S.Amdt. 3869

SA 3869. Mr. CASEY (for himself and Ms. Murkowski) submitted an
amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill H.R. 6157, making
appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending
September 30, 2019, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on
the table; as follows:

At the appropriate place, insert the following:
Sec. __. (a) None of the funds made available by this Act
or from any unobligated balances available from prior fiscal
years may be used by the Social Security Administration for
the purposes of reinstating reconsideration of an initial
disability determination by the Disability Determination
Services of Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan,
Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, or
California (Los Angeles North and Los Angeles West Branches).
(b)(1) Not later than 180 days after the date of the
enactment of this Act, the Commissioner of Social Security
shall submit to the applicable committees a detailed plan
to--
(A) improve the reconsideration level of review for
disability determinations; and
(B) decrease case processing time for initial disability
determinations and appeals.
(2) For purposes of developing the plan described in
paragraph (1), the Commissioner of Social Security shall
include information and input from--
(A) the Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the
United States;
(B) disability advocates and stakeholders through a
National Disability Forum, as well as other outreach methods;
(C) data collected from the 1997 Disability Redesign
Prototype model, including the elimination of the
reconsideration step of the administrative review process for
disability determinations in the 10 prototype States; and

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(D) scholarly experts as well as peer-reviewed disability
or administrative review studies published by academic or
non-profit research institutions.
(3) For purposes of paragraph (1), the term ``applicable
committees'' means the Committee on Ways and Means of the
House of Representatives, the Committee on Appropriations of
the House of Representatives, the Committee on Appropriations
of the Senate, and the Committee on Finance of the Senate.
(c) For purposes of this section, the term ``initial
disability determination'' means a determination made by a
State Disability Determination Services office in regards to
whether an individual is disabled for purposes of any
benefits under title II or XVI of the Social Security Act
based on such individual's status as disabled.
______