Posted on 04/22/2012 2:17:58 PM PDT by daniel1212
A record 5.4 million workers and their dependents have signed up to collect federal disability checks since President Obama took office, according to the latest official government data, as discouraged workers increasingly give up looking for jobs and take advantage of the federal program.
More than 5 million people have been jobless for 27 weeks or more, nearly twice the previous high set in 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Since the recession ended in June 2009, the number of new enrollees to Social Security’s disability insurance program is twice the job growth figure.
In just the first four months of this year, 539,000 joined the disability rolls and more than 725,000 put in applications. As a result, by April there were a total of 10.8 million people on disability, according to Social Security Administration data released this week.
Even after accounting for all those who've left the program — about 700,000 drop out each year, mainly because they hit retirement age or died — that's up 53% from a decade ago.
...the explosive growth in enrollment is not only increasing the financial strain on the Social Security Disability Insurance trust fund — which is scheduled to go bankrupt in 2018 — it's boosting costs for Medicare as well, since SSDI enrollees can qualify for Medicare after two years. SSDI now accounts for more than 16% of Social Security's budget and more than 15% of Medicare's.
The main causes of this broader trend, according to a study by economists David Autor and Mark Duggan, are the loosening of eligibility rules by Congress in 1984, the rise in disability benefits relative to wages, and the fact that more women have entered the workforce, making them eligible for disability.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Under the 8 year Presidency of George W. Bush, the gross public debt increased from $5.7 trillion in January 2001 to $10.7 trillion by December 2008. Under President Barack Obama, the debt increased from $10.7 trillion in 2008 to $15.5 trillion by February 2012. — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#History
The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that 45 million people in 2011 received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP] benefits, a 70% increase from 2007. The
CBO projected that one in seven U.S. residents received food stamps last year. - http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/04/19/food-stamp-rolls-to-grow-through-2014-cbo-says/?mod=e2tw
In 1988, there were 4.46 million SSI recipients. In 2011, there are 8 million.
What is SSI? The SSI program pays benefits to disabled adults and children who have limited income and resources. It also pays benefits to people 65 and older without disabilities who meet the financial limits. SSI is a federal income supplement program funded by general tax revenues, not Social Security taxes.
The SSI program for children was created mainly for those with severe physical disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and blindness. But benefits now go primarily to indigent children with behavioral, learning and mental conditions. “This [SSI] has become the new welfare,” said MIT economics professor David Autor.
The original intent of SSI was well intended. But, as with all federal assistance programs, scam artists horned in, particularly in the “disabled” child area. SSI is known as “crazy money” since one must “act crazy” to receive it. Oftentimes several people in the same household, adults and children, collect SSI checks. Easy-to-fake learning, behavioral, and mental disorders are the most common “disabilities,” especially among children, who comprise 55 percent of all cases. More than half who go on SSI as a child, requalify as adults. SSI recipients are not required to get treatment for their or their children’s disabilities.
The SSI program for children is rapidly expanding, with the biggest increase among kids with mental, behavioral and learning disorders, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), speech delays, autism and bipolar disorder.
The attraction of up to $700 a month in payments, and the near-automatic Medicaid coverage that comes with SSI approval, leads some families to count on a child’s remaining classified as disabled, even as his/her condition may be improving. http://floppingaces.net/2011/11/21/ssi-the-new-welfare-exempt-from-trigger-cuts-reader-post/
Agriculture Department statistics show that the number of food stamp recipients has increased 44 percent, to 46.2 million in October 2011, from 32 million in January 2009, when Mr. Obama took office, increasing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from $33 billion in fiscal year 2007 to $75.3 billion in fiscal year 2011. Nearly half of food stamp recipients are under age 18. Nearly 30 percent of food stamp households have earned income. Politics, New York Times Saturday, April 21, 2012 (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/south-carolina-debate-fact-check)
The amount of money the federal government hands out in direct payments increased 32% during first three years of Mr. Obama's Presidency.
49% of people live in homes where at least one person gets a federal benefit (Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, or subsidized housing) up 44% from the year before Obama took office. http://patriotupdate.com/17823/food-stamps-up-45-federal-handouts-up-32
From United States Government Accountability Office, Statement of Daniel Bertoni, Director Education, Workforce, and Income Security, October 27, 2011:
Last year the Social Security Administration paid almost $50 billion in SSI benefits. from the end of 1989 through 1996, the number of children receiving SSI benefits more than tripled from 265,000 to about 955,000.
SSA data show the number of child applicants with mental impairments increased 60 percent between fiscal year 2000 and fiscal year 2010, while the total number of SSI child beneficiaries with mental impairments on the rolls grew 52 percent from 543,000 to 827,000. In fiscal year 2010, about 62 percent of all SSI child applicants had a mental impairment as a primary diagnosis, and about 67 percent of those applicants were medically approved for benefits.
The number of children found to be medically eligible for SSI due to speech and language delay nearly tripled between fiscal years 2000 to 2010.
As of December 2010, the average monthly child benefit was $597. All but five states and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands supplement federal SSI benefits with additional payments.
ADD/ADHD represent the single largest primary diagnostic group, and the number of children found to be medically eligible because of ADD/ADHD increased by more than 100 percent, even though the majority of ADD/ADHD applications over the years have been medically denied.
Adults are considered disabled if they are unable to engage in substantial gainful activity by reason of a medically determinable physical or mental impairment expected to result in death or last at least 12 months. 42 U.S.C. § 1382c(a)(3)(A).
DDS officials reported that they rely on a combination of key medical and nonmedical information—such as medical records, prescribed medications, school records, and teacher and parent assessments—in determining a child’s medical eligibility.
Prior work has shown that accurately diagnosing some types of mental impairments is a complex and often subjective process for SSA, which can sometimes be vulnerable to fraud and abuse. [Should their claims be denied, claimants can pursue several layers of appeal; 80 percent of appeals are now ultimately successful. (CATO, 1995]
DDS examiners told us that they do not routinely receive information on multiple siblings receiving SSI benefits within the same household even though they are directed to be alert for such cases. Based on our interviews, it appears that SSA field offices do not consistently notify DDS examiners when an applicant’s siblings are already receiving SSI benefits, nor are they always made aware of concurrent sibling applications.
SSA is required to review the medical eligibility every 3 years of all children recipients under age 18 whose impairments are likely to improve, but preliminary work shows that SSA has conducted significantly fewer CDRs [Continuing Disability Reviews] for children receiving SSI benefits in recent years, including those with mental impairments. Between fiscal years 2000 and 2010, childhood CDRs for those recipients under age 18 and age 18 redeterminations overall suffered a than 38 percent decrease.
As of August 1, 2011, SSA had not yet conducted CDRs for about 434,000 SSI recipients under age 18 with mental impairments who had reached their scheduled CDR date (see fig. 8).33 Of these recipients, about 343,000 (79 percent) had exceeded the scheduled date by at least a year, with about 205,000 (47percent) exceeding their date by 3 years and 24,400 (6 percent) exceeding by 6 years.
Mental Disorders for Children under Age 18
Organic mental disorders: Abnormalities in perception, cognition, affect, or behavior associated with dysfunction of the brain...
Schizophrenic, delusional (paranoid), schizoaffective, and other psychotic disorders: Onset of psychotic features, characterized by a marked disturbance of thinking, feeling, and behavior, with deterioration from a previous level of functioning or failure to achieve the expected level of social functioning.
Mood disorders: Characterized by a disturbance of mood (referring to a prolonged emotion that colors the whole psychic life, generally involving either depression or elation), accompanied by a full or partial manic or depressive syndrome.
Mental retardation: Characterized by significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning with deficits in adaptive functioning.
Anxiety disorders: In these disorders, anxiety is either the predominant disturbance or is experienced if the individual attempts to master symptoms; e.g., confronting the dreaded object or situation in a phobic disorder, attempting to go to school in a separation anxiety disorder,
Somatoform, eating, and tic disorders:
Personality disorders: Manifested by pervasive, inflexible, and maladaptive personality traits...
