SSA has projected to the Committee staff that the House-passed budget would result in up to four weeks of furloughs out of the remaining seven months in the 2011 fiscal year. If Social Security shuts down for a month:

400,000 people nationwide would not have their retirement, survivors, and Medicare applications processed this year, resulting in a large backlog of unprocessed retirement and survivor claims for the first time in SSA history; and

290,000 people nationwide would not have their initial disability benefit applications processed, which means disabled workers, who already wait months for their applications to be processed, will wait an average of 30 days longer.

The SSA provided estimates to the Committee that the following could happen in Illinois as a result of the worker furloughs over the next seven months:

· 150,643 people would go to the Social Security office for help and find the lights off and the doors locked;

· 99,477 people would call the Social Security office and get no answer;

· 21,023 applications for Social Security benefits (retirement, disability, and survivor) could not be processed; and

· 157 jobs would be lost and the local economy would lose $5.2 million.

“Social Security has a $2.6 trillion surplus today. It has not contributed to the budget deficit, and it should not be cut to reduce the deficit,” Altman said. “Social Security belongs to the people who have contributed to the program, not to politicians in Washington who want to use it as a piggy bank.”