[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 125 (Tuesday, August 4, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6297-S6299]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. HATCH (for himself, Mr. Coats, Mr. Lankford, and Mr. 
        Blunt):
  S. 1922. A bill to amend titles II and XVI of the Social Security Act 
to provide for quality reviews of benefit decisions, and for other 
purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise to speak once again on the Social 
Security Disability Insurance--or DI--Program. As everyone in this 
Chamber should know, the DI trust fund is projected to be exhausted 
next year. That means, absent any change in law, we will be seeing 
across-the-board benefit cuts of close to 20 percent for DI 
beneficiaries. Over the last several months, I have come to the floor 
on a handful of occasions to talk about this program and the imminent 
depreciation of its trust fund.
  I have called on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to work 
with me to address these issues. I will repeat that call today.
  In addition, today I have introduced three separate bills that are 
designed to help update and improve the administration of the DI 
program. As we talk about solutions to address the depletion of the DI 
trust fund, we should also be talking about ways to update the DI 
program, ways to make it easier for beneficiaries who can and who 
desire to return to work to be able to explore those opportunities and 
ways to improve efforts to deter and prevent waste and fraud.
  The first bill I introduced today would update and expand the Social 
Security Administration's tools to deter and punish fraudsters who 
cheat the system. The second bill would authorize the Commissioner of 
SSA to provide denied DI applicants with information about employment 
support services that are provided by both public agencies and private 
nonprofit organizations.

[[Page S6298]]

