As an aside to this thread--

There is a Federal Court appeal pending regarding preferences given to certain people applying for the position of administrative law judge (ALJ).

Pending the appeal, the government is not even taking applications or testing for the position of ALJ, hence, the HUGE backlog in not only SSA applications for hearings but in all other adminstrative law cases--hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of administrative cases with a shortage of ALJ's and no new ones coming on.

TC&GL all.