More on the House effort to gut SSDI.......
Here’s the deal. Social Security doesn’t just provide benefits to seniors once they retire; the system also includes a disability-insurance program for those who want to work but can’t due to health reasons.
Over the course of the last several decades, when the disability-insurance program runs short on funds, Congress transfers money from elsewhere in the Social Security system to prevent benefit cuts. It’s never been especially controversial – in fact, it’s been done 11 times over the last seven decades.
And, with the disability-insurance program facing a shortfall next year, Social Security proponents expect this Congress to do what previous Congresses have done. The system’s trustees have seen this coming – it’s largely the result of demographic changes – and the fix should be pretty straightforward.
Not only do congressional Republicans oppose the fix, as Dylan Scott explained, GOP lawmakers also took steps yesterday to make the solution almost impossible to pass.
The incoming GOP majority approved late Tuesday a new rule that experts say could provoke an unprecedented crisis that conservatives could use as leverage in upcoming debates over entitlement reform.The largely overlooked change puts a new restriction on the routine transfer of tax revenues between the traditional Social Security retirement trust fund and the Social Security disability program.