Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, we responded in historic fashion to meet the needs of unemployed workers.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You have had a year.

Mr. Astrue, I assume you are on the side of the clients in this issue.

The 1.3 million people who are waiting for a decision to be made on their application deserve better.

I think that if you put two or three or four reasonable people around the table reading the cases, even these one-paragraph synopses that are given to us, in almost every case, we would say, this person is eligible for disability benefits.

Anybody can see the trend of the line for the last 8 years.

Isn't the trend line about the numbers of days waiting is exactly the same for the last 2 years? It is over 500.

It is now time for the agency to take bold steps to expeditiously reduce the length of time that a disability claimant must wait for a hearing.

The average waiting time to secure a hearing for a disability claim at SSA is roughly 500 days, 16½ months.