From a press release from the House Ways and Means Committee:
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08) delivered the following statement during debate in the U.S. House of Representatives on the Removing Barriers to Work for Disabled Americans Act (H.R. 8884):
As prepared for delivery.
“I rise in support of H.R. 8884, the Removing Barriers to Work for Disabled Americans Act, introduced by our colleague from Georgia Representative Austin Scott.
“Many Americans that are living with disabilities want to enter the workforce and seek gainful employment. In fact, an estimated 60 percent of Americans who receive benefits under the Social Security Disability Insurance program have stated a desire to return to work. And yet, less than 1 percent leave the DI program each year for a job. That is a gigantic gap between the number of disabled Americans who want to work and the number who successfully return to work.
“The Removing Barriers to Work for Disabled Americans Act seeks to shrink that gap by simply restoring the Social Security Administration’s authority to test drive solutions that can empower more of our fellow Americans to get back to work. Up until 2022, the SSA had such authority to run demonstration projects on improving work outcomes. With that authority expired and with so many disabled Americans still unable to successfully navigate the current program, we have to find a better way forward.
Sure, they want to return to work. They never wanted to be disabled to begin with. They have hazy ideas in their minds about getting better. The truth is that very, very few of them get better. The 12 month duration requirement to get disability benefits weeds out almost all of those who were going to get better. If you haven’t gotten better after 12 months, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever get better. You’ll probably get worse over time.
Social Security ran return to work demonstration projects for decades. They were all dismal failures. It’s a waste of money. It’s chasing a mirage,
10 comments:
So many who have tried to use the work incentive system with good intentions have been hammered by terrible consequences, and been vocal about it, that its no wonder few want to try it. No tweak of financial incentives to work is going to overcome that. Each work related overpayment assessed due to a confused beneficiary or some mistake by SSA is another shovel of dirt on the grave of the willingness of beneficiaries to risk work, and it's been piling up for a long time.
The current rules are not completely useless though. They sometimes work for the very small percentage of beneficiaries who possess the mental ability to navigate the complex system, and the luck to find a likely atypical job that can accommodate their disability. Even that is risky. If the employer yanks that accommodated job after they go off benefits, the person is screwed because of the terrible step-4 rule that the claimant loses if they have the ability to do past accommodated work even if the job does not exist anymore. Want to tweak a rule to encourage people with disabilities to work? Change that one.
A huge chabfe is heading to Social security as it grapples with the 22% funding shortdfall projected to hit in a few years. There will be an opportunity to make significant changes to the system - like a 12 month grace period for a return to Work experiment. We need to raise the cap, tighten our belts on some of the more ;ibera; aspects of our programs, restore funding for many more employees. & raise the cap on attorney's fees as applicable.
Some can work but at a level below SGA so it will never lead to removal from the rolls. Some could work with a lot of supports (transportation, childcare, job coaching, training/certification) but it will cost more than they're getting in SSDI. A very few could work above SGA but understand the program well enough to stay below it; more inadvertently work too much and wind up with overpayments and the very confusing process of EXRs or reapplications. There are ways to improve all of this, and some of it might be better for beneficiaries and SSA, but none of it will actually save the trust funds money.
They learned from Reagan’s mistakes so they try not to be so obviously malicious in their desire to kick people off the roles. They want more cessations but know they can’t get rid or MIRS. Winter is coming!
Wow. Very well said.
A better solution is to just abandon work CDRs, apply the AET to DIB, and if they exceed the AET in a year do a medical CDR earlier than planned.
What part of "100% disabled; unable to perform any job in the national economy" do the Republicans not get? We have on of the most stringent disability entitlement factors in the industrialized world. Why does Congress expect spontaneous regeneration?
SSA has done demonstration project after demonstration project over the years. The outcomes of all of those demonstrations have unequivocally established that no demonstration project, short of a firing squad, can even come close to satisfying the outcomes the red wingnuts want.
The current rules don't have enough systems support, and thus require too many manual actions by a totally insufficient workforce that can take months and months to complete to ever be remotely effective.
Will never happen, as it would cost WAY too much. The agency has already done a project on that which, of course, didn't satisfy the fascists.
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