Sen. Tom Coburn wants a meeting with the top Social Security Administration investigator to discuss the increase in people receiving disability payments, saying he's concerned that some may be using the program as “an extension of unemployment benefits.” ...
Coburn, R-Muskogee, said in an interview the fund may go broke before that because “growth in this program has been horrendous.” ...
Coburn said he has some personal experience: A man he hired in Muskogee to do some yard work told him that he was collecting Social Security disability payments. Coburn said Social Security workers from around the country have contacted him to tell of abuses in the program. ...
Coburn and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, sent a letter to the inspector general of the Social Security Administration saying they were concerned that some judges were approving appeals at unrealistic rates.
“Given the looming collapse of (the Social Security Disability Income program), it is imperative that disability claims are properly examined to ensure that only those who are lawfully entitled to benefits receive them,” the senators wrote.
“Individuals cannot be allowed to exploit SSDI, transforming it into a supplemental source of unemployment income with enormous and crippling costs to taxpayers.”
The senators' request followed a story in The Wall Street Journal about a judge in West Virginia who approves nearly every one of the appeals he hears from people who were first denied disability benefits.
May 30, 2011
Was It A Bad Thing That The Muskogee Man Was Trying To Work?
From The Oklahoman newspaper:
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3 comments:
Then maybe he should fix the approval process, or lower the retirement age back to 65, so the funds aren't wasted.
Or maybe he could do something about the economy, so that we have enough jobs for people.
He's told that story so often it's become tiresome. If he cared so much he should have reported the guy to the OIG fraud hotline at the time. But I guess Coburn believes in the "Don't be a snitch" philosophy. Either that or he appreciated the cheap labor.
Who's going to investigate disability, and how will it be paid for? If that investigation should ever happens, resulting in nothing useful, Coburn will rip into it as "a waste of the public's money".
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