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President Donald Trump's new budget proposal would reduce social security payments by $ 84 billion over the next decade, while providing fewer resources to explain changes to beneficiaries.
The reductions are the result of various changes to the operation of the disability insurance component of the program. Although Trump has previously pledged to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from the benefits of the financial axis, his administration says cuts to social security disability insurance do not constitute a significant reduction in social security program.
The budget plan also provides additional reductions of $ 47.5 billion in SSDI, attributable to "new approaches to increasing labor market participation". Additional reductions of $ 10 billion would be generated by reducing the amount of retroactive payments that a disabled person can receive during a period of inactivity prior to the labor market. their decision to seek coverage.
The budget tables list a series of other changes to the disability insurance system that each generate smaller reductions, with a total savings of $ 84.09 billion over 10 years.
This attack on disability insurance and other major benefit programs is contrary to one of Trump's campaign promises. Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has already boasted of having convinced Trump that disability insurance was different from other social security programs. But the three social security benefit programs are funded by the same money fund as the workers themselves.
"He turns around and smothers these programs. Our programs, taking our money, we won, "said Alex Lawson of Social Security Works. "A budget is a moral document, and this budget shows that we currently have an immoral administration at the White House."
The budget also reduces Social Security's relationship with its registrants in a more modest way. It proposes, for example, to reduce by 400 million dollars a year the financing of the Social Security Administration.
Presidents outline proposed funding levels in the context of the previous year. But this one-year snapshot hides the reality of the reduction on the part of Trump's Social Security Administration (SSA), which is more clearly seen in the context of successive year-over-year reductions. going back almost a decade.
Energy brokers at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have been obsessed with deficits throughout this period. Although activist coalitions have prevented many attempts to reduce benefits for social security participants, the sanctity of retiree payments does not extend to those charged with operating pension systems. and disability.
And while SSA budgets have been shrinking every year since 2010, the agency's client base has exploded over this period, as baby boomers began to reach retirement age. The double compression on SSA capacity has had predictable and preventable negative effects.
Callers on the agency's toll-free helpline now spend about 20 minutes waiting to get the human assistance they need, while they waited an average of three minutes in 2010. The number callers who received a busy call signal also more than doubled.
It is also more difficult to get in-person customer service now than it was before legislators began to tackle SSA funding. The agency fired 3,500 field agents from 2010 to 2018 in response to the cuts. It has closed 64 of its 1,200 permanent field offices and more than 500 part-time "contact stations", also providing direct responses to people with a benefit problem.
These may seem like little problems. The SSA itself has minimized the impact of its withdrawal from traditional customer service, calling on beneficiaries to rely on its online help systems to resolve issues related to lost cards, benefit claims and other issues. currents. But for people on fixed incomes, any issue that threatens to delay benefit payments can often present existential threats: eviction, empty closet, lost means of transportation to visit relatives and doctors.
But anything that makes the social security system slightly more boring to use helps to reduce the political forces that protect it from the kind of ignominious "rights reform" programs long praised by politicians willing to give a false picture of the financial situation from the program. The cliché that the benefits of social security constitute a third pillar of US policy is true, in part because people can get exactly what they've paid for effectively and reliably. Troubling American customer service through the program could eventually reduce the tension of the electorate that rightly distances many politicians from the reform of the rights regime.
And while the budget provides for a continued deterioration of the customer service that people really need, the administration is apparently ready to ask the same senior staff members to meet the needs of the recipients in order to perform a new task. insidious: spy on disability insurance recipients. social media feeds.
Unlike budget cuts proposed for Social Security in the budget, the Trump team could force SSA employees to monitor Facebook publications of disability recipients without Congressional assistance. And the agency would have already developed a plan for such a panopticon disability – "[u]under pressure from the White House, "according to an article published Sunday in the New York Times, which would require the ASS to undertake new surveillance work next year.
CORRECTION: This article originally contained information on changes made to Social Security disability insurance that were wrongly characterized by ThinkProgress by one source. This part has been corrected to eliminate these characterization errors.
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