This Tuesday, a Congressional committee will host a long-awaited hearing on Social Security and its customer service challenges. Now, the hearing’s witness list has been revealed.

The House Ways and Means Committee’s Social Security subcommittee will host a hearing on May 17 called Strengthening Social Security’s Customer Service.

The hearing will include a panel of witnesses consisting entirely of women. They include:

-Grace Kim, the deputy commissioner for operations, Social Security Administration (SSA);

-Tracey Gronniger, the directing attorney, of Justice in Aging;

-Bethany Lilly, senior director of public policy, The Arc of the United States, on behalf of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Social Security Task Force;

-Peggy Murphy, the immediate past president of National Council of Social Security Management Associations;

-Yanira Cruz, the president and CEO of the National Hispanic Council on Aging;

-Alison Weir, the policy advocate and attorney of Greater Hartford Legal Aid;

-Rebecca Vallas, senior fellow for The Century Foundation.

The hearings will be held following the reopening of the nation’s Social Security offices in early April after they were closed for more than two years. But even with the offices back, there remain delays and other inefficiencies with Social Security customer service.

Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee had been pushing for a hearing on the issue.

“Over the past few months, the SSA has gradually increased in-office service in certain, limited, critical cases and will resume in-office service for all members of the public today. However, the SSA anticipates that reopening will result in delays and long waits for customers who haven’t scheduled an appointment, which generally requires calling the SSA ahead of time,” the committee’s Republicans said a letter in early April.

“In the more than two years since the SSA closed its offices to the general public, this committee has not held a single hearing to discuss these challenges, despite the difficulties that our constituents have had and continue to face when trying to do business with the SSA,” the letter continued.

The Social Security Subcommittee held a hearing last December on Social Security 2100: A Sacred Trust, the Social Security reform plan introduced by Rep. John Larson (D-CT). It doesn’t appear that the plan has had any movement in Congress in the months since, however.

Two senators from Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman, this month introduced a bill called the Savings Penalty Elimination Act, which is aimed at reforming the Social Security-affiliated Supplemental Security Income Program. The bill would “update SSI’s restrictive asset limits and better meet the needs of vulnerable seniors and Ohioans with disabilities,” Portman said in a statement earlier this month.

The hearing will be available to live stream here.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters.