For most Americans, THE Government is probably the U.S. Postal Service, the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration. OK, and sometimes the Pentagon. Maybe the FBI or CIA, depending on your level of paranoia. Or the Centers for Disease Control if you live in Zika mosquito territory. After that the definition of what is the government can vary regionally. The big three have one thing in common: they take, give or deliver.

The Fish & Wildlife Service, for example, is big in Montana. The Bureau of Land Management is known, loved and sometimes hated, in many parts of the West. Not so much in New York City, where many probably never heard of the Interior Department operation.

Most federal operations don’t make money or worry about profits. But many taxpayers would be surprised at how the Minerals Management Service brings in lots of revenue. So does the Customs Service. And of course there is the IRS. Congress doesn’t turn a profit. But one of its primary functions — which it rarely fulfills — is to approve funding for government operations.

Mostly, like this year, it blows off that responsibility and approves a CR (continuing resolution) allowing agencies to operate on last year’s budget plan (which was also a CR) and hampering many operations in the process. Congress to some extent can control the operations of a service-oriented agency by giving or withholding funds. The IRS continues to to be punished for what House Republicans (and many voters) think was an unfair bias against tea party groups. While that may be satisfying — and justified — taxpayers ultimately suffer in the form of reduced service and lots of badly needed revenue goes uncollected.

Social Security has had its ups and downs. It’s 65,000 employees serve millions of Americans as they qualify for, enter and exit (in death) the Social Security system. In its annual 200-plus page congressional budget justification, SSA said that recent improvements in service may not be sustainable under the agency’s 2016 budget. “The current state of service remains fragile,” the administrator told Congress. That is the view from the top. Here’s another look at things from an employee in the trenches. Call him John.

”I am the person at Social Security who deals with first level appeals. I can tell you some of the reasons this is the case. First of all, we are having a tremendous bout of hiring to deal with the baby boomers. We are probably replacing one-third of the staff and as a result of this and other factors, the wait time for processing actions on person’s record has increased immeasurably . We have six major processing centers and the time frame on the best of these is 90 to 120 days to process to completion. The worst of these has work up to a year or more old. A person coming in as a new hire is in class 4 1/2 months minimum and then on review up to 18 months (a year is average). Once off review, they take three years or so to become totally proficient and to feel comfort in their job. The claims taking personnel learn most of their job by video and then are put out on the floor to talk to claimants. They do their best, but often do not know they do not know. The error rate for all components is higher than I have ever seen it and the worst part is that even if we discover we have made an error, it goes in the backlog and takes 90-120 days to process.

“Our teleservice representatives go into their jobs after just six weeks training and the main measure of their efficiency is the number of calls handled per day. In all fairness, they do not try to make errors, they just do. The law gets more complicated every year and even more mistakes are made. Medicare and the different enrollment periods is very complicated and people often make poor choices due to the complexity of the law, only to find out they cannot fix their mistake till months in the future ( even if very sick). Needless to say, all of this leads to people who are tired of calling SSA and getting the same run around they do from credit card issuers and banks, etc. They paid their taxes and want their benefit correct and on time. They also want the people they talk to to know what the correct answers are. Needless to say, they want change. Government is too big and too unresponsive to the people. Agencies that used to be small are now huge as those at the top expand their kingdoms.”

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michael O’Connell

The names of the animated clay figure Gumby’s parents are Gumbo and Gumba.

Source: Gumby World

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.