Politico has a nice article examining some of the things that Congress could do to address the pending shortfall in the Social Security disability trust fund. Suffice it to say, the approach of the House GOP is not the answer. That is mere partisan politics that are only part of a larger attack on the poor. But, if Congress did have any real interest in reforming disability, what might that look like? One option is for Social Security to conduct more continuing disability reviews, or CDR’s. These are simply an effort by SSA to find out if people getting disability are still disabled. Right now, CDR’s are terribly ineffective. So long as a disability beneficiary does not go back to work, with wages reported to the IRS, that person is likely to stay on disability for the rest of his life. The House GOP could have appropriated money to conduct my CDR’s in the last few years. Guess what they did? Yeah, you got it. Now, they have finally given some money for this effort. As a result, SSA estimates that CDR’s will double for the current year. An intriguing idea from Holland involves employers paying for some part of a worker’s disability benefits. This encourages employers to accommodate workers and offer rehabilitation to keep them on the job. That is one notion that seems to make a lot of sense. Give employers the motivation to keep workers off of SSA disability, and watch what happens.
You can read the article here.
