The Truth About Social Security Disability

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) warned that the Social Security Disability Insurance program is on pace to go bankrupt in four years, after the Congressional Budget Office reported that the amount of benefits provided through the program will increase about 70 percent over the next ten years.

According to Sessions, the CBO says the disability trust fund provided $119 billion to 8.3 million disabled workers and the CBO expects that number to jump to $204 billion by 2022 — an increase of 71 percent.

Republicans on the budget committee noted that disability claims have increased more quickly than job creation in the last three months. In that one brief snap-shot of time, Fox News reports that "between April and June, a total of 246,000 people enrolled in the Social Security Disability Insurance program. In the same period, just 225,000 found jobs."

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the budget panel, said that since 2008 a total of 3.6 million Americans have gone on disability -- while 1.3 million lost jobs*.

* Where did Sessions get that number? In October 2009 the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the national unemployment rate was at 10.2% with 15.7 million Americans out of work. Catherine Rampell at the New York Times writes: "Since June 2008, when Congress first created the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, nearly 18 million Americans have at some point received federally funded extended unemployment benefits." (More here)

** As an aside: Let's not forget that over 8 million lost jobs were directly related to the Bush Recession and millions more were lost to outsourcing during the Bush administration. Politifact: Over 56,000 factories closed under Bush. But yet, the GOP is blaming Obama for the rise in food stamps, unemployment claims, and disability cases in the aftermath of the Republican-caused economic melt-down.

According to that CBO report that Republican Jeff Sessions refers to, it will take some serious budget balancing to right the program's finances. The report floated options ranging from raising taxes, (which Sessions doesn't mention), to reducing disability benefits, to changing eligibility standards, to reducing the cost-of-living adjustment tied to benefits.

The disability program provides benefits to adults who've worked in the past but are now unable to work because of a medical conditions. The fund is financed mostly by a 1.8 percent payroll tax. But there is a "cap" on what the wealthy pay - - - which is ZERO on all earnings over $110,000 a year and ZERO on all the "investment income" they receive from capital gains and dividends.

This includes money that CEOs earn through bonuses and stock options, income earned through SWAG investments (silver, wine, art, and gold), money made through big real estate deals, and income that people like Warren Buffett, Sheldon Adelson, and Bill Gates earn through their stock holdings. They pay ZERO in Social Security taxes unless their company pays them a "base salary", and only up $110,000.

Mitt Romney may not have paid ANY TAXES AT ALL, and may be worth much more than just $200 million, but might actually be a billionaire (and why he's hiding his tax returns).

See my post: $1 Trillion in Personal Income not Taxed for Social Security or Medicare. That's why the GOP hates ObamaCare...it will tax investment income for Medicare and the GOP represents the rich.

Last week on Fox News Bill O'Reilly said that since 2009, 3.2 million people have "left their jobs to go on disability", inferring that regular hard-working Americans made a conscience choice to voluntarily leave their place of gainful employment to go on the government dole. Get real Bill!

This week Arthur Delaney and Michael McAuliff at the Huffington Post point out that the same CBO report also says the rise in America's ranks of disabled stems from an aging population, a surge in women workers, changes in the law in the 1980s and a terrible economy in which disabled people can't find jobs.

What wasn't mentioned by anybody was that just by BEING long-term unemployed (ranging from 2 to 4 years, as has been during the Great Recession so far) can also CAUSE mental and physical ailments that keeps a person from being employable.

The study, cited by the Huffington Post article, found that the biggest jumps in the disabled population came from aging Baby Boomers. From 1996 through 2009 -- "the approximate period during which the baby-boom generation entered their 50s -- the share of disabled worker benefits awarded to older workers (age 45 and older) rose from 67 percent to 76 percent," the report said.

What also wasn't mentioned is that the bulk of these claims most likely originated from people who were actively engaged in intense physical manual labor all their lives, and/or being on their feet 8 hours a day, and that they weren't just sitting behind a desk all day long shuffling paper or tapping a keyboard. The Republicans want these people to work until they're 70 years old, while members of congress can retire in their 50's. (And it's mostly the rich who are living longer).

Meanwhile, during this time of aging Baby Boomers, the share of benefits going to younger workers -- between the ages of 25 to 44 -- actually fell from 31 percent to 22 percent. "Baby boomers' aging would have boosted enrollment in the [disability] program even if no other factors had changed," the CBO report said.

