Use Of Death Master File To Purge Voter Rolls In Texas Blocked

     A state court judge has blocked an effort to use Social Security's Death Master File to purge voter rolls in Texas in advance of the election.

Meaning That The Other 25 Democratic Senators Are Open To Cutting Social Security?

From The Hill:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and 28 other members of the 53-member Senate Democratic caucus have signed a letter opposing any cuts to Social Security as part of a deficit reduction package. 

The letter forms a significant marker as Congress looks toward a possible deficit bargain in the lame-duck session after the election. It says Social Security has problems down the road, but that they should be dealt with separately from any budget deal.

Disbarred Omaha Lawyer Indicted For Social Security Fraud.

     From KOLN-TV in Lincoln, NE:

A former Omaha attorney has been indicted on a federal count of Social Security fraud.

The U.S. Attorney's office for Nebraska says that 46-year-old Kim Denise Erwin-Loncke spent nearly $93,000 in Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income payments that were supposed to go to her law clients. ...

She was disbarred in November 2010 for mishandling her client's finances.

Discrimination Claimed At Savannah Field Office

     A group of current and former employees at Social Security's field office in Savannah, GA are claiming that they have been unfairly discriminated against because of their race. They want an investigation.

Who Would Think That A Letter From A Doctor Is Needed To Document Receipt Of Social Security Disability Benefits?

     From a Department of Justice press release:

Bank of America N.A. has agreed to maintain revised policies, conduct employee training and pay compensation to victims to resolve allegations that it engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination on the basis of disability and receipt of public assistance ...

The terms of the settlement require Bank of America to pay $1,000, $2,500 or $5,000 to eligible mortgage loan applicants who were asked to provide a letter from their doctor to document the income they received from Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). ...

 “Loan applicants with disabilities should not be subjected to invasive requests for medical information from a doctor when they are applying for credit,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

The Anti-Disability PR Gains Traction

     David Brooks a a columnist for the New York Times. He projects an image as a moderate conservative. He wrote an op ed piece today sharply criticizing Mitt Romney's comments about people who depend upon government assistance, saying that the Republican candidate "has lost any sense of the social compact." Towards the end of his piece, Brooks says that:

Sure, there are some government programs that cultivate patterns of dependency in some people. I’d put federal disability payments and unemployment insurance in this category. But, as a description of America today, Romney’s comment is a country-club fantasy. It’s what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other. It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney. 

     You note that even someone who wants to project an image as a moderate conservative feels it is safe to say that disability benefits "cultivate patterns of dependency in some people." This is a sign of the depth of penetration of the anti-disability benefits public relations effort. I have no doubt that this is penetrating into Democrat ranks as well. This poses dangers to those applying for or receiving Social Security disability benefits.

Fox News Talks Up Coburn Report

     From Fox News:

The Social Security Administration improperly awarded disability benefits in more than 25 percent of cases examined between 2006 and 2010, according to a new Senate report -- potentially costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

The findings conclude an 18-month investigation by the chamber’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and show that roughly a quarter of the 300 randomly selected disability cases were awarded benefits “without properly addressing insufficient, contradictory and incomplete evidence.” 

Each questionable decision can mean a big taxpayer expense. According to one estimate, the average lifetime disability award is $300,000. 

The investigation was led by Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, a medical doctor and the subcommittee’s top Republican. He said the bipartisan report shows information gathered over the past several years concludes the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs are “teetering on financial bankruptcy.”

     The study wasn't bipartisan. It was anything but scientific. The people doing the study had no idea what they were doing. They had no business second-guessing anyone on disability determination. However, in a sense, none of this matters. All that matters to Fox is that it's easy to convince people, particularly those who lean rightward that people take advantage of a government benefits program.

Are You Sure You Want To Incorporate The ADA Into Social Security Disability Determination?

     Not long after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Social Security Administration decided that it would not try to incorporate the ADA requirement that employers afford reasonable accommodation to those with disabilities into Social Security disability determination. We now hear rumblings that this was the wrong decision and that Congress should force the agency to acknowledge that with the "reasonable accommodation" provided for in the ADA that many more disabled people can now work and should not be drawing disability benefits from Social Security.
     There a couple of simple responses to this idea. One is that employer attitudes towards the disabled have always been irrelevant in determining disability under the Social Security Act so that passage of the ADA was pretty much irrelevant. The second is that the ADA hasn't wrought any revolution for disabled people. In fact, it's had virtually no impact upon the hiring of disabled people, particularly since it's largely been interpreted out of existence by the courts.

     But let's put those arguments aside and try to game how incorporating the ADA into Social Security disability determination would play out. The terms "disability" and "reasonable accommodation" have been extremely troublesome in interpreting the ADA. Try to incorporate the ADA into Social Security disability determination and you inevitably end up with a lot of federal court litigation to try to define what these terms mean., not in the Social Security Act but in the ADA. On the one hand you would have Social Security insisting that a Social Security disability claimant has a "disability" as that term is defined in the ADA but is not "disabled" as that term is defined in the Social Security Act because of the "reasonable accommodation" afforded by the ADA. On the other hand, you would have the claimant arguing that he or she is "disabled" as that term is defined in the Social Security Act but that he or she does not have a "disability" as that term is defined in the ADA -- and believe it or not, given how the ADA has been interpreted that will often be a strong argument -- or because the accommodation needed so that he or she could return to work would go beyond what is reasonable Holdings in Social Security litigation over the meaning of the ADA would inevitably affect employers but all of this litigation -- thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of cases a year -- would proceed without an employer or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) being a party. 

      I think that would be madness.
     By the way, it would be impossible for Social Security to go down this road without legislation. Social Security has already told the Supreme Court that its interpretation is that passage of the ADA had no effect on Social Security disability determination. An agency can't change its mind about this sort of thing after making that formal a declaration. Trust me on this. I'm a lawyer.