Posted on 04/10/2025 8:29:26 AM PDT by bitt
Imagine, if you will, a judge who never says no. Not once. Not ever. Imagine a courtroom where the outcome is predetermined, the evidence irrelevant, and the hearing perfunctory or entirely absent. This is not a scene from a dystopian novel about justice undone but rather a faithful portrait of how disability claims are routinely handled by the Social Security Administration's (SSA) administrative law judges (ALJs).
These ALJs are not jurists in the traditional sense. They are executive branch employees, shielded by federal unions, and ensconced in a bureaucratic cocoon that rewards speed over scrutiny, volume over veracity. While most Americans imagine judges as stern arbiters of fact and law, the reality inside the SSA is closer to clerical automation, where some ALJs approve disability claims at rates approaching 100 percent. The cost to the American taxpayer? Hundreds of billions of dollars.
A rational government must distinguish between a compassionate safety net and a careless spigot. The Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program was created to aid those who, through no fault of their own, can no longer work. It was never intended as a universal basic income dispensed by bureaucratic fiat. Yet for years, the program has been distorted by a cadre of ALJs whose rubber-stamp approach has made a mockery of due process, science, and fiscal prudence.
The numbers are staggering. There are roughly 1,300 ALJs responsible for handling about 450,000 cases each year. Some of these judges approve disability claims more than 90 percent of the time. Indeed, over 40 percent of ALJs have allowance rates in excess of 75 percent. More than 20 percent top 85 percent. According to the SSA's own Office of the Inspector General (OIG), up to 60 percent of the award decisions made by ALJs are not supported by the evidence in the record. That is, they are legally indefensible.
Take ALJ Charles Bridges, a one-man entitlement machine who approved 95 percent of the cases he reviewed, awarding approximately $4.5 billion in lifetime benefits. An internal agency review found that in a majority of his cases, there was no evidentiary basis for his decision. Worse still, he routinely bypassed the essential due process mechanism of the hearing itself, rubber-stamping nearly 7,000 cases without bothering to convene a session. He ignored vocational experts, or consulted them only after he had announced his decision to approve benefits. One might call it judicial theatre, but even theatre has a script. This was pantomime.
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Same thing happens with FISA courts. Whenever the BeijingBiden Admin wanted to spy on non-commie trash the court just said “go ahead”.
I was in a Social Security office some years back and the VAST MAJORITY of people waiting in the office to apply for Social Security were NOT old people but young black men applying for 'disability'.
Black men in their twenties who planned on taking benefits for over 50 years if approved. IT'S time tp look at this mess for the sake of people who really are disabled... give us the numbers - who and where do they live? What's really going on?
Why would there not be a high approval rate?
In general, The cases don’t get brought unless there is a valid need.
The same reason that most criminal trials should result in a conviction. Cases that should not be brought should be dismissed by the prosecutors before they reach trial.
This system is mightily abused.
When Obama took office there were 4.5 million people on Social Security Disability and by the end of his term is was up to around 16 million.
So many perfectly healthy , able boded people were sucking of the disability system that it completely starved the SS disability trust fund of assets and money which froze out funds for the truly disabled Americans the program was intended to support. ,
There are literally millions of people who were laid off at the start of the Obama Administration and never worked another official, on the books day in their lives
They called it back door reparations.
There has to be a HUGE network of kickbacks here!
But at the VA even legally blind Vietnam Veterans have to wait years with several denials before they can get any help...
“ The cases don’t get brought unless there is a valid need.”
If that were true, why would there be an adjudication process? Solely having a diagnosis, for example, does not equate with being unable to work.
A number of years back, rumor was that plurality of the top 20 finishers of a California 15K mini marathon run were supporting their fitness lifestyle via Social Security total disability payments
The abuse and fraud in the California workers comp and disability systems is astronomical. Heck not only are many of the California workers comp and disability recipients not disabled, a lot of them a phantom recipients with phony IDs and who don’t even exist
A lot of laid offed/fired/downsized white men in the latter part of their careers, say 55 and older, are on SSDI. They decided rationally like any welfare recipient that it is better to accept a government check that pays better than working for less than their former wage and benefits.
I was clued into this when I was something like 15 years old and learned that a neighbor was collecting total disability and playing golf everyday at age 50.
It’s my understanding that denies almost all claims for disability. That in turn results in high approval rates on appeal AND a presumption among ALJs that the claim was unfairly denied.
SSA needs to do a better job on the front end and deny fewer claims. And ALJs need to do a better job on the back end and really verify the claim.
My son-in-law is in law enforcement in the Carolinas. He has been to the same address on many calls. When he asks the resident what he does for a living, the guy says he’s on disability..........for stress.
OMG! Who authorizes this kind of stuff?
But applying for SSDI requires voluminous documentation, including doctor certifications etc. How do these middle-aged white men get approved in the first place?
Part of why we have so many “special ed” kids (incredibly expensive for school districts) is because any parents can find some support for some sort of claim that makes their kids mini ATMs. Not good for anybody except, in the short term, the parent(s).
As part of a 10-month investigation Scripps News uncovered that every year, thousands of migrant children disappear from their homes shortly after arriving in the U.S. But there is no clear local, state or federal government agency taking responsibility for searching for many of these missing ...Apr 2, 2024
This is so bogus-——the kids arent missing, they are loaned out, passed around to other migrants. to be used in lucrative scams to get tax dollars from S/S and hefty disability checks.
Vindictive Biden overturned Trump’s order to get the DNA of these so-called needy families, to make sure the kids are really theirs.
A common practice by these greedy illegals is getting a crooked doctor to say a kid’s autistic b/c they get hefty SS tax paid benefits every month for the kid.
The maximum possible disability benefit for autism in 2024 is $943 per month for SSI and about $3,822 per month for SSDI. These maximums apply regardless of what condition you have or whether you apply with one condition or multiple. The actual amount received depends on specific circumstances. (Dec 7, 2023)
Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is a key benefit for children under 16 living with disability, including autism. It is assessed according to care needs, and a diagnosis is not required to make a claim. DLA helps cover the extra costs of raising a child with a disability. (Jan 30, 2024)
And it’s a sure bet they invent their “family circumstances.”
Plus senior illegals are draining the system, collecting without working a day here, not having put a dime into the system.
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