The average monthly benefit is $1,111 a month for 8.6 million Americans on disability who had worked all their lives making others wealthy in order to qualify for disability --- after paying Social Security taxes through their payroll taxes. The wealthy don't have to pay these payroll taxes.

The U.S. government spends $119 billion a year so that 8.3 million disabled workers can survive on what equates to below the minimum wage (poverty wages), while at the same time, spends $650 billion a year to "defend" these disabled people from their foreign enemies (not counting the billions we spend on our nuclear arsenal, which is budgeted through the Department of Energy, not the Department of Defense.)

Now, with the looming budget cuts, the GOP is using scare tactics to protect military spending, and blaming disabled workers for "gaming the system" to collect a government hand-out.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said Social Security administrators need to do a better job of distinguishing between "proper and improper disability claims." I think we should cut $174,000-a-year congressional salaries for those people whose only work is part-time behind a desk in an air-conditioned office talking to lobbyists in the defense industry.

Social Security Disability - Last Resort for the Unemployed
http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2011/12/social-security-disability-last-resort.html

Republicans versus Social Security
http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2011/12/republicans-verses-social-security.html

Save Social Security from the Robber Barons
http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2011/09/save-social-security-from-robber-barons.html

AARP Secretly Backs Cuts in Social Security and Medicare

AARP has been known for stabbing senior citizens in the back for profit, now they're at it again.

The senior citizens lobby AARP will kick off a national Social Security and Medicare "listening tour" called "You’ve Earned a Say and We’re Listening." The influential lobbying organization promises to offer members a chance to speak out on the simmering debate over the future of Social Security and Medicare.

The outreach is part of the AARP's propaganda campaign to restore the trust it lost during last year's spending debate, when a top AARP official told the Wall Street Journal the organization was open to cuts to the entitlement programs.

AARP is not an insurer and does not pay insurance claims. Instead, AARP allows its name to be used by insurance companies in the sale of insurance products, for which it is paid a commission like an insurance agent. John Rother, AARP's former chief lobbyist, said the single-payer model for healthcare would “disrupt the system that is currently in place” and “would require a very significant tax increase.”

So AARP agrees with big insurances companies and the Republicans.

In an editorial column within the Los Angeles Times, critic Dale Van Atta wrote that AARP does unauthorized lobbying for its membership, and lobbies against the best interests of its membership. Van Atta says that by lobbying in favor of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (which prohibits the Federal government from negotiating discounts with drug companies), AARP leaders betrayed the membership.

According to an Annenberg Public Policy Center report, critics have said AARP had a conflict of interest in supporting the Act, because AARP “derives income from the sale of health and life insurance policies,” by licensing its brand to insurance dealers and would benefit financially from passage of the legislation.

AARP is also declined to join a coalition of about 300 unions, women's groups and liberal advocacy organizations created to fight Social Security benefit cuts.

The Huffington Post obtained an AARP invitation to a secret meeting be held on March 27 that indicates that the AARP is still very much interested in a deal that puts Social Security and Medicare cuts on the table. This closed door meeting will be heavily stacked with "powerful Washington establishment figures who are on record favoring cuts to Social Security and Medicare."

Next week Republican leader Paul Ryan will unveil his cut-Social-Security-and-Medicare budget plan.

In stark contrast, the AFL-CIO just demonstrated real leadership by calling for Social Security benefits to be "increased across the board, while citing Social Security as a "key solution to our retirement crisis."

Last year AARP faced a massive backlash when its board dropped its opposition to cutting Social Security and its policy director publicly signaled a willingness to consider benefit cuts – and for a while, they backed off. After the public outcry, AARP backtracked and claimed it did not in fact support cutting Social Security. But now it looks like AARP is at it again, and this time backtracking will not be good enough.

Ironically, while the CEO of AARP is set to hold a private meeting with people who want to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, they've also launched their national Social Security and Medicare "listening tour" called "You’ve Earned a Say and We’re Listening."

So if there's ever a time to speak out to AARP, it's now. SIGN THE PETITION: Tell AARP, don't pander to the insiders. Demand higher benefits for seniors.

The wealthiest nation in the world can certainly afford a decent retirement for those who have contributed to building this nation throughout their lives.

We should also remove the CAP on Social Security taxes for those earning over $110,000 a year in "regular wages". Everyone else pay this tax on 100% of their earnings, so why doesn't the top 1% have to? As it is now, the top 1% pays NEITHER Social Security taxes nor Medicare taxes on ANY of their capital gains income. And capital gains is how the top 1% makes most their money...stocks, bonds, dividends, (etc.), because they're not paid an hourly wage like most of us are.

