Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) failed in her endeavor to criticize a Social Security Administration official over employee productivity on Wednesday.
Boebert reprimanded Oren “Hank” McKnelly, an executive counselor for the SSA, accusing the agency of allowing “delinquent employees to sit on their sofas at home” rather than “actually getting to work and doing their jobs” as she targeted telework policies during a House Oversight Committee hearing.
“This is absolutely unacceptable,” said Boebert, known for her bizarre behavior in – and outside of – Washington.
McKnelly, testifying before the committee, promptly corrected Boebert and explained how SSA employees’ performances are monitored as they work from home or the office.
“So real-time understanding of what actions are being processed at any particular given time,” noted McKnelly, who emphasized that employees must be “accessible” during work hours to supervisors, clients, and colleagues.
Boebert continued to press on employee productivity, but McKnelly shut her down, stating, “Because we’ve been historically underfunded for a number of years now.”
“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.”
