Astrue Schedules Meeting With Disability Advocates

The Capitol Insider published by the Disability Policy Collaboration, says that Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue has scheduled a meeting with "disability advocates" for Thursday, February 7 to discuss the next steps on the procedural regulations that Astrue proposed and then partially withdrew in the face of enormous criticism from advocacy groups and Congress.

This meeting is significant because of the ambiguity of the partial withdrawal. The partial withdrawal could gut the proposed regulations and leave them pending after President Bush leaves office or the partial withdrawal could mean only a minor modification in the proposal with Astrue charging ahead to complete action on the regulations before the end of the year.