[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 10 (Wednesday, January 21, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H435-H437]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MAINTAINING AMERICA'S INFRASTRUCTURE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I wish to associate myself with the prior
gentleman's commendation of those who fought on behalf of liberty at
the Battle of the Bulge. We bow before them. They bequeathed liberty to
this generation. It is a heavy burden. Let us hope that we can measure
up to it in tribute to their valor.
At last night's State of the Union Address, passing a transportation
and infrastructure bill to repair America and build forward a new
century, as we create hundreds of thousands of jobs, got the broadest
bipartisan applause. You could hear it on both sides of the aisle. So I
come to the floor this morning to
[[Page H436]]
say, Let's do it. Let's do it. Chairman Bill Shuster and Ranking Member
Peter DeFazio are two Members who can get us there. We want to help
them. I know the majority of Members feel that way. So my words to them
are: Onward, gentlemen; lead America forward by passing that bill
through us.
On another front, I rise to express deep dismay at what I believe to
be Republican efforts to weaken and begin dismantling the Social
Security and disability insurance program that so many Americans depend
upon. The headline in yesterday's Politico reads: ``Social Security
disability under attack by the GOP.''
As this Congress starts, Republicans have quietly and without
consulting Democrats tucked into the rules of this House a point of
order provision that aims to harm our Nation's 8,950,000 disabled
citizens and weaken the related Social Security earned benefit program.
The number of Americans on disability today in a Nation of over 310
million people amounts to less than 3 percent of our population. That
is actually a very small number when you think about it. God has been
good to most of us, but that isn't true physically and mentally with
many of our fellow citizens.
Mr. Speaker, even though the number of disability approvals has been
declining since 2010, Republicans have begun this Congress by singling
out the disabled. They haven't targeted Wall Street moguls who brought
our economy down and stole trillions of dollars of home equity and the
very homes from our families. No, Republicans are targeting the
injured, the suffering, and those not able to fend for themselves. Even
to touch this subject so callously is a cruelty. It causes worry and
trepidation. It makes life more uncertain.
Why should such an important change not be debated on this House
floor? Republicans instead hope to pull the wool over the eyes of the
American people by hiding it in an obscure rule that was part of a
massive parliamentary package for this 114th Congress. But I tell you
what, not all Americans have been fooled. Despite this subtle attempt
to pit Social Security pensioners against disabled beneficiaries, our
office has already received a great number of calls and letters from
citizens sick over the possibility that a 20 percent benefit cut could
adversely affect our neighbors and relatives most in need.
These proposed cuts in Social Security and disability insurance--and
I underline the word ``insurance''--set the stage for what Republicans
truly want, and I fear: severe cuts, a weakened Social Security system,
and ultimately dismantling one of our greatest American legacies,
earned Social Security benefits and earned disability benefits for our
old, our ill, and our disabled. Our disabled and senior citizens have
the right to live out their lives with dignity. And for so many, their
lives are not easy.
I remind my colleagues who visit nursing homes and who have neighbors
or relatives in their own family who endure pain every day how vital
these programs are. There but for the grace of God go you.
This Congress should oppose these backhanded cuts, and at the same
time we should support the passage of the transportation and
infrastructure jobs bill to build our Nation forward. There are items
we can agree on, and there will be items that we disagree on. But our
roads, our bridges, our harbors, our airports, our rail systems, the
St. Lawrence Seaway System, and navigable waters all deserve our
attention. We can make it happen this year. Let's do it.
[From POLITICO, Jan. 20, 2015]
Republicans Target Social Security Disability
(By David Rogers)
Like Mrs. O'Leary's cow, House Republicans kick-started a
bigger fire than many imagined with an opening day rules
change that revived Social Security as a hot issue for this
Congress--and the 2016 presidential elections.
The GOP's immediate target is Social Security's sprawling
disability insurance program, which has grown at a pace far
beyond its revenues and will exhaust its trust fund reserves
by December 2016, threatening a 19 percent cut in benefits.
In the past, Congress has simply shifted revenues from
Social Security's larger retirement account to fill holes in
the disability fund. But the new House rule throws up a
roadblock by creating a point of order against any such bill
that does not improve the ``actuarial balance'' of the
combined funds.
``What we want to do is not kick the can down the road
anymore,'' said Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), who promoted the
change as chairman of the Social Security panel on the House
Ways and Means Committee. ``The rule is intended to get the
Congress to at least take a first step toward solving the
Social Security problem. If we continue the way we are, it's
a go-broke operation.''
``If all they're doing is rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul, that's
going to be subject to a point of order, and rightly so in my
opinion,'' added Rep. Thomas Reed (R-N.Y.). ``We have to
protect the retirement fund and the retiree.''
It all sounds like ``good government,'' but the politics
are rich.
House Democrats were not consulted on the rules change, and
liberals accuse the GOP of trying to cull the weak from the
herd, pitting the disabled against pensioners to undermine
the larger Social Security coalition.
