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Republicans will loose the presidential election (again) if they go down this road.
Watching the governor of NJ Chris Christie say the middle class needs to take a haircut on SS & not addressing the money handed out for illegals, welfare, section 8, EBT cards & on & on FIRST is, well, it's so tone-deaf as to be laughable.
Republicans will loose the presidential election (again) if they go down this road.
Am I the only one for whom this common misspelling of the word "lose" is like fingernails on chalkboard?
Also realistically Republicans (on the whole, some individuals vary) don't want to cut SSDI for people with bonafide disabilities, but there are a lot of people, including myself, who see this as a great opportunity to force the Democrats to either finally agree to anti-fraud measures in the program (which unfortunately could save more than that 20% the way things have gotten) or come out in the open as viewing protecting benefits for people who faked their way in as more important than protecting the income of the truly disabled. Either way I don't see much backlash if (big if, because they've screwed up plenty often before) the Republicans play this right.
It won't happen. They will move money from the SS fund over to the SSDI fund and call it a day.
They started doing that about two or three months ago. SSDI ran out of money for the year in about May. The retirement fund has been making up the difference since then.
True story: About five or ten years ago, a pharmaceutical plant in Puerto Rico was closing down so that the production could be shipped to Ireland. The plant had employed something like 332 people.
The month after the plant closed, something like 321 of them were on SSDI.
Yup; all but eleven went on SSDI.
THIS - and the congress' replacement of the SS fund with IOUs, is why SS isn't going to be around for the baby boomer and subsequent generations.
wrong.. "A report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that about 0.4 percent of disability beneficiaries were likely receiving improper payments, because they were working before or after they began receiving checks. Another report by Social Security's inspector general examined administrative law judges who were approving an unusually high proportion of disability applications and concluded that some of those approvals may have been mistaken. That group of beneficiaries also accounted for about 0.4 percent of all those receiving disability payments."Is there Fraud in Disability
You can believe that if you want; I saw it firsthand and . . not just one or two.
I'm not a right-winger that wants to slash all benefits but I lived and worked in a very poor state and the abuse was not limited to . . .just one or two.
I worked with people with disabilities who received SSDI. Most were denied the first couple times they applied---but with the help of an attorney, got it the third time. Some could never have supported themselves, whereas others were just gaming the system.
I have a former friend who got accepted for SSDI on her first try without an attorney! This blow my mind since I don't see her as being all that disabled. For a while, she claimed she couldn't walk more than a couple of steps and was using a wheelchair (doctors could not determine why she was be so weak). Still says she is too weak in her arms to lift up a roll of 50 pennies to exercise with, as weights (but somehow, 45 is doable). She had been working as a tutor/learning specialist for elementary and high school kids, making $90 an hour! She still does this, but she lost some clients, so isn't earning nearly as much as she used to. And of course, parents typically pay her "under the table," so SSDI will never know how much she is earning (because a majority of her earnings haven't been declared for years, she is receiving only $875 a month SSDI, even though she was earning $150,000 previously---since all they can do is base it on previous declared earnings). She was offered a job as a tutor where she wouldn't be self-employed, earning $15 an hour, but she didn't want to accept this and work 30ish hours a week, so is going the SSDI route, supplemented by any clients she can see and bill for $90 an hour.
I can't see how weakness in the arms or legs would preclude tutoring. There must be some pretty good mental health diagnoses she has acquired (a ton of depression, anxiety, etc.) to have led to SSDI approving her.
I worked with people with disabilities who received SSDI. Most were denied the first couple times they applied---but with the help of an attorney, got it the third time. Some could never have supported themselves, whereas others were just gaming the system.
I have a former friend who got accepted for SSDI on her first try without an attorney! This blow my mind since I don't see her as being all that disabled. For a while, she claimed she couldn't walk more than a couple of steps and was using a wheelchair (doctors could not determine why she was be so weak). Still says she is too weak in her arms to lift up a roll of 50 pennies to exercise with, as weights (but somehow, 45 is doable). She had been working as a tutor/learning specialist for elementary and high school kids, making $90 an hour! She still does this, but she lost some clients, so isn't earning nearly as much as she used to. And of course, parents typically pay her "under the table," so SSDI will never know how much she is earning (because a majority of her earnings haven't been declared for years, she is receiving only $875 a month SSDI, even though she was earning $150,000 previously---since all they can do is base it on previous declared earnings). She was offered a job as a tutor where she wouldn't be self-employed, earning $15 an hour, but she didn't want to accept this and work 30ish hours a week, so is going the SSDI route, supplemented by any clients she can see and bill for $90 an hour.
I can't see how weakness in the arms or legs would preclude tutoring. There must be some pretty good mental health diagnoses she has acquired (a ton of depression, anxiety, etc.) to have led to SSDI approving her.
Report her, if she is earning over $1090 a month and not reporting it, she's committing fraud.
It's not just people it's also judges. Takes 3 denials and then you go in front of a judge.
You have some judges with a 99% approval rate on SSDI petitions.
And historically SSDI spikes during economic downturns with job losses.
And this time is especially bad because they changed the rules for what qualifies which added more subjective disabilities. More than 50% of claims are for mental impairments.
For some it has become long term unemployment until SS kicks in.
They never changed any rules. And there is a correlation between high unemployment rates and SSDI applications but it's not quite as nefarious as Breitbart & Fox news would like you to think. What happens is that you have a person who has worked most of their life and at 50-60 years of age they have disabilities, maybe a heart condition, or joint problems, but their employer will accommodate them, or their job duties do not make their condition worsen. They want to tough it out to retirement age, but in a recession these older workers are the first to be laid off.
When they try to get another job they are competing with 25 year old kids and they don't even get an interview. So they start looking for jobs in other career fields and find out they can't pass the physical required to get the job, or they can't do the physically demanding work that is available. So they apply for SSDI. If Ronnie Raygun hadn't destroyed unions that employee might have had re-hire rights after a lay off but not in this brave new world.
It's not fraud, it's reality.
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