Social Security's Office of Chief Actuary recently completed a set of estimates on the effects of a wide range of proposals concerning Social Security disability benefits. Here are some estimates that may surprise you:
- Implementing any type of benefit offset scheme would cost money, not save money;
- Changes to the grid regulations would have only a minor effect;
- Changes to evidence submission rules would have a negligible effect;
- Eliminating reconsideration would cost money although not that much
- A change to suspend benefits or offset benefits due to the receipt of unemployment insurance benefits would have a negligible effect;
- Any changes in program integrity would have almost no effect.
If you want to have a significant effect on the Disability Insurance Trust Fund, you either have to make it much more difficult to get on benefits or reduce benefit payments or raise taxes. You're not going to accomplish much without making a lot of people mad.
I don't think raising taxes by enough to keep DI going would make people mad. The people who are opposed to any tax increases will complain, but the amount would be so small that I don't think anyone would really care about the money they lose.
ReplyDeleteWell gosh darn, let's just do this and then when enough disabled folks drop dead or live with relatives then we can just stop the program completely
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