Nancy Altman, the President of Social Security Works and a past candidate for nomination to become Commissioner of Social Security, has written a piece for Common Dreams arguing for an end to the marriage penalty which terminates Disabled Adult Child (DAC) benefits for recipients who marry. I've been arguing for decades that the DAC marriage penalty is indefensible and should be abolished. Altman is arguing that President Biden should just order an end to the DAC marriage penalty because of the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which prohibits application of any federal law that substantially burdens religious freedom. The argument is that one's religion may demand marriage therefore making application of the marriage penalty illegal. Altman says that the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund is trying to convince Social Security to adopt this view.
My opinion is that this is a strained interpretation of the law that is unlikely to get anywhere. If nothing else, remember that marriage is both a civil and a religious institution but you can have one without the other. Many people choose civil ceremonies but it's possible to have the opposite, a religious wedding without obtaining a marriage license which leaves you without the legal rights and penalties that go along with marriage but with religious sanction for your marriage.
8 comments:
So you oppose a DAC getting cut off for getting married.
How about collecting off an ex spouse if remarried and the ex is still alive and under 60? Or if the marriage didnt last 10 years, but the PIA is higher. I mean they were still married right? Why punish the ex because it didnt last 10 years?
How about if we all get to chose the record we want to draw off of, related, unrelated, whoever we want?
A better argument would be that the law interferes with the fundamental right to marriage of disabled individuals. A first amendment argument can be tossed in, but I think the 14th amendment substantive due process clause holds a more direct argument.
If we're talking about unfairness that's woven into the very thread of the Social Security Act, it's on the list but it's not near the top.
From the cruelest on down:
1. 5 month disability waiting period
2. 2 year Medicare waiting period
3. early retirement earnings penalty
4. Hard threshold on SGA (earnings) instead of a softer, gradual phaseout of benefit a la SSI or early retirement earnings over the limit
5. ISM (Income, Support, Maintenance) penalties on SSI recipients
6. SSI resource/income cap not being tied to inflation
7. The disparity in prisoner suspensions/reinstatements between disability and SSI recipients, who get much more favorable treatment
8. Medicare late enrollment (or re-enrollment) penalties
9. DAC marriage ban
#8 is not cruel. Were it not for the penalities involved, people would just wait until they were ill before enrolling in Medicare, which would result in an astronomic increase in monthly premiums. The program relies on healthy retirees paying their premiums to offset the expenses incurred by seriously ill enrollees.
@5:20
I suspect discrimination/equal treatment would be a better angle than arguing for a fundamental right to marriage itself and substantive due process has been shrinking for decades, specifically but not limited to Social Security.
@6:13
...how is the 5 month waiting period unfair? It's basically pointless, but a claim with significant retroactivity, which is common, is going to wipe it out. Now that I think about it, limiting retroactivity to 12 months is unfair.
@10:09
Why require any action be taken by retirees at all? Deduct premiums automatically and enroll automatically. Also, remove any early/late retirement filing. All studies show it actually makes little difference (delayed retirement? higher benefits for less years. Early retirement? lower benefits for more years; on average making almost literally no difference). All it does is make nearly every retiree think they either enrolled too early or too late.
Yep I processed a claim last week. The woman has been working through stage four cancer and chemo and now the cancer has moved to her brain. The doctor gave her 3 months to live. She will never see her disability benefit that is going to begin in 4/23 payable 5/23.
Let's add a marriage penalty to all survivor beneficiaries so everyone is equally treated.
@ 11:18, I considered your equal protection argument but problem is that disabled people aren't a protected class. Equal protection gets you the strict scrutiny test when there is discriminating on the basis of race, religion, national origin, or alienage. Discriminating against the handicap will likely be subject to the rational basis test. This is why arguing that marriage is a fundamental right that is being restricted and thus violating procedural due process is the stronger argument, because no protected class needs to be proven. Under due process clause, anybody whose fundamental rights are being violated by the government is entitled to protection regardless of whether or not they are a protected class.
Post a Comment