In fact, the new rule's fine print leaves an escape hatch
for Republicans to move tens of billions into the disability
fund if this gambit fails. Still, the upshot could be a one-
two punch Democrats most fear: a first-round debate over
disability funding in 2016 followed by a bigger battle over
all of Social Security in 2017, when Republicans hope to
control both Congress and the White House.
``They're looking for a new weapon,'' said Michigan Rep.
Sander Levin, the ranking Democrat on Ways and Means. ``What
they're doing in this rule is to use any problems within
disability as a way to attack the whole system. It's
dangerous doubletalk when they have been the problem, not the
answer.''
Adding to Levin's fears was testimony last week before Ways
and Means, in which Harvard economist Martin Feldstein
promoted the idea of Congress gradually raising the
eligibility age for full Social Security benefits to as high
as 70. That would increase labor-force participation among
people older than 65, expanding the economy, Feldstein said.
But raising the retirement age would add to the strain on the
disability fund, which has had to cover more workers longer
since the retirement age was raised from 65 to 67.
These tensions fueled a separate uproar last week over
remarks by 2016 presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul about the
disability program.
Testing the waters in an appearance in New Hampshire, the
Kentucky Republican suggested that half the people on Social
Security disability had no more to worry about than achy
backs and anxiety in the morning. ``Join the club. Who
doesn't get up a little anxious for work and their back
hurts,'' Paul said disparagingly.
After video of his remarks went online, Paul quickly
backtracked: ``We absolutely should take care of those truly
in need of help,'' he said in a statement.
At this stage, the White House and Treasury show no sign of
backing down from their intent to pursue a straight
reallocation of funds from the retirement account, formally
known as the Old Age Survivors Insurance or OASI trust fund.
Given all the divisions already in Washington, adding a new
procedural hurdle is ``unhelpful,'' an administration
official said icily.
Indeed, transfers between the two Social Security funds
have gone on for years. Each relies on a percentage of the
same payroll tax, and the disability program helped the
retirement trust fund in the 1980s by reducing its own share
of the tax revenue.
What's most changed now is that critics are singling out
the disability fund as the profligate partner--and a
harbinger of bad times ahead for all.
Without doubt, the growth of the disability program has
been explosive.
In the past 20 years, the number of workers getting
disability payments has more than doubled to 8.95 million
last month. About $140 billion went out the door in fiscal
2013, double what the costs were just 10 years before. And
like food stamps in the Farm Bill debate, disability payments
are common enough now to be a whipping boy for conservatives
like Paul, playing on resentment toward people receiving
government aid during hard economic times.
At one level, this is all political catnip for Democrats,
eager to be seen as defenders of Social Security and its New
Deal heritage. But given their history, Republicans don't
come to the table with clean hands.
For example, the GOP's 2011 budget deal with President
Barack Obama held out the promise of millions in
appropriations to help the Social Security Administration
fight precisely what Republicans complain about in the
disability program: medical fraud. But for 2012 and 2013,
House Republicans failed to approve the money, thereby adding
to Social Security's woes.
Moreover, an analysis by Social Security's chief actuary,
Stephen Goss, suggests there's less to the new House rule
than meets the eye. That's because the point of order is
triggered only if lawmakers exceed a ``0.01 percent''
threshold, which equates to a $38.6 billion cap on what any
one Congress can move from the retirement fund, Goss told
POLITICO.
That leaves too little room for some long-term, multiyear
reallocation of payroll tax revenues but it is enough to get
past 2016, by Goss' calculations.
[[Page H437]]
``We're projecting [disability] trust funds will be
depleted in December of 2016. . . . The shortfall for the
ensuing 12 months would come to about $29 billion,'' Goss
said. ``What that means is that we could have a tax rate
reallocation that could apply in 2016 or 2016 and 2017 that
would generate up to $30 billion or even $35 billion
transferred to the [disability] trust fund, which would at
least extend its reserve depletion date for one more year.''
It's a stop-and-go scenario that serves neither party's
goals in the end. Much depends in the interim on Johnson and
new Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
Ryan has boasted that Ways and Means will be ``command
central'' for the GOP's agenda, and he has installed his own
staff in Johnson's Social Security subcommittee. In the
previous Congress, the disability debate among Republicans
was shaped by flamboyant personalities such as the now-
retired Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-
Calif.), who has had to surrender his platform as chairman of
the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. But now, Ryan
would like to be the architect for reforms in the social
safety net.
There is room for compromise. The crisis is no surprise--as
long ago as 1995, Social Security's actuaries were predicting
2016 as a breaking point for the disability fund. And
multiple academic papers from the center-left and center-
right outline changes Congress could consider.
Three potential areas of agreement: First, find a dedicated
source of money for Social Security to expedite so-called
continuing disability reviews, which have been shown to
generate savings. Second, limit recipients' ``double-
dipping'' among disability and other government benefits. And
third, experiment with ways to help people with disabilities
to stay in the workforce or return more quickly.
The past year has seen some turnaround on funding for the
disability reviews. In the fiscal 2014 and 2015 Social
Security budgets, House Republicans finally agreed to the
extra ``program integrity'' appropriations that the budget
deal had called for. The Social Security Administration says
every dollar spent here can lead to $9 in long-term savings,
and in 2013--the latest year for which data are available--
more than 17,000 workers were disqualified as a result of
these medical reviews.
