Changes at SSA—Part 2
By Bruce D. Schobel
In the Public Interest, May 2024
A November 2021 article in this newsletter described in great detail the very interesting circumstances surrounding President Biden’s firing of Commissioner of Social Security Andrew Saul, who had been appointed to that position by President Trump and whose six-year term was scheduled to end on Jan. 19, 2025. In a nutshell, a 1994 law said that the commissioner could be fired “only pursuant to a finding by the President of neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”On June 23, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court found such restrictions on the president’s ability to replace heads of executive branch agencies to violate the Constitution’s separation of powers. Following that decision, President Biden fired Commissioner Saul on July 9, 2021. He did not leave willingly, but he did leave. President Biden named deputy commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi acting commissioner on that date, and she served for more than two years. She was never nominated to be Commissioner of Social Security.
On July 26, 2023, President Biden announced his nomination of Martin O’Malley to be Commissioner of Social Security. O’Malley, age 60, graduated from law school in 1988 and was hired as an assistant state’s attorney for the city of Baltimore. In 1991, he was elected to the Baltimore city council as a Democrat and served eight years. He was elected mayor of Baltimore in 1999 and reelected in 2003. In 2007, he was elected governor of Maryland and served in that position for eight years, after being reelected in 2011. In 2015, O’Malley announced his candidacy for president of the United States but withdrew on Feb. 1, 2016, after performing poorly in the Iowa caucuses. Starting in 2016, he lectured at Georgetown University and Boston College Law School and wrote two books about the use of technology in government. Obviously, that’s a topic of great relevance to anyone overseeing the Social Security Administration, a huge government agency highly dependent on technology to accomplish its mission.
The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on O’Malley’s nomination on Nov. 2, 2023. The committee approved his nomination on Nov. 28 by a party-line vote and sent it to the full Senate for confirmation. The Senate approved the nomination by a 50–11 vote on Dec. 18, and he was sworn in on Dec. 20. The fact that only 61 senators out of 100 voted was unusual, but many senators were absent due to the approaching holidays. The 11 senators who voted against O’Malley’s confirmation, all Republicans, generally cited President Biden’s removal of Commissioner Saul as the reason for their opposition. Commissioner O’Malley’s term will end on Jan. 19, 2025, the same date that would have marked the end of Commissioner Saul’s six-year term. Whoever is elected president in 2024 will name Commissioner O’Malley’s successor. During his 13 months in office, Commissioner O’Malley is expected to focus his attention on improving SSA’s service delivery.
In other news, the two “public trustee” positions on the Social Security and Medicare boards of trustees may possibly be filled, after being vacant since 2015, when the four-year terms of Robert D. Reischauer (the Democratic member) and Charles P. Blahous, III (the Republican member), expired. On Jan. 3, 2023, immediately after the newly elected 118th Congress was sworn in, President Biden renominated Patricia Hart Neuman to be the Democratic member of the Social Security and Medicare boards (after the 117th Congress failed to act on her nomination, primarily because no Republican counterpart member had been nominated) and nominated Demetrios L. Kouzoukas to be the Republican member. The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on these nominations on Sept. 28 and, on Nov. 2, approved both nominations: Neuman by a vote of 25–2 and Kouzoukas by a vote of 23–4. Kouzoukas’s nomination was opposed by Senators Menendez, Cardin, Whitehouse, and Warren, all Democrats. Senator Warren, in particular, refused to support his nomination unless he agreed to resign from the board of Clover Health, a company administering Medicare Advantage plans. Kouzoukas has refused to agree to resign, so his nomination may be held up indefinitely if any opposing senator places a hold on it. The Senate is unlikely to approve Neuman’s nomination alone, but only time will tell how this plays out. People may change their positions. Meanwhile, on May 6, the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees released the 2024 Trustees reports, again without the benefit of public trustees.
Bruce D. Schobel, FSA, MAAA, is a consulting actuary based in Winter Garden, FL. He can be reached at bdschobel@aol.com.