Originally Posted by Janke

It is the Congressperson who votes for the legislation that determines how SSA makes disability decisions. They also vote for or against the funding determines how much staff SSA has and the amount of staffing also determines how quickly work gets done. If SSA is not as responsive to you as you would like, a very big reason is that the employees are overwhelmed with work and are always playing catchup and never catch up. If your Congressperson truly cared about that, they would provide the funding necessary for SSA to perform the job that SSA is tasked to do. There wouldn't be a long history of hiring freezes and reduced staffing and budget cuts.

My guess that in your case it was the evidence that determined that outcome of your case. And I think your condition must be obviously severe in order to get a favorable decision at the reconsideration level and that the favorable finding had pretty much nothing to do with the Congressperson's involvement.

I do believe that nothing shady happened between you and the Congressperson and between the Congressperson and SSA, but what I don't understand is what role that you believe a Congressperson played in your case and what role should they play in the rest of their constituents' cases? I think SSA takes too long to make decisions, and the hearing backlog is harmful to applicants, but if SSA is going to follow law and policy with their reduced staffs (expected to do more with less) then the backlogs will not go away.

There are some cases that get priority handling and get moved to the front of the line. And I think there are times when that is needed. But if everyone's case was flagged as priority handling because a Congressperson is involved, then no one is special.