A Good Start

    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.

SSI Is A Mess

     Gabrielle Emmanuel has put out a long piece for WBUR on the problems that SSI claimants, particularly children and their parents, face in filing claims, dealing with the Social Security Administration and staying on benefits. 

    SSI is disappearing before our eyes. Social Security lacks the money it needs to administer the program. There's all the money in the world to cut people off benefits but precious little to help people get on the SSI benefits they deserve and to help them stay on those benefits.

Union Complaints About Training

     From Government Executive:

... Rich Couture, president of AFGE Council 215 and the union’s chief negotiator with Social Security management, said a poor “self-taught” training model employed by the agency is leaving new hires unprepared for their duties and already looking for work elsewhere. Council 215 represents Office of Hearing Operations staffers.

“We have folks leaving the agency, because the training stinks,” Couture said. “I’d use another word, but we’re in polite company, but the training is terrible. The mentoring, based on an agency focus group report we just got last week, it looked like it was written by us, saying all the same things [we’ve been saying]. There’s not enough time; there’s not enough accommodation to make sure that it actually works. So instead, our folks are telling us, and they’re telling management when they leave, ‘I feel unsupported, I feel unprepared and I feel set up to fail.’ ” ...

A Sad But Familiar Story

    A television station in Denver presents the now all too familiar story of a disabled person becoming homeless because of delays in processing their Social Security disability claim. Here's a quote from the claimant's attorney:

"We had to re-fax the same paperwork six times over a period of about six months," the attorney explained. "But it's not just the faxing. It's calling, 'Did you receive the fax? No, we haven't received the fax,' Even my staff, when they call into the field office, they will wait on hold for sometimes an hour — if the call is even answered at all."

    This isn't just happening in isolated cases. It happens all the time. How is this acceptable?

Turning 18 Doesn't Make You Healthier

     Mark Betancourt writes for Mother Jones about the problems caused by kicking large numbers of disabled people off SSI when they turn 18. Here's the key quote:

... Youth who lost benefits at 18 were twice as likely to be charged with a crime as they were to hold a job. Compared with those who stayed on SSI, they were 60 percent more likely to be incarcerated. Most were charged with income-generating crimes like theft, fraud, or prostitution. And they didn’t just commit crimes at a higher rate immediately after losing their checks but did so over the ensuing two decades. The study also found that increased spending on policing, adjudication, and incarceration nearly erased any government savings from reduced payouts; the added expenses far outstripped the savings when victims’ costs were included. ...

SSI Child's Disability Disappearing

     National Public Radio has a new piece out about the dramatic decrease in the number of people applying for and receiving Supplemental Security Income for disabled children.

    SSI is disappearing before our eyes, destroyed by antiquated income and resource rules and inadequate resources for the Social Security Administration to do much other than cut people off benefits.

Juneteenth 2023

 

This Won't Get Enacted But It Shows You Where The GOP's Heart Is

     From The New Republic:

Republicans have claimed over and over again that they are not trying to cut Social Security and Medicare. Heck, Joe Biden got them to agree they would not make cuts to the programs in a memorable verbal maneuver during his State of the Union speech earlier this year.

And yet, the Republican Study Committee (of which some three quarters of House Republicans are members of) just released its desired 2024 budget in which the party seeks to, you guessed it, cut Social Security and Medicare. ...

The proposed budget would effectively make cuts to Social Security by increasing the retirement age for future retirees.  The document seeks to assure people that there would only be “modest adjustments,” but does not list what Republicans think the new retirement age should be.

On Medicare, Republicans propose requiring disabled Americans to wait longer before getting benefits and turning Medicare into a “premium support” system, a long-floated Republican idea that essentially turns the government program into a voucher scheme. ...