The administration estimates that as many as 790,000
continuing disability reviews will be conducted this year, a
50 percent increase over 2014 and double the annual average
from 2009-2013. To maintain this effort, the 2016 budget that
Obama proposes in February is expected to ask again for close
to the $1.4 billion provided in 2015.
The White House is also expected to come back to Congress
with a set of demonstration programs to test and gather data
on the effectiveness of early intervention--with workers and
employers--rather than individuals simply surrendering to
going on disability. The omnibus bill approved in December
provided $35 million for this purpose, far less than what the
administration had hoped for.
``I think it's clear that the system needs to be
improved,'' said Jeffrey Liebman, a Harvard professor who
served in the Office of Management and Budget during Obama's
first term. ``I also think it's clear that we don't yet know
enough about the cost and benefits of specific proposals to
make wholesale changes.''
Part of the challenge for policymakers is the unique nature
of disability insurance.
Unlike many other disability programs, Social Security's
covers only total disability--not partial or short term.
Benefits are a function of how much a worker previously
earned and put into the system, but on average these run
under $1,200 per month. On top of this, a worker is allowed
to earn some outside income, but this is capped at less than
$1,100 a month.
The result is that many households can be locked in at 200
percent of poverty or lower once the decision is made to go
on disability. That's why early intervention can help both
the government and the worker. But how early to intervene--
and at what cost--remain big questions.
``They are really only biting at the outer edges of the
issue. Their idea of early intervention is way too late,''
said Richard Burkhauser of Cornell University and the
University of Melbourne. Burkhauser argues that the U.S. must
look to European countries like the Netherlands that ``have
really done major things that have fundamentally altered
their system.''
The Dutch model, for example, requires employers to cover
more of the first two years of disability costs, thereby
encouraging more management involvement in trying to help
employees rehabilitate themselves and stay in the workforce.
Yet selling this to a pro-business Republican Congress may
take more than a little doing.
``The Dutch still spend more of [gross domestic product]
than we do on disability benefits,'' Liebman said. ``They
came from spending a lot more than we do to spending more
than we do.''
Johnson is certainly not eager for big new expenditures.
But for all his famous crustiness, the Texas conservative was
not unsympathetic to people who depend on the current system.
``We want to work to protect the disability program, but we
want to consider how to help those who can and want to
work,'' Johnson said. ``And those who can or want to work
ought not to be sentenced to a lifetime of near poverty with
no way out.''
For all the partisanship now, the disability insurance
program was born in the mid-1950s under a Republican
president, Dwight Eisenhower. Ronald Reagan triggered bitter
fights 25 years later when he sought cuts in the early 1980s.
That sparked a backlash from Democrats in Congress, which led
to changes making it easier for more people to qualify.
But the enrollment numbers really took off in the mid-
1990s, as more baby boomers moved into their late 40s and
began applying during an otherwise strong economy. The Great
Recession accelerated this trend as workers turned to
disability as a last resort after unemployment benefits ran
out. But the prime mover for the past 20 years has been
demographics--changes set in motion generations ago.
These include not just the baby boom, but the fact that
women have worked long enough now to qualify for disability
benefits. All this comes, most importantly, at a time when
the drop in birth rates has left fewer younger workers to
help absorb the costs.
If all these forces make disability insurance the black
sheep now, it will soon have company: The retirement side of
Social Security is feeling the same forces, while new
enrollment numbers suggest the spike in disability has
peaked. Data show a steady drop in the number of new
disability awards since their high in 2010.
``The increasing effects of [disability insurance] are
over. We're done with that,'' Goss said. ``The bad news is
now the boomers are moving to the higher ages and once they
get there, they'll have the lower-birth-rate generation below
them. . . . This is unfortunately kind of like the tide.''
As the waters recede, rural low-income states like
Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi and Maine face a larger
concentration of disability cases as a percentage of the
population. Workers complain of a slow, almost Dickensian
application process that can put their lives on hold for
months. This same environment can attract aggressive
attorneys, who boast in phone book ads that this is their
briar patch--just call.
Fresh indictments this past week in Puerto Rico are a
reminder of the risk of fraud--and collusion among doctors,
lawyers and administrative judges. Government Accountability
Office reports have raised questions about workers double-
dipping, by stringing together payments from Social Security
disability along with jobless benefits or non-combat-related
disabilities covered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
None of this alters the 2016 deadline.
``The trust fund programs really are special because they
cannot borrow. The reserves deplete. Congress has to act,''
Goss said. ``We'll still have revenue come in, but our
projection is we'll only have 81 cents of tax revenue coming
at that time for every dollar of benefits.''
But under the new House rule, Goss said, any single piece
of legislation can give the program at most ``a one-year or
slightly more than a one-year extension of the reserve
depletion date.''
Does that mean Congress should do more than one year?
The actuary chuckled. ``The good news,'' he said, ``is that
given we have 535 members of Congress, we'll hear lots of
arguments and that will likely be one.''
____________________