AP’s Social Security Disability System Writeup Inadvertently Corrects Meme About Benefit Denials Under Reagan
To borrow from a certain president's former preacher , the ” chickens are coming home to roost ” in Social Security's disability program. It's nearly bankrupt, and set to run out of cash by 2017. In the Associated Press's writeup (“Social Security disability on verge of insolvency”) of the situation occasioned by a congressional report repeating the obvious, Stephen Ohlemacher surprisingly and correctly retold a bit of the history which readers should find quite interesting, as it largely explains how the program got out of control (bold is mine): Congress tried to rein in the disability program in the late 1970s by making it tougher to qualify. The number of people receiving benefits declined for a few years, even during a recession in the early 1980s. Congress, however, reversed course and loosened the criteria, and the rolls were growing again by 1984. The disability program “got into trouble first because of liberalization of eligibility standards in the 1980s,” said Charles Blahous, one of the public trustees who oversee Social Security. “Then it got another shove into bigger trouble during the recent recession.” Today, about 13.6 million people receive disability benefits through Social Security or Supplemental Security Income. Those of us who were around and tried to pay attention during the early 1980s when a very few entities (The New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and three or four wire services) had a virtual stranglehold on national news coverage were led to believe that it was the evil, mean, heartless, cruel, unfeeling, uncaring Reagan administration which on its own initiative was solely responsible for its attempt to trim the disability rolls of people who did not qualify. As Ohlemacher indicates, what really happened was that Team Reagan — silly them — was trying to implement a law which a firmly Democrat-controlled Congress (58-42 in the Senate and 277-158 in the House during 1979-1980 ) had passed during the final years of Jimmy Carter's presidency. This is reinforced in a 1992 New York Times item covering a government agreement to reopen over New York State-based cases involving over 200,000 claims (not kidding) involving 1980s disability denials, wherein the Times's Robert Pear chose to do a virtual victory dance in print — and used a Bush 41 slogan to do it (bolds and numbered tags are mine): U.S. TO RECONSIDER DENIAL OF BENEFITS TO MANY DISABLED Reversing one of the most widely criticized policies of the Reagan Administration [1], Federal officials have agreed to reopen tens of thousands of cases in which the Government denied benefits to people who said they could not work because of mental or physical disabilities. …
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on August 22, 2011. Filed under