The National Journal has an article summarizing the current state of Republican efforts to come up with a plan for the upcoming shortfall in Social Security's Disability Insurance Trust Fund. The takeaway is that the GOP has no plan nor are they likely to have any plan until well into next year.
5 comments:
Any "plan" they have will have to include adjusting the trust funds because the trust fund balance needs to be addressed immediately while any reforms to DI will improve the trust fund over time, if at all. So they are just holding the DI trust fund hostage to get their changes enacted.
I recall from the previous bill that there was nothing good for claimants and reps included. Two of the worst proposals included bumping up the Grid Rules and requiring reps to "justify" their fees (it wasn't clear what this meant - fee petitions on every case?) Both these proposals would cause uproars. Make it even harder to obtain disability for those over 50? The allowance numbers are already quickly dropping. Universal fee petitions? There isn't the manpower to handle them. Any drop in attorney fees would include a drop in that "user fee" SSA collects. We'll just have to hold our collective breath until the "plan" is all hashed out. Hopefully, the Democrats will keep that backbone they found in fighting the cuts attached to the transportation bill.
There is an alternative to adjusting the trust funds - raising the payroll tax for DI. Some people have suggested increasing the amount of payroll tax going to DI but keeping the total fixed, which of course reduces the amount going to OASI. But why not just increase the DI tax and keep the OASI tax the same? It would be a small tax increase, and the combined OASDI program is likely going to need more revenue eventually (if we want to avoid cuts as most people do). So why not start now? (I know the answer - the GOP will be against it.)
@8:24
The manufactured crisis over SSD reminds me of Republican tactics in some other contexts in the past few years. It's become part of their playbook. "Give us what we want. You wouldn't want anything bad to happen to this nice disability program, would you?"
@12:36, the point for them is not fixing the problem so recommending sensible solutions is a waste of time. The point, as any good kidnapper knows, is what they can get for threat of hurting something of value to the victim, whether that be the SSD program, or other things in the recent past (the creditworthiness of the U.S. Gov't debt, for example). The ransom demands will keep coming until the issue is forced to a conclusion.
and they would like to win in 16 maybe they think there are enough millionairs to vote them in. Talk about being your worst enemy.
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