Senator Susan Collins has introduced the We Can't Wait Act from the Senate floor, a bipartisan proposal that would impose enforceable deadlines on how quickly the Social Security Administration must schedule and decide disability hearings. For the millions of Americans currently waiting months — and in many cases more than a year — for an administrative law judge to hear their SSDI appeal, the bill is the most concrete legislative response yet to the multi-year hearing backlog that has come to define the disability appeals process. ## Why the bill exists The Social Security disability appeals system has been under sustained pressure since long before the current administration. Hearings pending before administrative law judges have grown into the hundreds of thousands, and average wait times from the moment a request for hearing is filed to the day a claimant actually appears before a judge have stretched well past twelve months in many hearing offices. The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly identified the hearing backlog as one of the high-risk issues facing the federal government. The We Can't Wait Act responds to that problem by tying Social Security's procedural obligations to specific timeframes. Under its framework, the SSA would be required to schedule hearings within a defined window of receiving the request, issue decisions within a defined window of the hearing, and notify claimants about the status of their case at regular intervals. The bill also creates reporting obligations, requiring the agency to publish timely data on how each hearing office is performing against those deadlines so that Congress and the public can see where backlogs are growing. ## What the deadlines would actually mean The core of the proposal is a shift from aspirational goals to legal requirements. The SSA already publishes internal target timelines for hearings and decisions, but those targets are not enforceable. When a hearing office falls behind, the consequences are limited to internal planning conversations and the slow accumulation of cases. The We Can't Wait Act would change that by giving claimants a clear timeline they can point to, and by giving Congress a benchmark it can use during oversight hearings and budget negotiations. For a claimant at the reconsideration stage who has just been denied and is about to request a hearing, the practical effect would be less waiting without a status update. Cases would move through the pipeline on a clock rather than depending on the staffing level of a particular hearing office. For claimants whose cases have already been pending for a long time, the bill offers the prospect of renewed pressure on the agency to clear the oldest cases first. ## Limits and questions that remain Like any bill introduced in the early stages of the legislative process, the We Can't Wait Act raises practical questions about how it would be implemented. The SSA cannot decide cases that are not yet ready, and deadlines do not themselves produce more administrative law judges, more staff to process appeals, or more digital infrastructure for managing the workload. If the bill passes, Congress will still need to fund the capacity needed to meet the timelines it imposes, or risk creating a new set of obligations the agency cannot meet. There are also questions about how the deadlines would interact with the quality of decisions. Disability adjudication is a fact-intensive process that depends on medical evidence, vocational analysis, and careful review of each claimant's work history. If hearings are pushed through faster than the evidence in a case supports, the risk is that decisions become less accurate at precisely the stage where accuracy matters most. Advocacy groups have signaled that they will be watching the bill closely to ensure that speed does not come at the cost of fairness. ## What claimants should do now For SSDI claimants currently in the appeals pipeline, the introduction of the bill does not change anything about how their case will move in the near term. Hearings are still scheduled based on existing workload, and the existing process still applies. But claimants who want to weigh in can contact their senators and representatives to express support, particularly if they have personally experienced long waits. Public pressure during the committee stage is often what determines whether hearing-deadline legislation moves forward or stalls. In the meantime, the most useful preparation remains the same. Claimants should make sure their medical evidence is complete and current, respond quickly to any requests for information from the SSA, and consider working with a representative who knows how to move cases forward at the hearing level. A well-prepared case can often be scheduled and decided more efficiently than one that requires repeated development, and that advantage persists regardless of what Congress ultimately decides about deadlines.