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Instead of accepting their application for benefits to begin at age 70, the agency's representative instead gives the person a six-month retroactive payment! This act resets the person's entitlement back to what it was six months prior and wipes out half a year of Delayed Retirement Credits (DRCs). The person loses 4 percent off their monthly benefit check in exchange for a six-month lump-sum payment they didn't ask for and don't want. ... "Based on SSA regulations, retroactivity is automatically applied to applications filed after FRA unless retroactivity is expressly restricted by the claimant," he wrote. "If this is a...

Social Security helps not only retirees but also roughly 9 million of people suffering from disabilities. Unfortunately, the trust fund that covers disability payments is in even worse financial condition than the trust fund that covers retirement benefits. What will happen when the disability program's trust fund runs out? In the following video, Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool's director of investment planning, talks about the two Social Security trust funds, noting that the latest estimates give the retirement trust fund about 20 more years before it runs out of money, but the disability trust fund is slated to be used...

It's highly unlikely that Congress will reform Social Security any time soon. But there is a near-term cash crunch in one part of Social Security that lawmakers must resolve in the next year or two. The trust fund for Social Security disability benefits, which is separate from the fund for retirement benefits, is on track to be insolvent -- most likely by the end of 2016 but no later than 2017. So unless Congress acts to replenish the fund beforehand, the program will only be able to pay an estimated 80% of promised benefits to 8.8 million disabled workers, plus...

Stan Druckenmiller makes an unlikely class warrior. He's a member of the 1%—make that the 0.001%—one of the most successful money managers of all time, and 60 years old to boot. But lately he has been touring college campuses promoting a message of income redistribution you don't hear out of Washington. It's how federal entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are letting Mr. Druckenmiller's generation rip off all those doting Barack Obama voters in Generation X, Y and Z. "I have been shocked at the reception. I had planned to only visit Bowdoin, " his alma mater in Maine, he...

WASHINGTON – A retired Social Security judge in West Virginia collaborated with a lawyer to improperly award disability benefits to hundreds of applicants, according to a report released Monday by congressional investigators. The report accuses retired administrative law Judge David B. Daugherty of scheming with lawyer Eric C. Conn to approve more than 1,800 cases from 2006 to 2010. "By 2011, Mr. Conn and Judge Daugherty had collaborated on a scheme that enabled the judge to approve, in assembly-line fashion, hundreds of clients for disability benefits using manufactured medical evidence," said the report by the staff of the Senate Homeland...

<p>Nearly half — 48 percent — of American workers haven’t noticed that more money is being taken out of their paychecks for the payroll tax that funds Social Security, according to a survey released today by Bankrate.com.</p> <p>In the previous two years, workers’ paid 4.2 percent of wages (on income of up to $113,700 this year) instead of 6.2 percent. But during last year’s tax negotiations to avoid the fiscal cliff, the payroll tax holiday wasn’t extended. Many predicted at the time that low-income workers would be the most hurt by the payroll tax going up 2 percentage points.</p>

Almost everyone seems to agree that some combination of Social Security reform, Medicare reform and Medicaid reform is essential to any long-term fix of the federal government’s fiscal woes. But few in Washington are prepared to face the political challenges of such reform. Perhaps it would help if we stopped calling these federally financed benefits “entitlements.” In any legal sense of the term, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are not entitlements. Unlike public employee pensions, which are contractual obligations now threatening to bankrupt state and local governments, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits can be modified, or even eliminated, by...

The Social Security Administration officially reprimanded an employee whom colleagues accused of continuously “passing gas and releasing an unpleasant odor” that created a “hostile work environment.” After the Smoking Gun posted the reprimand letter online, the agency said it had withdrawn its disciplinary action against the flatulent worker. “When senior management became aware of the reprimand it was immediately rescinded,” agency spokeswoman Dorothy J. Clark said in an e-mail to The federal Eye. The agency did not respond to requests to provide a date for its rescinding action. It also did not answer questions about the status of the employee...

Obama Breaks Promise to Not Raise Taxes on the Middle Class. The headline news from the recent deal to avert the fiscal cliff is that Congress is raising tax rates on wealthy individuals for the first time in nearly two decades. Less noticed is something that may be equally momentous: Congress just raised taxes on the middle class as well.virtually every worker will still get a smaller paycheck in 2013, because of another tax measure that expired. Beginning in 2009, Congress cut the payroll tax—which helps finance Social Security—to put a bit of extra spending money in workers' pockets. The...

For a country still gasping to recover from the Great Recession, disability payments from Social Security have evolved into a lifeline and an economic trap for millions of unemployed Americans threatening the program with insolvency in just four short years. Created decades ago to help those unable to work because of severe health problems, the $128 billion program stops many from sliding into total poverty and inflicting further damage on the economy. More Americans qualified for disability than found jobs over the past three months, and since 2000, the number of beneficiaries rose by 73 percent, even though the workforce...

WASHINGTON -- In the last three months, the biggest battle here has been about carving a relatively tiny amount of money out of this year's $3.7 trillion budget. But while Republicans, Democrats and the White House bickered over whether to cut anywhere from $61 billion to $33 billion -- or else shut down the government -- a far bigger battle looms in the months ahead over the fiscal 2012 budget and trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. House Republican budget leaders were expected to unveil their budget proposals Tuesday that called for spending reductions in the...