Commissioner leaves SSA after six years

Jo Anne Barnhart's eyes welled when she discussed leaving behind the 65,000 employees of the Social Security Administration when she steps down as commissioner on Friday.

"This agency is an amazing -- it's an amazing place," Barnhart said. "There's no way to really express what the people in this agency are like."

Barnhart's sentimentality may come as a surprise for a Republican appointee at the helm of a social service agency. But Barnhart, the first commissioner to serve the full six-year term since the 1960s, said President Bush has been extremely supportive of the agency.

"Every president's budget since I've been commissioner has asked for more money for Social Security than any other domestic agency," Barnhart said. "And I know how tight the budget situation is."

Congress has not been so kind to the agency recently, however. Barnhart has made a very public showing of the 10-day furloughs she believes her employees will need to endure if Congress fails to boost funding for fiscal 2007.

Bush targeted a Social Security overhaul as a major domestic initiative after his 2004 presidential win. He pushed for private accounts, among other changes that have yet to gain traction in Congress. But Barnhart did not spend too much of her tenure promoting the hot topic on behalf of the president.

"It's an independent agency," she said. "The whole idea of creating the independent agency was to take the politics out of Social Security."

Instead, Barnhart turned her eye toward a slightly less well-known topic: reforming the disability process that sometimes makes disabled citizens wait months or years to receive their first payments. The first step was to move all the disability records from a paper to an electronic format. On Jan. 4, Nebraska became the last state to go electronic.

Barnhart created a federal reviewer position to replace state-level positions in order to standardize the review process. This was made possible by the electronic documents, which can be reviewed from any location. She also made a rule change, which she said was inspired by a meeting with Bush, to fast-track the most obviously disabled applicants to receive their benefits within 20 days.

David Traver, a lawyer who specializes in Social Security disability claims, said he applauds Barnhart's efforts, but hasn't seen huge improvement on the ground.

"It's kind of like steering the Titanic," Traver said. "It's a very, very large old ship with a very small rudder. I think she has been somewhat successful, but I haven't seen any improvement across the board."

Barnhart's designated replacement, Michael Astrue, a Massachusetts biotechnology executive who has his Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 24, will likely guide her reforms to fruition. A spokesman for SSA said Thursday afternoon that no acting director has yet been announced.

Barnhart demurred when asked to offer Astrue, whom she has not met with since his nomination, advice on running the agency.

"You really have to do what's in your heart," Barnhart said.

Barnhart is a Tennessee native who started her Washington career in the office of Sen. William Roth, R-Del., and went on to positions in the Health and Human Services Department and as minority staff director for the then-Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. She also completed several stints at SSA before becoming administrator. She said she will spend next week vacationing in Rehoboth Beach, Del., and has no plans yet for her next career move.