Friday, January 30, 2015

Op-ed: “Disability program needs reform, not merely revenue reallocation.”

Over at The Hill, I look at the new House rule regarding revenue transfers from Social Security’s retirement program over to the disability program, which faces insolvency next year.

“Republicans target disability,” say the headlines. A rule passed by the newly elected Republican-controlled House prohibits a supposedly “routine” reallocation of revenues between Social Security’s retirement and disability insurance programs, threatening dramatic benefit cuts for the disabled. In reality, the House rule may force Congress to finally enact substantive reforms for the troubled Disability Insurance (DI) program.

You can check out the whole piece here.

1 comment:

WilliamLarsen said...

Any program that needs reformed indicates that the program has problems. For decades, I have heard politicians talk about reforming social security and medicare. For decades I have heard they need to be saved. For decades nothing truly has been done to address the fundamental problems associated with both programs.


For this reason and this reason alone, SS-DI needs to be reformed? Why does it need to be reformed? Are there no other options that we can take? I propose we eliminate the SS-DI program. Clearly the program was not designed to work. If uses some of the basic fundamental flaw as SS-OASI, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.

It removes individual choice and forces one size fits all. It puts everyone into the same basket with no diversification. Without diversification, when a program like Social Security fails, it affects us all.

So why let a program be such a harm to anyone?