Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) flopped in her attempt to scold a Social Security Administration official over employee productivity on Wednesday.
Boebert told Oren “Hank” McKnelly, an executive counselor for the SSA, that the agency was allowing “delinquent employees to sit on their sofas at home” instead of “actually getting to work and doing their jobs” as she took aim at telework policies during a House Oversight Committee hearing.
“This is absolutely unacceptable,” said Boebert, who is known for her bizarre behavior in – and outside of – Washington.
McKnelly, who was testifying before the committee, swiftly checked Boebert and broke down how SSA employees’ performances are monitored as they work from the office or at home.
“So real time understanding of what actions are being processed at any particular given time,” noted McKnelly, who added that employees are required to be “accessible” during work hours to supervisors, clients and colleagues.
Boebert pressed further on employee productivity before McKnelly shut the Republican down.
“Then why is the backlogs for Social Security applicants increased from 41,000 to 107,000?” asked Boebert.
“Because we’ve been historically underfunded for a number of years now,” McKnelly replied.
“I don’t think you’re underfunded. You’re funded at the Nancy Pelosi levels, at the democrat levels. We just continued that same funding,” said Boebert, adding that it’s at “pandemic-level spending.”
“So I’d say we’d have an increase of over eight million beneficiaries over the last 10 years. At the same time, we experienced our lowest work staffing levels at the end of FY 22. That’s a math problem,” he replied.
“I mean, that is a problem. If you have those workloads increasing and you don’t have the staff to take care of those workloads, you’re going to have the backlogs that you’re talking about, representative.”