Psychoactive substance dependence disorders: Manifested by a cluster of cognitive, behavioral, and physiologic symptoms that indicate impaired control of psychoactive substance use with continued use of the substance despite adverse consequences.
Autistic disorder and other pervasive developmental disorders:
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Manifested by developmentally inappropriate degrees of inattention, impulsiveness, and hyperactivity.
Developmental and emotional disorders of newborn and younger infants (birth to attainment of age 1): Developmental or emotional disorders of infancy are evidenced by a deficit or lag in the areas of motor, cognitive/communicative, or social functioning. (http://waysandmeans.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Daniel_Bertoni_Testimony_1127.pdf) Contact: Website: www.gao.gov/fraudnet/fraudnet.htm E-mail: fraudnet@gao.gov Automated answering system: (800) 424-5454 or (202) 512-7470
From a 1995 CATO study:
SSI is a welfare program, an open-ended entitlement program for low-income aged, blind, and disabled persons. SSI is administered by a social insurance agency, the Social Security Administration (SSA), because that agency runs a previously established social insurance entitlement program, DI, for disabled workers and their dependents.
SSI and DI were not features of the original Social Security Act of 1935. SSI was originally sold on the basis of primarily helping the aged, but nearly two-thirds of the recipients today are persons under age 65. [1995]
SSI and DI are supposed to be programs for people with permanent disabilities, but the law defines permanent to include conditions expected to last as little as 12 months.
Partially in response to congressional mandates, SSA was spending roughly $8 million a year by 1995 to find new beneficiaries. (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-224.html)
When people can’t find work, they seek out disability.
This is why 46% say they intend to vote for Barack the Kenyan. They’ve got a government check coming in and don’t have to work. They could care less about jobs and the economy. They don’t intend to ever work again anyway.
That’s was it says, but as they were able to work, this shows that SSI is becoming extended unemployment insurance for many, while “reducing” the figures of the unemployed.
Inversely proportional to the employment rate since 0bama has ruled his kingdom.
SSI is known on the streets as “crazy money.
Most on SSI disability are probably Holder’s People.
0bama IS the disability president!
I'm guessing most don't leave the program due to death. Most just move from one welfare program (SSI) to another (Social Security, Medicare).
As I have posted elsewhere, one thing I’ll remember about the Obama years is feeling stupid for working and paying my bills.
All it takes to be disabled is to place a "XXXX disorder" (X = anything you want it to be) title on yourself and vuala, instant SSI!
No.
It's WELFARE
The problem? When it's all broken, the scammers will walk away looking for the next 'program', handout, scam, victim - whatever. Those people who are disabled - and the elderly who can't work - will simply die. Or be helped along to die - by the usual parasites... Liberal lawyers have sent up shop in every major city - offering to help YOU get what YOU deserve.
There's no time limit. The lawyers take a 'cut' of the action. No downside to getting in on this lotto game.
These folks can collect Social Security for 40, 50, 80 years... and those in the middle class? They'll just keep upping the age until the average middle class person can work until they die on the job.
We Are All Out of Work Coal Miners Now
Are you TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY,
Or still have your last dime?
Do you need to keep on giving
Until you are poor, weak and blind?
Do you feel good as the parasites
Destroy what you have built?
Does it warm your heart to witness
That the poor refuse to work?
Ah, the joy of working to go in debt
To DC’s Company Store,
And with each election the politicians say,
“We must tax you until YOU are also poor.”
In the inner city, it is like a rite of passage to get pregnant, and get into the system. And if your child is slow to speak or has one of the many symptoms, then a liberal working for the gov. and perhaps doing so in order to get his/her student loan forgiven (after 10 years of employment and steady payments), who has no problem spending the money of the working class, will maybe classify the child as in need of SSI on slight evidence.
Compassion by neighbors is what should be fostered, as it what is personally and esp sacrificially given calls for a response of accountability, versus an impersonal check in the mail.
They all suffer from a disability called “Lazy Ass”. It’s becoming very prevalent.
Many States gives like benefits as well.
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