  That information will help denied applicants find opportunities to 
reenter the workforce, instead of continually cycling through the DI 
application process. The third bill would require SSA to review hearing 
decisions by administrative law judges to ensure that they are 
following the law as well as Social Security regulations and policy. 
All three of these bills are designed to improve the administration of 
this disability program and make it work better for beneficiaries and 
taxpayers. They will not, by themselves, solve all of the program's 
fiscal problems, but they will improve the DI system.
  More work will need to go into this effort, and as chairman of the 
committee with jurisdiction over the DI program, I am committed to 
solving these problems and preventing the massive benefit cuts we will 
see under current law. I would like to point out three things about my 
stated approach to dealing with the DI program.
  First, you will note I have not used the word ``crisis'' to describe 
what is happening with the DI trust fund. Second, you would be hard-
pressed to find any proposal I have submitted that could credibly be 
characterized as ``slashing'' DI benefits. Third, nothing I have put 
forward either today or in the past could conceivably be thought of as 
``privatizing'' disability insurance.
  I have to point this out because a number of people, including some 
of my friends on the other side of the aisle, have described the 
Republican efforts to address the DI trust fund depletion using some of 
those very same words.
  These individuals are currently more interested in turning this issue 
and the coming benefit cuts into a political football than in actually 
solving the problem. My question is, What good will that do for the DI 
program or its beneficiaries? It is not just the DI program that has 
problems. Social Security, in general, faces a number of significant 
fiscal and policy challenges.
  In their most recent report, the Social Security board of trustees, 
which includes several members of President Obama's Cabinet, 
recommended ``that lawmakers address the projected trust fund 
shortfalls in a timely way in order to phase in necessary changes 
gradually and give workers and beneficiaries time to adjust to them.''
  That says to me the sooner we act to put Social Security on a 
sustainable fiscal path the better it is for Americans and their 
security. It clearly does not mean we should ignore the financial 
problems facing Social Security or kick the can down the road, hoping 
some future Congress will get its act together and solve the problems.
  Of course, providing financial sustainability to Social Security is 
easier said than done. There are reasonable disagreements over how best 
to address Social Security's fiscal shortfalls, including different 
views on payroll tax revenues that fund the program and how quickly 
promised benefits will grow in the future. Yet we should not limit the 
discussion to taxes and outlays.
  We also should look at how the program can be improved and brought 
up-to-date. For example, the vocational grids and medical guidelines 
that SSA uses in the disability program are woefully out of date, and 
much of the existing structure of Social Security's retirement program 
was developed long ago, when labor markets and work patterns were much 
different than they are today.
  We should be working to address all of these challenges, both the 
fiscal and policy challenges now, instead of putting them off for later 
days. With respect to the DI program in particular, I have been working 
for some time now to obtain input from experts and stakeholders across 
the spectrum to figure out how we can make the program work better. 
Joined by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Ryan and Social 
Security Subcommittee Chairman Johnson, I have solicited input from 
stakeholders in various venues and continue to welcome ideas or 
proposals from anyone who wants to submit them.
  The bills I have dropped today are just the latest in a series of 
bills I have introduced to help jump-start the discussion of DI 
reforms. We should not sit idly by and wait for another financing cliff 
to appear around the end of next year. As the Social Security trustees 
made clear, the sooner Congress acts to address these shortcomings, the 
better. Neither DI beneficiaries nor taxpayers benefit from lingering 
uncertainty about how the impending trust fund depletion will be 
resolved.
  As I have said many times, I am ready and willing to have this 
conversation. Sadly, up to now, I have heard nothing in response from 
the Obama administration and very little from my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle. Anyone familiar with the current state of the 
DI trust fund would likely acknowledge that we are going to have to 
reallocate resources into the fund if we are going to prevent the 
impending benefit cuts from happening next year.
  Most proposals I have seen, including those from the President's 
budget, involve a shuffling of money from Social Security's retirement 
fund to the DI trust fund, but even if we have to reallocate resources 
to shore up the DI program, we should not delay confronting the obvious 
need for reform. On this point, I will once again quote the most recent 
report from the Social Security trustees, which says, ``Reallocation of 
resources in the absence of substantive relief might serve to delay DI 
reforms and much-needed corrections for Social Security as a whole.''
  It is true that as many of my colleagues have noted, there have been 
bipartisan agreements to reallocate resources within Social Security in 
the past. However, in virtually every case, the reallocations were 
accompanied by substantive policy changes. This time should be no 
different. The last time we reallocated resources from the retirement 
to the DI trust fund, DI awards were increasing unexpectedly and 
Congress needed to examine the reasons for this increase before acting 
to change the way the DI system worked.
  At the time, most people agreed that reforms were necessary and that 
the reallocation would buy the time Congress needed to come up with 
those reforms, get them enacted, and put the trust fund on sound fiscal 
footing. That was more than 20 years ago. Sadly, though not 
surprisingly, Congress did not follow through with the reforms, and we 
now face another reserve depletion in the trust fund.
  Needless to say, doubling down on the same strategy, a strategy that 
has already failed to produce the needed policy changes, is not a 
prudent course of action. In my view, any resource reallocation that 
gets enacted must be accompanied by changes in the DI program. However, 
the President does not seem to share this view. The administration has 
called for a stand-alone reallocation of payroll tax receipts away from 
the retirement and survivor's trust fund and into the DI trust fund.
  This proposal would, depending on the estimate, extend the life of 
the DI program to the early 2030s, at which point both Social Security 
trust funds, disability and retirement, will be exhausted at the same 
time, triggering massive benefit cuts for all beneficiaries. In fact, 
there are those who would argue that the Social Security retirement 
fund is already exhausted and deeply in debt.
  That is their idea of a responsible approach to a widely acknowledged 
fiscal problem. Outside of the stand-alone reallocation scheme, the 
President's budget offers precious little in the way of reforms to the 
DI program or Social Security in general. In other words, the Obama 
administration's entire answer to all of Social Security's many fiscal 
problems is literally to just let future Congress's and administrations 
deal with those problems.
  This, to me, would be the height of irresponsibility. While it may 
not be possible, absent some kind of resource allocation, to keep the 
DI program's current promises between now and the end of the year, we 
can and should take meaningful steps now to improve the program. That 
is my goal. I hope enough of my colleagues share this goal to make it a 
reality.
  If we are going to get there, it is going to require bipartisan 
cooperation on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. In other words, we are 
going to need to see more from the administration than we have seen 
thus far. It is already August. Despite my repeated requests to the 
administration and my friends on the other side of the aisle to engage

[[Page S6299]]

with me to work on this issue, I have yet to hear a meaningful 
response. I hope that will change.
  There is no harm in discussing options. I am willing to discuss any 
and all options to fix these problems. There is, on the other hand, a 
great deal of potential harm to DI beneficiaries if we continue to 
ignore the problem while waiting for a financial cliff to force 
people's hands. Once again, I urge my friends on both sides of the 
aisle to engage on this issue now, and do not wait until it is too late 
to take meaningful action.

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