My situation is almost exactly the same as yours. Including the bone deformities – I have a collagenopathy – and I worked until my late thirties, including making a bunch of dotcom money upon which I paid the highest marginal rates and wrote six-figure checks to the IRS. Now, fifteen years later, SSDI is my only income and it is very small, actually below the federal poverty line.
And I agree that the the Dems should hold the line on this. Although I’m not sure what you’re advocating – I’m willing to risk some temporary disability cuts if Congress refuses to rescind the rule change that disallowed the reallocation to the disability fund. The issue here is that the reallocation isn’t a matter of federal law, just internal to Congress’s budgeting process. Obama has no direct influence other than vetoing the reconciled funding bill that will come out of Congress, thus triggering a shutdown. He won’t do that over this issue and he shouldn’t do that over this issue. He will and should veto a bill that makes the changes required to Social Security that the rule change requires for the reallocation, because those changes, from a GOP Congress, will be a reduction in all Social Security benefits in order to make it revenue neutral and the rule change requires. The rule change, per that GOP statement, is a lever with which they intend overall SS reform. They don’t actually want SSDI benefit cuts. The want the rule’s requirements met by Social Security reform.
Obama should resist that reform, of course. The only way he can do that is threaten to veto, and to veto if necessary. And that’s fine. He won’t veto a bill that doesn’t reform Social Security, but that will mean that the rule change prevents the reallocation. And that will also be fine, even though it will mean a (temporary) reduction in benefit cuts to people like you and me.
I say that’s fine because the bottom line here is that the GOP wants to somehow or other reduce social security benefits to everyone over the long-term. That absolutely should be opposed, at any cost. If the cost is a short-term reduction in SSDI benefits and a political confrontation that results from it, that’s acceptable because … that’s a battle the GOP will absolutely lose. When the news start showing people in wheelchairs who can’t pay their rent because Congress’s prevention of the reallocation has meant their benefits were cut, it will be a disaster for the GOP. But, also, it won’t come to that because they’re aware of it. And, furthermore, if this does happen, the funding for SSDI will likely run out just during the heat of the 2016 Presidential election.
In other words, the only way the Dems and Obama can lose on this issue is by succumbing to the GOP’s bluff and accepting the rule change’s required reforms to Social Security. The GOP is attempting to hold people like us hostage for Social Security reform, and they won’t actually be willing to shoot us. They’ll back down.