Social Security Administration

More than 55 million people receive critical cash benefits from the Social Security Administration (SSA) each month, including Social Security retirement, survivor and disability benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for poor aged, disabled and blind Americans. Although SSA’s benefit payments are entitlements and therefore are not subject to the budget process, treatment of the agency’s administrative budget affects SSA’s ability to serve the tens of millions of Americans who interact with the agency each year. In addition to administering Social Security and SSI, the SSA performs certain health insurance functions, particularly for Medicare. While the actual dollars requested for SSA’s administrative budget (LAE) reflect a modest increase (5 percent above the FY 2006 appropriation), the reality is that the proposal provides no additional funding, in inflation-adjusted dollars to SSA.

SSA: Comparison of FY 2001 and FY 2006 Actual Appropriations and FY 2008 Budget Request, (dollars are in millions)
	FY 2001		FY 2006		FY 2008 request
Discretionary Budget Authority	Appropriated amount	Inflation-adjusted amount	Appropriated amount	Inflation-adjusted amount
Administrative budget (Limitation on administrative exemption)	$7,124.0	$8,626.2	$9,147.0	$9,592.1	$9,597.0
Office of the Inspector General	$69.0	$83.6	$91.0	$95.4	$95.0
Research and development	$30.0	$36.3	$27.0	$28.3	$27.0
Total	$7,223.0	$8,746.1	$9,265.0	$9,715.8	$9,719.0

The freeze of SSA’s administrative budget may lead to the same potential service interruptions and employee furloughs now confronting the agency.