MADISON, Wis. – U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson wants to know whether the Social Security Administration is playing a “shell game” with its hefty disability benefits caseload, to the detriment of claimants’ due process rights.
The Oshkosh Republican, in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent a letter this week to the Government Accountability Office asking for a review of the case-transfer practices of SSA’s Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, or ODAR.
“Transfers may be sensible in some circumstances to expedite case processing. However, if the practice is merely a shell game to artificially reduce an office’s APT (average processing time), the transfers may needlessly delay adjudications for claimants,” Johnson wrote to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro.
Johnson’s request is driven by due process concerns of former Milwaukee ODAR senior case technician Ron Klym. In the lead story of Wisconsin Watchdog’s investigative series, “Deadly Delays,” Klym provided documents showing hundreds of cases languishing in the system for nearly two years – in some cases, much longer.
Average processing times from initial application to reconsideration, if the request is denied, can be more than a year.