Heads up: Unless Congress gets its act in order on an extension of the federal spending authorization, at midnight on the 14th of March large sections of the federal government will shut down. If memory serves, most of SS is automated as far as disbursements go, and it's a "mandatory" program, so this should not have much of an impact on checks going out. Anything that would require an actual federal employee to do anything well could be impacted, thought (help calls, new applications, manual processing of files, etc.) since the staff, which is already stretched really thin, will be furloughed.
Of possible note - the Transportation Security Administration is considered essential, so employees would be working without pay. Still, delays and interruptions could happen. Passport Services: The processing of passport applications may be slowed or halted. So if you have something in the pipeline, it may be a while.