Solution: Remove "the cap" on the very rich to save Social Security so we won't have to raise the age for retirement, because it's the rich that live longer, not necessarily those who have broken their backs and worked their fingers to the bone all their lives. And don't cut benefits to the elderly, they can barely survive on what they have now.

* Why the rich live longer:

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Social Security Disability - Last Resort for the Unemployed

More than 10 percent of Americans between the ages of 50 and 65 apply for Social Security disability benefits right after they run out of unemployment insurance. Unemployed workers with significant and persistent illnesses or injuries can qualify for SSDI despite the fact that some applicants would continue to work if they still had a job.

As more jobless people run out of unemployment insurance, they are turning to a last resort to make ends meet: government disability benefits.

Two new studies cited by The Wall Street Journal find that when jobless Americans exhaust their unemployment benefits, they turn to Social Security disability benefits to survive. The number of Americans receiving Social Security disability benefits has risen to 10.6 million since 2002 -- an increase of 47 percent, the WSJ reports.

With more and more people coming to depend on Social Security, the program's long-term prospects are starting to seem endangered. Most people who start receiving disability insurance stay in the program until they retire, and the average person in the disability program ultimately receives more than $240,000 in benefits, according to a 2006 study by economists David Autor and Mark Duggan cited by the White House's Council of Economic Advisers.

More than 10 percent of Americans between the ages of 50 and 65 without access to $5,000 apply for Social Security disability benefits right after they run out of unemployment insurance, according to the White House's Council of Economic Advisers. By contrast, less than 1 percent apply for the disability program when they are still about 50 weeks away from exhausting their unemployment benefits. A November report by Boston College research economist Matthew Rutledge reached a similar conclusion, finding that jobless Americans are more likely to apply for disability benefits once they are about to run out of unemployment insurance.

Out-of-work Americans are now without jobs for longer than ever. The average duration of unemployment reached a record high of 40.9 weeks in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And it's thought that cutting unemployment benefits doesn't only hurt the people receiving them. The United States would lose nearly 500,000 jobs by the end of 2014 if Congress does not continue the extension of unemployment insurance, according to the CEA.

News that jobless Americans are relying on more disability benefits arrives as Social Security is increasingly coming under attack. Texas governor Rick Perry called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" at a Republican presidential debate, and Rep. Paul Ryan, who many consider an intellectual leader of the Republican party, has said he agrees.

Congress recently agreed to extend unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut for two months, but as the battle has become more partisan, it is unclear whether House Republicans will agree to extend unemployment insurance for another year.

Per the White House report: An important potential avenue for leaving the labor force, especially for older job seekers, is to apply for disability benefits through the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program. SSDI applications generally rise when unemployment is high. Unemployed workers with significant and persistent illnesses or injuries can qualify for SSDI despite the fact that some applicants would continue to work if they still had a job. According to recent research, the average SSDI enrollee stays in the program for many years and ultimately receives benefits of over $240,000 (Autor and Duggan 2006). Workers on SSDI rarely return to the labor force, resulting in a loss to society of the economic contribution those workers could have made. Thus, keeping the long-term unemployed in the labor force should be a priority. Krueger and Mueller (in progress) find that applications for SSDI by unemployed workers older than age 50 increase as these workers get close to exhausting their unemployment benefits. This increase is driven by applications from individuals with limited assets, defined as those who reported that they would be unable to come up with $5,000 if needed to cover unexpected expenses in the event of an emergency; application rates change very little for individuals with greater access to resources. By providing workers who might otherwise apply for SSDI more time to find a job, EUC and EB apparently keep more of the long term unemployed actively in the labor force and thus increase the potential length of their productive work life. The extended benefits programs do not appear to have had a differential impact on the relative job-finding rates of unemployed persons who have been out of work for different lengths of time. Job-finding rates are consistently lower for those who have been unemployed longer, but the rates for the different cohorts delineated by unemployment duration have stayed roughly parallel since 2003.

* As reported by the Wall Street Journal, via the Huffington Post

Related Post: Republicans versus Social Security

Republicans versus Social Security

(Excerpted and edited from a post by Jared Bernstein)

You will really learn nothing accurate, or even true, about the nation’s system of so-called entitlement programs from listening to the GOP - - - it’s pure rhetoric. It plucks heartstrings with words like opportunity (good) and entitlement (bad), but we learn nothing about how we as a nation will tackle a basic problem of advanced societies: economic security for those past their working years.

