With about a year left until 11 million disability insurance recipients see their benefits automatically cut by 19 percent, policymakers are debating how to reform the program to maintain benefit levels into the foreseeable future. The eventual solution will need approval from President Obama, but his administration hasn’t been involved in the debate, according to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
“The Obama administration mostly continues to sit this effort out,” Hatch said Tuesday at a conference in Washington, D.C., organized by the McCrery-Pomeroy SSDI Solutions Initiative. “Frankly, I don’t understand how that helps current and future beneficiaries.”
Benefits will be cut at the end of 2016 when the Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund is depleted and will only be able to pay out as much as it takes in.
In February, the Obama administration proposed partially shifting the destination of payroll tax revenues from Social Security’s retirement trust fund to the disability trust fund. If the two trust funds were simply combined, it would lead to simultaneous depletion of both trust funds in 2034.
Hatch says that would only “kick the proverbial can even further down the road.” Hatch opposes reallocation unaccompanied by reforms that would improve the program’s finances. Instead, he proposes modernizing the program’s eligibility grids, making it easier for beneficiaries to return to work, and limiting fraud in the program.
Hatch said he would introduce three bills later Tuesday related to disability insurance reform. “I’m willing to work with anyone,” Hatch said. “I think you’ve seen that. I don’t care what party you are or what your philosophy is, I’m willing to work with anyone to try and solve this problem and ensure that benefits continue to be paid to disabled American workers and their families.”
