The President’s budget director can’t seem to help casting doubt on the administration’s commitment to keep its hands off Social Security and Medicare. Appearing on CBS Face the Nation this weekend, Mick Mulvaney openly questioned whether disability insurance should be part of Social Security.
“Let me ask you a question, do you really think that Social Security Disability Insurance is part of what people think of when they think of Social Security?” he asked. “I don’t think so… It’s a very wasteful program and we want to try and fix that.” – Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney 3/19/17
The moderator cut to a commercial right after that statement, so Mulvaney was not asked to elaborate on what he meant by “fixing” Social Security Disability Insurance. We can only assume that “fixing” really means cutting benefits. His remarks demonstrate a disregard for the facts about Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and its very history.
Nearly 11 million Americans currently collect Social Security Disability Insurance benefits. Disability insurance has been part of Social Security since 1956. During the two decades after Social Security was created in 1935, a consensus evolved that not only retirees – but the disabled – require social insurance to stay out of poverty. It was a natural extension of the philosophy underpinning Social Security that President Franklin D. Roosevelt so eloquently summarized as protecting the population against “the hazards and vicissitudes of life.”
A few dangerous myths underlie Mulvaney’s statements about Social Security disability insurance. Here are the facts:
*SSDI is not a handout. The truth is that anyone receiving SSDI must meet the same basic qualifications as other Social Security beneficiaries do. Beneficiaries – or their parents – must have worked and contributed payroll taxes to Social Security in order to collect disability benefits.
*There’s a stringent set of parameters that SSDI applicants must meet. Only 40% of applicants actually qualify for disability benefits.
*SSDI beneficiaries do not have minor disabilities. 28% of beneficiaries have serious musculoskeletal disorders; 28%, serious mental illness; 9%, nervous system disorders and 9% circulation disorders, among others.
In case the seriousness of these conditions is still in doubt, consider this: a beneficiary collecting disability benefits beginning at age 50 only lives an average of 8 years past that point. Some 8,000 applicants died in Fiscal Year 2016 waiting for a decision on their disability claims – due to backlogs at the Social Security Administration caused by draconian budget cuts.
When an official like Mulvaney makes comments about “fixing” Social Security Disability with the benefit cuts that implies, he is playing off of worries about the solvency of the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) trust fund. The SSDI trust fund is separate from the retirement (OASI) trust fund, and is projected to remain solvent until 2022 if Congress takes no action to fortify it. The National Committee supports Congressman John Larson’s Social Security 2100 Act (to be re-introduced in the House later this month), which – among other things – combines OASI and SSDI into a single, more durable Social Security Trust fund. This, along with legislation proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders and others, could preserve the solvency of Social Security well into this century without cutting benefits – including the ones that help people with serious disabilities maintain their financial security and their dignity.