The federal safety net for Americans with disabilities could be out of reach for hundreds of thousands of older people under a proposal from Donald Trump’s administration.
The Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience and education to determine whether an applicant is capable of working.
Older applicants typically have a better chance of qualifying for disability benefits, but a proposed plan — part of a planned overhaul of the agency that manages retirement and disability benefits for tens of millions of Americans — would eliminate age as a factor altogether as administration officials encourage older people to keep working, according to The Washington Post.
The changes, reportedly pushed by White House budget director Russell Vought, could mean 750,000 fewer Social Security recipients and $82 billion in reduced payouts over 10 years, with 80,000 widows and children among those affected, the Urban Institute recently found.
Social Security is also considering raising the threshold for accessing disability benefits to 60, according to The Washington Post.
A spokesperson for the Social Security Administration told the newspaper that the agency aims to “propose improvements to the disability adjudication process to ensure our disability program remains current and can be more efficiently administered.”
“This includes proposing policy updates to occupational data sources and optimizing their use to serve our customers and preserve the trust funds,” spokesperson Barton Mackey said. “Once the proposal is fully developed, we will share it publicly and request public comment through the standard rulemaking process. … As with any rulemaking, we will consider and analyze public comments before deciding whether to finalize the rule.”
The Independent has requested additional comment from the agency.
Social Security includes two types of benefits: Social Security Disability Insurance serves as a kind of insurance for people who cannot work because of a disability, while Supplemental Security Income supports people who are disabled, blind, or over age 65 with limited income or assets with basic monthly payments.
Accessing retirement benefits earlier imposes a permanently reduced rate.
Older Americans who apply for disability benefits from the $11 billion program typically do not get another job, according to the Urban Institute. So if age is no longer a factor when considering those benefits, older disabled workers are likely to start withdrawing retirement benefits earlier — at the cost of a significantly reduced monthly rate.
“You worked hard. You played by the rules. Now, Trump is breaking the promise of Social Security when you need it most,” according to Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee, the chief tax-writing body in the lower chamber of Congress.
“In Trump’s America, if you’re not young and healthy, you don’t matter,” the committee said Monday.
Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, told the newspaper that the Vought-led changes are “Phase One of the Republican campaign to force Americans to work into old age to access their earned Social Security benefits, and represents the largest cut to disability insurance in American history.”
Americans with disabilities “do not deserve the indignity of more bureaucratic water torture to get what they paid for,” he added.
Trump and administration officials have repeatedly claimed without evidence that millions of people who are hundreds of years old are collecting Social Security payments. Critics argue the administration’s claims to cut government “waste” are laying the groundwork to make dramatic cuts for some of the most expensive programs in the federal budget to justify massive tax cuts for America’s wealthiest households.
