers on their payrolls; the employees qualify for benefits when they retire, and their survivors receive benefits when they die. This program was the SSA's initial responsibility and remains its largest single one, consuming 44% of the effort of its workforce.

The Social Security Administration understands that it is fraught with faults. Its culpability is clear and the agency admits that it "did not do as good a job as we should have" when it came to monitoring SSI funds. In 1994 Commissioner Chater in her testimony before Congress acknowledged the problems and said that the public "has a right to expect that those disabled by substance addictions will not simply continue on the disability payment rolls without taking responsibility for themselves." For this reason, states have been order to tighten their candidate screening in order to ensure that only the deserving get benefits of SSA.

SSA faces many new challenges as well. The biggest however will still be ineligible candidates getting benefits. It has also been seen that many drug addicts are on the program while they are clearly not suitable or eligible to be on this system. This will continue to pose a problem unless strict measures are taken. But sometimes when things are tightened, even the most eligible might fail to qualify. This creates dual problem for SSA.

Apart from this SSA has also been facing problems of lack of staffing. Chater says that the agency doesn't have enough hands to handle the load. And thus mistakes can happen. Even though the government has increased funding since 1993 when it was $4 million to almost 80% more, SSA is still facing some challenges because of slow economy.