Boebert tussles with Social Security official over claims backlog

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) argued with a Social Security official over claims of backlogs in a Wednesday hearing about post-pandemic teleworking policies.

Boebert asked Oren “Hank” McKnelly, an executive counselor for the Social Security Administration, if the administration monitored its employees’ output and hours if workers are logging on from home.

McKnelly assured Boebert social security employees are “subjected to the same performance management processes” whether they are teleworking or working from the office.

“We have systems in place that our managers use to schedule, assign and track workloads,” McKnelly said, adding that if employees work virtually, they must be responsive to various forms of communication.

Boebert continued, asking the official why the backlog of social security applicants has increased from 41,000 to 107,000.

“We’ve been historically underfunded for a number of years now,” McKnelly fired back, to which the congresswoman disagreed.

McKnelly said in the past 10 years, the administration has seen an increase of more than 8 million beneficiaries and experienced the lowest staffing levels ever at the end of fiscal 2022.

“That’s a math problem,” he said. “If you have those workloads increasing and you don’t have the staff to take care of those workloads, you’re going to have the backlogs that you’re talking about, representative.”

It takes 220 days for social security claims to be decided, on average, which is 100 days longer than it did in 2019, said Rep. Drew Ferguson (R-Ga.), the chair of the House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee, in a hearing in October.