Whenever a republican member of Congress talks about “reforming” the disability system, they are really talking about one of the following: 1. getting rid of the system, 2. taking people off their benefits, or 3. making it harder for people to get disability.

Here’s a link to the article: How a bold new Disability Insurance proposal would benefit individuals with disabilities and taxpayers.

Hey, the title alone tells you it’s bullshit on a notable scale. Like, trying to bring religion to the natives. Along the way, they may be dispossessed of their land, forced to abandon their language and culture, even enslaved for the sake of conversion. But, hey, it’s good for them, right?

Pure bullshit exhibit 1 from the article:

“One of the biggest problems with the SSDI program is that too few people ever exit the rolls and return to work. The bill seeks to improve return-to-work rates by having the SSA conduct more frequent and more comprehensive continuing disability reviews, using the most appropriate standards available to determine continued disability status.”

Ok, this is just BS that can be translated into “we are looking for ways to kick people off their benefits, even though it took them years to get them in the first place, and they lost nearly everything they had while applying for them over 1-3 years of depressing and nerve-wracking time”.

Pure bullshit exhibit 2 from the article:

“Finally, the bill would help restore the program to its original goal of preventing poverty without tapping the regular Social Security trust fund. To this end, it establishes a flat, anti-poverty benefit for all new SSDI beneficiaries. This would help lift more than a third of those SSDI recipients out of poverty.”

Wow, these people have some chutzpah. Ok, so here they are saying that instead of getting your actual disability benefit that is essentially your retirement benefit that you are getting early based on your disabled status, you will, instead, get some bullshit amount that probably won’t even be close to what your benefit would have been. Pay close attention to when these A-holes talk about how your disability is a burden to the system. Hey, you paid for your DISABILITY and RETIREMENT COVERAGE through the FICA taxes taken out of every one of your paychecks. It is not welfare, it is something you actually paid for. Republican congressmen never like to acknowledge this fact.

By the way, if you are a republican reading this, this is not about politics. It is a simple fact that one party in Congress continually attacks Social Security Disability, and it’s not the other party. I’ve been watching this for more than 20 years and this is the way it’s always been. For the record, I am a registered republican.

The fact of the matter is, your disability benefits are supposed to be there when you need them. You paid for them. And pinhead members of Congress have no business trying to take them away, particularly after passing tax cuts that primarily help those earning more than $300,000 per year.

I am a former disability examiner and I publish the website Social Security Disability Resource Center, or SSDRC for short. I also maintain a facebook page for SSDRC (Social Security Disability Blog.

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Neither this blog, nor the facebook page, nor my website are affiliated with the Social Security Administration.