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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees has called on a key House appropriations subcommittee to fund adequately two vital Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies she described as being at “the core of effective administration of government.”

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) made that request in a letter to Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and its Labor, Health and Education Subcommittee, and Rep. John Walsh (R-N.Y.), ranking member of the subcommittee.

She asked that the subcommittee provide “no less than the administration’s request of $125 million” for the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), where NTEU represents nearly 300 employees. This represents an increase of $11 million over current funding levels.

NCHS is part of the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and is the nation’s principal health statistics agency.

“The data they collect is essential to the work of many programs at HHS, as well as other (government) departments, academic research and private sector non-profits and businesses,” President Kelley wrote.

She added: “Million-dollar decisions are made by the data NCHS collects—and if NCHS does not have the resources to collect information or cannot maintain the quality of its research because of budget pressures, then million-dollar mistakes can be made because of a lack of data or incomplete data.”

The NTEU leader also called on the subcommittee to provide “at least $240 million above the president’s budget request” for the Social Security Administration (SSA) in fiscal 2009 “to respond to staff shortages” at SSA’s Office of Disability Review and Adjudication (ODAR), as well as for other agency administrative needs.

NTEU represents nearly 900 ODAR employees nationwide; they play key roles in the handling of hundreds of thousands of claims for Social Security disability payments.

Kelley described ODAR as “woefully underfunded” and noted that claimants “are suffering from a massive backlog in disability hearings.” At present, she said, the backlog totals more than 750,000 cases, with the average wait time for a decision more than 500 days.

“Without additional resources, this backlog will continue to at least 2013,” she said. “In the meantime, claimants are dying before they receive these earned Social Security benefits. Others are facing foreclosure on their homes or lack of health care as they await benefits.”

To underfund these two critical agencies would be “truly an abdication of the duties of government,” the NTEU president said in her letter.