Book Report on "Stress: The Social Security Administration in American"

Book Report 5 pages (1586 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Stress: the Social Security Administration in American Government, Martha Derthick examines the performance of the Social Security Administration (SSA). Her conclusion is that the SSA is foundering. She believes that policymaking neglects administration and that policymakers act without a basic understanding of administrative organizations. Derthick also believes that democracy is incompatible with efficient administration because changing governments bring about frequent administrative changes. The separation of powers means that policymaking decisions are subject to review by people other than those making policy. Furthermore, federalism results in fragmentation of administrative agencies, making cohesive policies difficult to create and enforce (See generally, Derthick, p.4). To demonstrate the inefficiency of the SSA, Derthick examines two significant events in the history of the SSA: the implementation of the supplemental security income program (SSI) in 1974 and a review of eligibility of disability recipients in the 1980s (Derthick, p.4). Both of these events represented crisis for the SSA, and helped demonstrate the inherent weaknesses in the SSA.

Derthick organizes her book in a three part structure. Part one of the book describes the two above events. Part two describes how the presidency, Congress, and the SSA imposed these two new tasks on the SSA without ensuring that it had the appropriate resources to carry out these tasks. Part three of the book examines the separation of powers and how the president, the courts, and Congress engaged in oversight of these decisions. Taken together, these three sections highlight a dichotomy in modern American government. Bureaucracies exist to serve the government, not the government to serve bureaucracies. However, it is clear that, in a country the size of the United States, bureaucracies are necessary to for administration of government functions. Derthick's explanations of the causes of these two incidents help illuminate areas for improvement.

Derthick begins her examination by looking at the SSI event in 1974. It is easy to understand why she selected this event as an example of administrative incompetence. In the mid 1970s, SSI replaced state-run programs that helped distribute aid for the disabled. Simply put, the SSA was not prepared to take over the task. There were payments made to people who did not deserve them, while others who were entitled to payments did not receive them. The SSA lacked the computing resources to track and correct errors. The resulting errors led to mobs jamming local SSA offices, and both federal marshals and private security forces had to be used to keep SSA employees safe. Moreover, resolving the issues required millions of hours of overtime (See generally, Derthick, p.5). Clearly, this incident is an example of an unsuccessful administrative action.

Derthick examines what went wrong in the SSA's transition in 1974. She determines that, in order to facilitate a successful transition, the SSI needed to: develop formal rules for the administration of individual cases; secure and verify critical information about 3 million recipients; publicize the new program; be ready to process newly-eligible applicants; open, expand, and relocate field offices; hire and train 15,000 new employees; negotiate agreements with individual states for the takeover; and develop software systems (Derthick, p.25). Field employees could see that these goals had not been accomplished and dreaded the rollover. While the rollover did occur, approximately a quarter of the initial payments had errors (Derthick, p.27). Derthick concludes that many of these errors were preventable, and were caused by the SSA's failure to implement the changes necessary for a successful transition before attempting that transition.

Next, Derthick discusses the disability review that the SSA conducted in the early 1980s. Congress was concerned that SSI was being abused and ordered the SSA to periodically review recipient eligibility. The SSA projected that it could save billions of dollars by removing ineligible recipients from the system. However, the periodic reviews resulted in the removal of clearly disabled people from SSI's eligibility rolls, and that created tremendous opposition. "Flooded with appeals, the courts ruled against the SSA in more than 200,000 cases (many of which were encompassed in class actions), and many state governments ceased to cooperate with the agency in carrying out the review" (Derthick, p.5). In 1984, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency in charge of the SSA, suspended the review.

Ensuring that the only people receiving SSI disability benefits are those who are actually disabled certainly seems like a laudable goal. In fact, even today people are concerned about people who are inappropriately receiving government benefits, whether SSI or other benefits. However, the SSA had not initiated these changes from an internal standpoint. Instead Congress, seemingly without a true understanding of the SSA's capabilities and limitations, imposed the review requirement. It did so without outlining procedures for such a review. Like the SSI takeover in 1974, the SSA was simply unprepared and insufficiently staffed and trained to take on its new roles.

Derthick does not believe that these problems were caused by internal issues at the SSA. Though she does not hold the agency's internal leadership blameless, she highlights several different ways in which the SSA had little to no control over its activities. She begins with the President, who is, ultimately, the head of all federal administrative agencies. She argues that "both efforts originated to a considerable extent in the postelection urge of presidents and their entourages (together constituting the "presidency") to achieve transformations in domestic policy. In content, both reflected a presidential bias in favor of rationalizing the actions of government, and both betrayed an insensitivity, born of remoteness, to the practicalities of implementation in the field" (Derthick, p.51). Her arguments are persuasive. She outlines how the Presidents in charge were responding to political pressures and concerns about overspending on public benefits. In this way, the Presidents were responding to the demands of the people, as they are supposed to do. This relates back to Derthick's original thesis, which is that the design of American democracy is incompatible with successful administration because large bureaucracies cannot be as responsive to the changes in the political climate as the President is. Moreover, Presidents are pressured to achieve results in a relatively short period of time, which can make them be unresponsive to concerns from the people initiating those changes.

In addition, Derthick makes it clear that Congress was not the only actor in the SSA scandals. She discusses the nature of the SSA anyway, which is to transfer benefits from all taxpayers to a select group of people, which is politically difficult. She also discusses how Congress' actions impact administrative agencies: "Congressional enactments tell agencies what they are entitled or obliged to do. How Congress influences administration is, then, principally a function of the character of those enactments, which may be more or less voluminous, clear, consistent, and exacting" (Derthick, p.68). She believes that Congress and the President interact in ways that produce conflict, Congressional guidance itself is unstable, Congress can be very concerned with administrative details when it is politically beneficial to be so, and Congress likes to minimize federal employment, which seemingly reduces expenses (Derthick, p.68). Derthick successfully demonstrates how each of these issues helps contribute to Congressional interference with administrative agency activities. Put succinctly, Congress has the power to mandate what administrative agencies must do, but also the power and incentive to deny the budget adjustments necessary to enact those changes.

Derthick moves on to discuss how the separation of powers doctrine creates three different types of oversight for administrative agencies. First, the President is theoretically the head of federal administrative agencies. However, she suggests that this role may be illusory. According to Derthick, "although the dominant strand of administrative theory in this country has tended to portray the executive branch as a hierarchy with the president as its head, in practice his right to direct the agencies is ill… READ MORE

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