From a press release:
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), today introduced legislation to remove a Social Security work disincentive for Americans with disabilities. ...
If an adult has a severe medical condition that began before age 22, they may be eligible for a Social Security benefit called the Disabled Adult Child (DAC) benefit. Their benefits are based on their parent’s Social Security earnings, in the same way that benefits of a child under age 18 would be. However, under current law some of these young adults fear that if they try to work they will lose future DAC benefits, which are often higher than any benefit they may qualify on their own. This fear inhibits the ability of Americans with disabilities to explore their ability to work as they transition to adult life.
The Work Without Worry Act promotes financial security by ensuring that any earnings from work – no matter how much – will not prevent an individual from receiving a Social Security DAC benefit from their parent’s work history if they have an eligible medical condition that began before age 22. ...
This change is estimated to improve the lives of nearly 6,000 individuals with disabilities over the next 10 years and would have no significant effect on the Social Security Trust Funds. ...
Now, how about we do something about the marriage penalty that cuts off DAC if a recipient marries.
14 comments:
Once they marry they are their spouse's responsibility, not their parents. That's how it works for everyone.
DAC benefits are not cut off if you marry someone also receiving DAC benefits. A result, I believe, of how Social Security and Congress respond to TV shows as much as logic. There was a story, sort of like the Widows in Florida story, highlighting the penalty if someone receiving DAC benefits were to marry. So, there was an adjustment that the marriage did not end benefits if the person they married was also receiving AC benefits.
Except, in the half assed and thoughtless way they do everything, that saving provision doesn't apply if the new spouse is disabled but only receiving SSI benefits based on disability. See RS 00203.035 Child's Benefits Termination of Entitlement
You are not a child if you get married. Why the hell should I pay for you and your spouse not pay for you. Dont like it dont get married.
You are not paying for anyone. DAC benefits are based on parental earnings. Someone who has a life long disability has a hard enough time as it is. Why must we deny them the benefits of a life partner. Especially as their parents are not going to be around forever. I cannot believe the cold hearted, shirt sighted, parsimonious people on here. May your chickens come home to roost so you can get a taste of what some people go through.
@1208. DAC benefits exist because the disabled adult child is dependent on the parents because the child can not work. This especially is the case when the parents are deceased and can provide no income to their disabled adult child. Once the DAC marries, they are much like a young adult who marries and is no longer dependent on their parents. Same applies to DACs. Just like any adult, they probably shouldn't marry someone who has no income.
I have had former DACs earning $200,000 a year. (Not many). To say should never consider income is ridiculous.
12:08 my parents are not around, I dont get a check. If you are well enough to marry, then the chain of entitlement being dependent upon a parent is ended and the person is now relying on the spouse for support and not the parent, dead or alive. It is not a hard concept. I dont expect the parents to pay for my spouse for life, why would the government? If the benefits mean that much, simply do not get married. A person could make the wannabe spouse rep payee, create a POA that would handle all duties like a spouse.
BTW you are 100% wrong that we are not paying for them now. It is our taxes, being held from current workers that pay these benefits. The money paid by the parents was used to pay for the benefits of the generation before them. That is basic SSA, look it up.
You make my case. It is a benefit the child's parents paid for. Just like you may be paying for benefits now a disabled child of yours may need. Just because it is not a direct payment from parent to child does not negate this. Hopefully you will never need that benefit. That is how insurance e works. This is an insurance program.
If they remove earnings as a requirement for those benefits, you might as well remove it from all benefits.
10:20 do you believe that spouses should support each other? Is the parent responsible for life (and death) for the child? I need to hit up my inlaws for some jack, appears they arent paying for the spouse.
If you cant afford a spouse dont get married. It is not the governments job to pay for your personal decisions. BE ACCOUNTABLE.
11:49, they aren't going to ignore earnings entirely. Someone applying for DAC benefits would still have to go through the 5-step sequential evaluation process. If they're currently doing SGA (like 5:28's example of someone earning $200k a year), they'll be denied. But the bill would allow people to get approved for DAC if they've done SGA in the past...just like other Title 2 disability applicants.
Right now, if a person with an intellectual disability bags groceries for a summer during high school, it could prevent them from getting DAC benefits 25 years later when their parent dies or retires. So the family might tell the kid not to work. That stinks, because maybe the grocery-bagging job would have gone well and continued--the person could get insured on their own record and will never need DAC benefits (or SSI). The bill would let people try to work, with DAC as insurance if it turns out they can't do SGA.
Part of what is being proposed already applies for people already on CDB benefits (i.e. CDB re-entitlement after a medical cessation or SGA termination). In those cases a CDB who has been ceased can again be re-entitled if they have not married since the prior entitlement ended and an onset can be established within 7 years of a medical cessation or at any time after a termination for SGA at the end of their EPE.
The only issue I have with the proposed law is that it would create massive additional workloads in terms of additional multiple record entitlements (i.e. entitlements involving from 2 to 4 different records), especially since CDB has no waiting period (either disabled throughout the month in a life claim, or at any time in the month for a death claim).
Multiple entitlements are already an absolute plague on the agency since the boomer wave began due to the ever increasing numbers of them. As the agency has discovered, it is very difficult to design systems to automate handling them well (which is to say that, beyond COLAs, they aren't really automated and always require manual handling when work incentives become involved).
And, with agency staffing so low (together with the inability of newer employees to properly process those workloads and managers that want to push numbers rather than actually worrying that work is done correctly), it would be a very bad thing without massive hiring by the agency (which the political turds in Congress will never allow).
Wrong. As it is a pay as you go system, the parents earnings record only secured the insured status. The taxpayers who work pay for the monthly benefits thereafter. This is the fundamental foundation of the program and getting married changes their status. They aren’t walking into it blind and are informed. Choices. Consequences. Life.
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