Advanced societies have all implemented solutions that draw some resources from the current workforce to help provide for the current generation of retirees. There’s an economic rationale: the generation that came before helped build the productive infrastructure that produces today’s economic output, so it only makes sense for them to benefit from it.

And then there’s a social rationale: most of us want to provide something–a foundation, not a mansion—for our elderly: we respect the inter-generational contract that is Social Security.

Is Social Security efficient? Very much so; I challenge anyone to identify a private mechanism that is more so.

Mitt Romney railed against an "entitlement society" - When Romney asks, “Will the United States be an entitlement society or an opportunity society?” it is vapid and misleading. It's not just a false choice, but an illogical one. It's just like saying “we must decide whether to grow food or eat food.”

Newt Gingrich proposed allowing younger workers (still decades away from retirement) to bypass Social Security and instead choose private investment accounts that would be subject to stock market gyrations (rather than invest their future retirement in the safer investment of U.S. Treasury bonds in the Social Security Trust Fund).

Ron Paul calls Social Security and Medicare unconstitutional. Michele Bachmann called Social Security "a tremendous fraud". Rick Perry said Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Paul Ryan wanted to issue vouchers for Medicare so that we would have to fend for ourselves after working and paying into the system for decades.

Government has, and always will, play an integral role in enhancing opportunity, in offsetting market failures that thwart opportunity, from poverty to pollution. Progressives, Democrats, Independents, and all clear-thinking people must not allow this debate to float miles above the real world.

Moderator: And we must not allow the Republicans to dominate the narrative, or believe the multi-millionaire commentators on Fox News...that's would be allowing the fox to guard the henhouse.

GOP Candidates - Millionaires Representing Millionaires - It should also be noted that it's become common knowledge that all these Republican presidential candidates, like everyone in the GOP, represent the interests of large corporations and those earning over a million dollars a year.

And it is no coincidence that they're also all millionaires themselves. They don't want to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, because unlike the rest of us, they don't need Social Security and Medicare.

And unlike the rest us, who pay these taxes on 100% of our wages and salaries, theirs are capped on the first $110,000 they earn. Not only should we continue these programs when we get too old or sick to work, but we should also eliminate the cap that millionaires currently enjoy.

Paul Ryan lied to his constituents by saying removing the cap on Social Security taxes for the rich wouldn't extend the program.

For years the Republicans have been looking for a way to kill destroy smash end eliminate cut de-fund "reform" Social Security and Medicare, so why would Republican voters vote for a Republican candidate, and vote against their own self-interest?

* Jared Bernstein is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the former Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, and a former member of President Obama’s economic team.

Protect Social Security and Medicare

Social Security broke 'cause Nikki Haley is a drunken floozy?

Paul Ryan and the GOP has Waged Class War with Food Stamps

The poor in America aren't waging class war on the rich, they're too busy just trying to survive.

Why aren't members of congress required to take a drug test? (Just like almost everybody else must do these days.) Congress passed the Drug-Free Workplace Act and they make life-and-death decisions all the time....such as the funding for wars. Or in this case, the de-funding in class wars, such as cuts to unemployment benefits, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), and food stamps.

Paul Ryan went to the conservative Heritage Foundation to give a speech and spent most of his time attacking Barack Obama for sowing the seeds of "class warfare." But over the last several months it's become increasing clear to almost everyone (even Republican voters) that it's really been Paul Ryan and the GOP who have waged a class war against the middle-class and poor (the 99%).

In a New York Times/CBS News poll, an astounding 69 percent of all Americans said Republican policies favor the rich (the top 1%).

A recent survey by The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center showed Occupy Wall Street to be more popular now than the Tea Party (and that includes the likes of Paul Ryan).

Besides being an heir to the family construction business and part of the 1%, taxpayers paid Paul Ryan an annual salary of $174,000 year, provided for his government healthcare, and gave him a generous government pension. So who is it REALLY that's on the government dole?

And they don't work that hard either. The Republicans changed the congressional House schedule so they could take one week off for vacation for every two weeks they work in Washington. Their excuse was: "More days in session has always resulted in bigger, more intrusive government." (But it's really so they could spend more time taking care of their financial interests, not talking to their middle-class constituents back home).

The fat in Congress isn't the part of government that's "too big" for Paul Ryan and all the other fat-cat Republican politicians, it's other things that ordinary Americans are more concerned with, such as  Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. That's what Republicans think is "big government", not their own extraordinary salaries and perks.

