Congressional Republicans loudly decry what they believe to be "rampant fraud" (their term, not mine) in Social Security's disability programs but they refuse to fund increased efforts to find and prosecute this fraud. Democrats support increased funding for program integrity while Republicans oppose it. Are Republicans interested in whatever fraud there may be only to the extent that it may be used as a political issue? Do Republicans have any actual interest in the proper administration of Social Security?
15 comments:
As if their true intentions weren't already clear, this just further drives the point home. If they "fix" the fraud, they could no longer use that alleged fraud to demands cuts in the program, which appear to be their ultimate goal. The public overwhelmingly opposes Social Security cuts. However, if the cuts are in response to rampant "fraud," the cuts then appear to be more justified.
And in addition to what 9:55 says, when it comes to government, Republicans seem to think that it's wrong to pay for anything. That it ought to be free of charge. It's an odd phenomenon.
well, you see, they like many gov't programs, they just hate gov't spending and taxes. so they just expect agencies to pick up extra workloads or do more with the same or lower budgets, trotting out the old canard that gov't employees are lazy as a reason to say they could handle the extra workload without any increased funding/personnel if they just worked hard like in the private sector.
just remember--
SSA's administrative budget (read: money it spends on its buildings, employees, etc.--the money needed to run SSA) is barely above 1 percent of its total benefit payments, etc. Medicaid and Medicare are around 3 percent.
Show me a large private sector company delivering healthcare or insurance products that has overhead in the single digits. I'm waiting.
And gov't is the ineffecient actor, ha!
I would like to tell you all something. We, government employees, did much better under Republicans than we did under Democrats. More hiring, more salary increases, more bonuses, etc. Obama did next to nothing for us. Oh wait, were you talking about General Motors??
Here, how;s this: $1,185,613,000,000: Federal Taxes Hit Record Through February; Gov’t Still Runs $386B Deficit
Do you not see a problem with the entitlement programs?
SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance) is not an entitlement. It is long term Disability Insurance that a worker (non-Government) is forced to pay into in the event he/she becomes disabled.
I do not understand how govt employees, like 12:06 and 12:31 can support Republicans. Talk about voting against your self-interests.
Haven't federal workers got the highest COL increases under Republican administrations historically?
1:22 I am a long time fed, long time blue collar democrat, always vote demo but I can tell you that when there are Repugs in the white house, I as a federal employee do better. I hate to admit it and I hate to tell you that there are others like me that recognize the same fact. But true to my roots, I never vote Repug.
that's because republican congresses and presidents, despite their rhetoric, love spending cash on things they like (like, for instance, huge wars that span continents. It was south/central america, asia, and africa in the 1980s and early 90s, then it was most of the arab world and afghanistan [again!] in the 2000s). Then dems have to come in and fight the stereotype of blowing a bunch of cash and balance the budget their whole terms. lol, you guys are so bad at history it hurts.
Just look at where the deficits were after 8 years of Reagan (you can go ahead and say 12 and tack on HW's term to that span) and 8 years of W.
Republicans don't care about budget deficits except to the extent that they can blame it on Democrats, or use deficits as a cudgel to stop Democratic priorities from becoming law, see the entire W administration, the ongoing Obamacare hysteria, and the current Republican budget proposals - IOKIYAR.
If/when they retake the Presidency, all pretense of "fiscal responsibility" will be gone on day one, just as it was under Bush, Bush II and St. Ronnie. It'll just be a question of whether any spending is directed towards average income Americans served by SS and other domestic programs, or 100% goes into the defense and millionaire coddling budget lines.
Back to the original post. Republicans use "rampant fraud" as a campaign slogan. They have no desire to root out fraud but they do wish to continue to use the slogan. If they actually rooted out fraud, the campaign issue would go away.
Republicans are creating a crisis out of nothing. Read the article below, it shows that entitlement programs wont even come close to destroying our country.
http://tinyurl.com/cs7ttsp
Sorry to hop in a little late on this but the COSS can direct funds to PI anytime she likes. It might require a routine request for approval from OMB but that happens all the time.
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