1.  The Department of Labor (DOL) reiterates opposition to investments of pensions for social or political purposes.  Bradford Campbell, DOL Assistant Secretary in the Employee Benefits Security Administration, emphasized the obligations of pension plan fiduciaries.

"The department reiterates and clarifies its longstanding view that workers' money must be invested and used solely to provide for retirements, not for political, corporate or other purposes," Campbell said. 

He stressed that pension managers may never increase expenses, sacrifice investment returns, or reduce the security of plan benefits in order to promote legislative, regulatory, or public policy goals that have no connection to the payment of benefits or plan administrative expenses.

During the Clinton Administration, Secretary of Labor Robert Reich attempted to promote of the use of private pension funds for risky purposes.

The new DOL directive on Economically Targeted Investments is online at
http://www.dol.gov/federalregister/Search/GetHtml.aspx?DocID=21631

2.  Social Security Administration (SSA) issues Performance and Accountability Report for Fiscal Year 2008.  In its annual report, SSA cited its accomplishments:

• Issuing over 18 million Social Security cards
• Crediting almost 270 million earnings items to individuals records
• Issuing over 148 million Social Security statements
• Handling over 57 million calls to the national 800-number
• Handling over over 44 million visitors to the SSA field offices
• Taking 3.9 million retirement and survivor applications
• Taking 2.6 million disability applications
• Taking 321,000 Supplemental Security Income-aged applications
• Paying benefits to 60 million persons each month
• Processing over 1 million periodic continuing disability reviews
• Processing over 23 million status changes, such as address and marital status
• Processing over 4.8 million benefit re-computations
• Making decisions on nearly 575,000 hearings
• Making decisions on more than 83,000 appeals reviews

The complete report is online at http://www.ssa.gov/finance/

3.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reports on improper payment rates.  Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) paid $10.4 billion in improper claims in Fiscal Year (FY) 2008. 

However, this was about $400 million less than FY 2007, as the rate of improper payments declined from 3.9% to 3.6%.  By comparison, in 1996, 14% of Medicare FFS payments were improper.

For the first time, the rate was reported for improper payments in the Medicare Advantage program:  10.6%, which amounted to $6.8 billion.

Also reported for first time was improper payments in Medicaid:  10.5%, which amounted to $32.7 billion, of which the federal share was $18.6 billion.

CMS stated that improper payment rates include payments that have been made incorrectly and do not always reflect fraud.  Kerry Weems, Acting Administrator, said, "We are using the most effective information-gathering tools available to help us identify and eliminate improper payments in our efforts to protect the integrity of CMS programs."