Social Security Disability Trust Fund Bankruptcy
This impending bankruptcy of the Social Security Disability Fund is becoming more newsworthy as the date it goes the way of the City of Detroit gets closer. In 2016, less than 3 years from now, the Social Security Trust Fund will be depleted. The Kiplinger’s Retirement Letter took note of this in their recent issue in an editorial note by Susan Garland, their editor. She noted ‘the income to the trust fund will cover just 80% of the benefits’ and the call of the Trustees for ‘legislative action as soon as possible’. She also indicated the Trustees proposed the solution of using the Social Security Retirement Trust Fund to bail out the Disability Fund. As we have noted before, this is an outrageous and wrong headed solution. It means the Retirement Fund will be bankrupt 2 years earlier than presently projected and would mean the retirees would be subsidizing the deemed disabled which includes many slackers and scammers. Garland further went on to indicate the huge increase in beneficiaries since the early 2000’s from 6.6 million beneficiaries to over 11 million today and attributed it partially to the aging of the baby boomers. We agree with her statements. We would also add the trend of increased beneficiaries has been going on since the 1960’s. According to Michael J. Boskin, economist, the disabled rates are substantially higher than expected even with the baby boomers. As we have noted before, the increased rates are do to the abuse of the program by some scamming recipients, too helpful doctors, 20 states including Oregon and Washington who are converting their poor from welfare to disability, consultants who receive $2,000 to $3,000 by converting Medicaid recipients to Disability recipients, and lawyers and their firms.
She finally notes that Congress has known of this impending bankruptcy since 1995 and has chosen to do nothing. It is hoped that the Congress and the President will take prudent steps to resolve this bankruptcy. Otherwise those folks who are truly disabled and legitimately receiving Social Security Disability benefits will be hurt by having their benefit reduced by 20% to 25%.
Harry Pukay-Martin
