President Joe Biden has tapped Martin O’Malley, former Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor, to head the Social Security Administration.
If confirmed by the Senate, O’Malley would oversee around 60,000 administration employees, headquartered in Woodlawn. The agency administers federal retirement, disability and family benefits programs and enrolls people in Medicare health coverage.
O’Malley, 60, was elected Maryland’s governor in 2007 and served two terms before launching a presidential bid in 2015. He dropped out of the primaries in 2016, after garnering less than 1% of support in the Iowa caucuses. Before that, he was elected to two terms as mayor of Baltimore.
O’Malley didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning.
“He adopted data and performance-driven technologies to tackle complex challenges facing the communities he served — and I saw the results firsthand when we worked together during my time as Vice President,” Biden said in a statement announcing the pick.
As Maryland governor, Biden said O’Malley “made government work more effectively across his administration and enhanced the way millions of people accessed critical services.”
O’Malley “is a lifelong public servant who has spent his career making government more accessible and transparent, while keeping the American people at the heart of his work,” Biden said.
O’Malley would inherit a department in desperate straits; according to the annual Social Security and Medicare trustees report released in March, the program’s trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits in about 10 years.
If the fund is depleted, the government will be able to pay only 80% of scheduled benefits, the report said.
The story continues at the Baltimore Banner: Biden nominates former Maryland governor O’Malley to lead Social Security Administration
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