But in regards to defense spending, oil subsidies, and tax breaks for the top one percent and large multi-national corporations, they are all acceptable expenditures for Republicans like Paul Ryan. But food stamps for the poor are not...they consider that "big government".

It's always "big government" when we need something, but not when they benefit from something -- they are just hypocritical pigs. When his father died Paul Ryan used his Social Security survivor benefits to pay for his education at Miami University in Ohio, where he completed a bachelor's degree in economics and political science in 1992.

His family wasn't indigent, but Paul Ryan wants to cut benefits for those who are.

Paul Ryan drinking a glass of $350-a-bottle wine, specifically Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru

In addition to releasing that radical budget to dismantled Medicare for the elderly and those with disabilities (The Path to Prosperity) while raising taxes on the middle class (while giving more tax breaks to the rich), House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has also suggested a radical reworking of the food stamp program (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP).

Under Paul Ryan's plan, it would simply block grants for SNAP to state governments, “SNAP would largely lose the ability to respond to rising needs, forcing states during economic downturns to cut benefits or create waiting lists for needy families.”

In order to build support for his dismantling of the food safety net, Paul Ryan has been spreading falsehoods regarding SNAP. Case in point, during a question and answer session hosted by the Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, Ryan claimed that SNAP is “rife with fraud“:

"Help us figure out how to reform these programs so they can grow at more sustainable rates and so that they really work. Help us reduce the redundancy and the duplicativeness of programs. Help us figure out how to make sure that these things are actually getting the assistance to the people who really need them. Look at SNAP for example. You know we get all these reports. We get hearings and GAO and reports about how the SNAP program is rife with fraud, how it’s not getting the assistance to the people who need it, how there’s no incentive to – we’ve got a guy who won a lottery that’s on the program you know. Help us figure out how to reform these programs so that they can work better."

But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found, SNAP errors are currently at an all-time low, with errors accounting for less than three percent of the program’s cost:

To ensure that benefits are provided only to eligible households and in the proper amounts, SNAP has one of the most rigorous quality control systems of any public benefit program and, in recent years, has achieved its lowest error rates on record. In fiscal year 2009, even as caseloads were rising, states set new record lows for error rates. The net loss due to errors equaled only 2.7 percent of program costs in 2009. There is no evidence that program errors are driving up SNAP spending.

During the recession, SNAP has been critical for reducing poverty and pumping money into local economies. So in order to push his radical revamp of the program, Ryan is simply inventing reasons to attack its current structure, which is actually functioning quite well.

Now we have to wait and see what the un-Constitutional congressional super committee will do. Yesterday in the Senate, the poor got a temporary reprieve on a 60-39 roll call vote, seven Republicans joined Democrats in blocking a motion by Tea Party forces that threatened to pit food stamp benefits.

Half of congress are already millionaires, but now, according to Roll Call, members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total -- and nearly 90 percent of that increase is concentrated in the 50 richest members of Congress.

Paul Ryan is a millionaire with a family business who enjoys $350-a-bottle wine on a $174,000 annual salary, but instead of paying for my food stamps, he wants even lower taxes for himself and his family business.

My prediction for November 2012

Barring any last minute Republican nominees and any major scandals by the Democrats, Mitt Romney will win the GOP nomination (although I would have preferred Jon Huntsman); but he will lose to Obama in the presidential debates and the election. The Democrats will retain the Senate, and win back the House.

But no matter what party wins, unemployment will remain about the same, and nothing will change for the 99%. Homelessness and poverty will continue to rise, the banks and big corporations will continue to earn profits, wages will remain stagnant, and the CEOs will still rake in multi-million-dollar salaries and bonuses.

The politicians will most likely cave in to the "job creator's" ploy and lower corporate taxes, but if corporations were already being taxed too much now, how could they have hoarded $2 trillion in off-shore bank accounts? Wouldn't more tax breaks just put more cash into those corporate off-shore banks? Wouldn't more tax cuts just go to give CEOs bigger bonuses? It's low wages, not high taxes, that induce corporations to outsource jobs.

As they say, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

The only thing I can't predict for November 2012 is my own survival. People like me don't have any "certainty" in the marketplace.

Don't the poor and elderly in this country also have a Right to Life? Paul Ryan and the Republicans want to deny millions of people the basic necessity of life...food. "Class war" my ass! It sounds more like "mass extermination".