SOCIAL SECURITY CUTBACKS PUT CALLERS ON LONG HOLD

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 26, 1993                   TAG: 9303260052
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium
SOCIAL SECURITY CUTBACKS PUT CALLERS ON LONG HOLD
The government is ringing up an $11.5 million telephone bill by putting callers to its nationwide toll-free Social Security hot line on hold, investigators say.
But calls to a local Social Security office may not even go through. The General Accounting Office says fewer than half of all such calls are answered.
Congressional Democrats say the Social Security Administration's troubles answering the phone are just one of the consequences of massive cutbacks in the agency's staff under Presidents Reagan and Bush.
Applicants for disability benefits are now waiting three months instead of two for decisions on their claims, said a report by the Democratic staff of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Advocates say some Americans suffer economic hardship or ill-health, or die waiting for their case to be decided.
"Justice delayed is quite literally justice denied when a taxpayer dies before his or her disability claim is so much as looked at," Rep. Andy Jacobs, D-Ind., chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security, said at a hearing Thursday.
At the end of 1992, more than 725,000 disability claims were waiting to be processed.
Social Security's work force was trimmed from 80,000 to 63,000 from 1984 to 1990. The agency also sought to economize by disconnecting local phone lines and installing a toll-free, nationwide hot line on Oct. 1, 1989.
But complaints about busy signals and inaccurate information on the toll-free line prompted Congress to direct the agency to restore public telephone access to its 1,300 local offices a year later.
"SSA responded by relisting local office telephone numbers in local directories but did not reinstall the incoming telephone lines that would have enabled the public to reach these offices readily," the Ways and Means report said.
As a consequence, the GAO said, 55.7 percent of calls to local Social Security offices do not go through.
And an internal audit by Social Security found that putting callers to the national toll-free number on hold cost the government $11.5 million in telephone time charges in 1991 - or 30 percent of the agency's total 800-number costs. A caller to the hot line on Wednesday night waited six minutes.
Nevertheless, Louis D. Enoff, acting Social Security commissioner, told the subcommittee that he believes the public "has more convenient and far better access to SSA than at any time in the past."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB