Discussion for article #232086
“Jesus wept.”
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What kind of discussion of the whole deal is he looking for? Is he the kind of guy who wants to get more money into the program and raise benefits? Make it easier for disabled people to qualify for the program and get help sooner? Or the kind of guy who wants to abolish it, with or without the fig leaf of so-called “privatization”?
GOP/Teatrolls: “You’ve poisoned the well. You’ll regret it. Therefore, no negotiation whatsoever and we’re going to obstruct and block it in ever manner that is available to us.”
Dems/liberals: “That’s counterproductive. Was my limpy-limp wrist bent at the correct angle when I said that? Please don’t make me repeat it in an upset tone of voice. Maybe we should send a letter.”
I do wish they would look at disability and SSI and redefine who is eligible. None of this first time application denial and then the lawyers step in to make sure people who shouldn’t qualify get on disability when they apply the second time. No states transferring people from the welfare rolls onto disability rolls so states don’t have to pay a dime. The qualifications for getting kids on SSI are too broad as well. When people qualify for disability they also qualify for Medicare driving up the cost for all.
the full trust fund being fully solvent until 2035 and after that the amounts in the trust fund would pay for about 75 percent of the benefits," Van Hollen continued. “So clearly sometime between now and then, and in my view the sooner the better, we should address that longterm thing.”
That gives me an uncomfortable feeling.
I’m curious as to how much the payroll tax rate could be dropped if the cap was removed entirely instead of just raised.
How would a soft cap look, one where the current drop to a 0% rate above the cap was replaced by a taper starting at a soft cap and dropping down to some small (2%?) rate rather than to 0%.
I’m glad there is a Dem out there speaking out against this and to TPM for reporting it. Hopefully he will continue speaking out against it in larger forums. And maybe get his colleagues to do the same.
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Disability is abused to some degree, of course, but it is tricky to set objective standards and expensive to operate a program without relying heavily on a physician’s stated assessment.
An episode of This American Life on SS disability made me aware that my own thoughts on the matter assumed that reality was much simpler than it really is. I’ll try to give an overview from memory.
A TAL contributor was curious about the fast growth of disability (much of which reflects aging boomers). Looking into it, she found some counties with extraordinarily high rates of people on disability. Visiting one such county, she readily found people on permanent disability due to things like diabetes or arthritis. She, like me, knows people who work full time with those and similar ailments, so she wondered why the people in this county were on disability. She wanted to hear from a doctor, and a lot of the people pointed her to one doctor in particular.
In the interview, the doctor explained that many of his patients had never had a job where they could sit down, and the county had almost no such jobs for people without specialized education and experience. The jobs available required constant standing and/or repetitive motion. If a person has a permanent medical condition that renders them unfit for the jobs available, it is hard to argue against granting disability.
With that type of situation in mind, reform then might be less about tightening up on the eligibility side and more about giving employers and potential workers both incentives, devices, and training that would make it possible for more people to work without risking their health.
I strongly suspect that most so-called disability fraud, amounts to somebody witnessing someone park in the handicapped stall, who doesn’t have a wheelchair. Its actual incidence is probably comparable to voter fraud: something practiced by an insignificant number of hotheads, who are mostly if not exclusively Republicans.