House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) sent a letter to former Social Security Administrator Martin O’Malley requesting that he testify on telework standards he set for the agency just before his departure.
The hearing will focus on the relationship between the rising number of hours that SSA employees are working from home and the delays and decrease in the agency’s productivity.
The SSA consists of 58,785 employees, and nearly all of them are eligible to work from home for some portion of time. However, Comer asserts in his letter that these federal employees are abusing this privilege, pointing to a report from the Biden administration that found that SSA employees have been spending less than half their time in the office.
“This failure to show up runs parallel to failures at SSA to accomplish its mission,” Comer wrote. “SSA is failing to adequately serve the American people, as SSA disability determination processing times on average have increased since fiscal year 2020.”
Comer noted how President-elect Donald Trump ended telework privileges for some SSA employees in October 2019 upon recognition that service delivery was lagging, but the Biden administration reversed those policies.
Just last month, O’Malley signed an agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees that guaranteed 42,000 SSA employees a minimum level of telework hours through 2029. He signed the agreement just days before stepping down from his role, right after declaring that he was running for chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
“Your motive for signing such an agreement is unclear, nor is it clear why the public interest is served by having a departing official of a lame duck Administration determine the work arrangements to occur at an agency for years after he is gone,” Comer wrote. “Democracy is best served when an incoming, duly elected President and his appointees are empowered to actually manage the workforce they are charged with overseeing.”
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On Dec. 6, Comer and incoming Department of Government Efficiency Subcommittee Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) sent letters to 24 federal agencies, including the SSA, calling on them to stop all actions to “Trump-proof” themselves.
Comer said the Oversight Committee “will be as active as ever as it works with President Trump to empower Department of Government Efficiency proposals, hold the federal workforce accountable, institute regulatory reforms, and root out waste, fraud, and abuse.”