Senators Oppose Cuts In Disability Benefits

     This is the text of a letter sent by Senators Ron Wyden (Ore.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Vermont independent Bernie Sanders:

Dear Leader McConnell et al:

This week, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives took an unprecedented step toward cutting Social Security benefits for millions of Americans with disabilities, including veterans and children. As you consider what legislation Congress must pass this year, and how to maintain good governance of the United States Senate, we ask you not to pursue this highly partisan rule change.

We are deeply concerned that the rule change in the House will impact millions of Social Security beneficiaries. According to its actuaries, the Social Security Disability Trust Fund will be unable to pay full disability benefits starting as early as 2016, meaning that legislative action will be necessary to protect the benefits of nearly 11 million Americans. Instead of taking responsible action to address this issue, House Republicans acted according to their extreme ideology and put these benefits at risk by adopting a legislative rule change that creates a point of order against simple bipartisan technical corrections (called reallocations) to adjust the financing of the Social Security Disability Trust Fund.

This move is a particularly audacious in light of the fact that past reallocations have been commonplace and bipartisan. In fact, Congress has reallocated taxes between the Social Security retirement and disability trust funds 11 times before, in both directions, when it was needed to put either program on stronger footing.

The last reallocation occurred in 1994 and was passed without opposition by both the Senate and the House of Representatives. After that reallocation, it was projected that the Disability Trust Fund would be depleted in 2016 – so the need to adjust the trust fund’s financing is not a surprise or cause for alarm. There were no accusations of mismanagement then, or the 4 times it was used under President Reagan, because this country has traditionally managed Social Security as a whole. It is cynical to try and pit retirees and beneficiaries with disabilities against each other, as the House Republican rule change attempts to do.

An earnest debate on how to improve the solvency of the Social Security Trust Funds is needed, and we look forward to working together to find bipartisan solutions. However, House Republicans have eliminated a common sense action to ensure that Americans with disabilities who receive Social Security benefits are held harmless as Congress debates that issue.

Holding hostage the Social Security benefits of any American, particularly those of the 9 million Americans with disabilities who are at risk in the coming years, is an untenable proposition. It only increases the chances of yet another unnecessary manufactured crisis, akin to shutting down the government or threatening the full faith and credit of the United States. We ask that you speak out and forcibly reject the House Republican rule in order to take this reckless concept off the table and ensure Americans with disabilities that they can count on their government to act responsibly.

Can The President Be Trusted On Social Security?

     From Dylan Scott writing at TPM:

When House Republicans signaled last week that they would provoke a fight over Social Security in the next two years, progressive stalwarts like Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren decried the action, with Brown alleging the GOP wanted to "set the stage to cut benefits for seniors and disabled Americans.”\

But notably silent on the Republican stance, which prevents what has been a routine transfer of revenue between the retirement and disability funds, upping the chances of a crisis for the latter in late 2016, was the Democratic official who might actually be at the table if conservatives succeed in forcing negotiations in the next Congress: President Barack Obama.

TPM asked multiple times last week for the White House's position on the House action, but never received a formal response, a stark contrast to the loud public pronouncements of Brown, Warren, and others. It also invokes the uneasy relationship between the White House and Social Security advocates, who were dismayed by Obama's willingness to accept cuts to the program during the 2011 grand bargain talks with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

"Advocates do not trust the president on Social Security," Monique Morrissey, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told TPM last week. "If he blinks and they message this right, it could be something."

Nancy Altman, co-director of Social Security Works, told TPM that while the Obama administration "hasn't been great on this issue," she sees encouraging signs in Obama's recent appetite for confrontation on issues like immigration.

"Our hope is that he'll be that way on Social Security, too," she said. "But if you look at past history, you can't be confident that that's what will happen."

ALJ Daugherty Agreed To Voluntary Disbarment

     I missed this earlier. Back in May 2014, retired Administrative Law Judge David Daugherty agreed to voluntary disbarment. It had been alleged that Daugherty approved claims that didn't meet government guidelines, falsified time sheets and improperly assigned attorney Eric Conn's cases to himself. 

     So far, as best I can tell, despite considerable publicity given to the case, neither Daugherty nor Conn has been charged with any crime. While the Kentucky Bar Association was looking at the allegations against Conn in 2013, I cannot find any indication that they ever took action against him.

Driving While Blind

     ABC ran a report Friday night on a man drawing Social Security disability benefits on account of blindness who was working without telling the agency and also driving. Maybe this is how Republicans plan to stigmatize Social Security disability recipients -- hidden videos of isolated individuals committing fraud. Sounds weak to me but maybe it will work. There are plenty of videos of people robbing convenience stores but we aren't planning to close them.

     By the way, I've had a couple of clients over the years who were unquestionably blind as that term is defined in the Social Security Act but who drove occasionally. They weren't defrauding Social Security but they were endangering everyone on the roads. Blindness as defined in the Social Security Act isn't the same as complete loss of vision. 20/200, the most important component of the definition of blindness in the Social Security Act, means things that are 20 feet away are seen about as well as a normally sighted person sees them at 200 feet but people with 20/200 vision still have some vision. I told the blind clients to stop driving, by the way.

Is This The Plan?

     Mark Miller at Reuters writes that "House leaders appear to be maneuvering to push through an SSDI [Social Security Disability Insurance] fix during the lame duck session following the 2016 elections."

     If this is the plan, it's not much of a plan. The timing of the exhaustion of the Disability Trust Fund probably won't come right in the December 2016/January 2017 time period.  Even if it does, Social Security disability would become a red hot issue for the 2016 election. Do Republicans really want that?

How Does GOP Pass A Bill Cutting Social Security Disability?

     To clarify something I posted yesterday, I don't really think it's possible that the House of Representatives will end the Lump Sum Death Payment (LSDP) in order to allow transfers from the Retirement to the Disability Trust Fund. That would work under the rules they just passed but, no, even though ending the LSPD makes perfect sense -- the payments are so tiny they it probably costs more to administer them than is actually paid out -- Republicans would never end the LSDP because they're afraid of being accused of cutting Social Security. And there's the problem for Republicans. If they're afraid of being accused of cutting Social Security if they end the LSDP, a tiny benefit that ought to be eliminated, won't they be afraid they'll be accused of cutting Social Security if they really cut Social Security disability benefits? No doubt they tell themselves that Social Security disability isn't "really" Social Security but do they "really" believe that? More important, do voters "really" believe that? I'm pretty sure that if Republicans cut Social Security disability they'll see campaign ads run against them for cutting Social Security. They can tell everyone that didn't "really" cut Social Security since Social Security disability isn't "really" Social Security. They can also claim that Social Security disability is full of fraud (even though the evidence shows that isn't true) but that's not likely to help. So, how are Republicans really going to pass a bill cutting Social Security disability?I have no idea.

Hardly A Booming Business

     The final 2014 figures for payments of fees to attorneys and others representing Social Security claimants are in. These are amounts paid by the claimants themselves out of their back benefits. Social Security is only a conduit. The total amount paid in 2014 was $1,140,183,312.10. This is 8% less than the 2013 total of $1,226,129,697.74. Fee payments have been going down since 2010. The total fee payments per year are now down 20% from their 2010 peak.

Downturn In New Awards To Disabled Workers