Help Wanted: Overseers for Social Security and Medicare

WASHINGTON (AP) — Key posts overseeing the financial health of Social Security and Medicare have been vacant for more than three years, leaving the programs without independent accountability in the face of dire predictions about approaching insolvency.

With Washington corroded by partisanship and consumed by political crises, gridlock has become the norm and hundreds of senior government jobs remain unfilled. For beneficiaries and taxpayers the lack of "public trustees" for Social Security and Medicare means a loss of outside supervision over bedrock middle-class programs.