Yesterday President Obama released his Fiscal Year 2017 budget proposal for the Social Security Administration (SSA). If Congress granted the President’s budget request, SSA would see a 7.02% increase in funding for Fiscal Year 2017, which begins October 1, 2016. However, Congress is unlikely to grant the President’s budget request. (In recent years, Congress has provided far less to SSA than the President has requested.)
The good news
There is no provision that would offset disability benefits by the amount of unemployment benefits that a person received.
The bad news
SSA Judges made fewer than 508,000 hearing decisions in Fiscal Year 2015, while receiving more than 746,000 hearing requests. This means that even with the level of funding the President requested, SSA estimates that wait times for hearings will increase to 555 days in Fiscal Year 2017.