With just a tweak to internal House rules, Republicans set the stage for a showdown over disability insurance in the early days of the 114th Congress.
The move has Democrats and liberal Social Security advocates worried, even though it’s not clear what exactly the GOP intends to do.
As part of the legislation setting out the rules for the House, Republicans set a point of order that will force legislative action to address the looming expiration of the Social Security disability insurance trust fund, which Social Security’s trustees project to dry up next year.
If the fund is not shored up before then, its roughly 11 million beneficiaries would face an immediate 20 percent cut in their benefits.
In the past, the trust fund has been replenished by simply redirecting payroll tax revenues to the disability trust fund, away from the trust fund for Social Security retirement and survivors’ benefits. Combined, the two trust funds would be able to pay out benefits for both programs through 2033, according to the trustees.
But Sam Johnson, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee subcommittee on Social Security, said such a redirection of funds would amount to “raiding the Social Security retirement program to bail out the disability program.”
Congressional liberals immediately decried the rules change as an attack on Social Security through the disability program. As early as last summer, Sen. Sherrod Brown, a populist Ohio Democrat, set out the Democratic response to such a move, warning in a speech of “backdoor attempts to dismantle and privatize Social Security by discrediting disability insurance.”
It’s clear that the tweak to the House rules sets up the possibility of a larger confrontation over Social Security, although lawmakers can suspend or change rules later. Republicans, however, have not stated what changes to disability insurance they might want.
A spokesman for Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said “this is something that will be discussed by the members in the coming weeks.”
Republicans generally have been critical of the disability program, which has grown rapidly over the past decade.
Republicans have highlighted fraud within the program, which grants benefits to workers who have paid into the system and demonstrate that they are unable to engage in substantial gainful activity, defined as $1,090 in monthly earnings in 2015. Most recently, in December, a Republican-led investigation of disability judges found that a number of them were approving the vast majority of disability appeals.
Nevertheless, outright fraud in the program is low, according to the Government Accountability Office. Social Security’s own actuary testified in July that the run-up in disabled workers was predictable based on demographic changes, especially the aging of the workforce.
Some outside experts, however, including researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, have argued that the rolls have swollen because the benefits have become more attractive relative to work and because the criteria for eligibility have been loosened over the past several decades.
A few prominent academics from the right and center have called for a major overhaul to the disability system to encourage workers facing injuries or illness to pursue rehabilitation or vocational training rather than Social Security benefits.
A reform of that scale does not appear to be on the agenda. Last session, Johnson submitted a bill to tighten fraud controls and another measure that would prevent disability recipients from also receiving unemployment benefits. A spokeswoman for Johnson said that he expects that the committee will focus on strengthening the disability program.
But Social Security advocates fear that the upshot might be a Republican attempt to cut overall Social Security benefits, including for retirees.
Eric Kingson, a professor at Syracuse University and a co-director of the advocacy group Social Security Works, said the rules change is “telegraphing that the Republican majority in the House wants to cut everyone’s Social Security.”
During the George W. Bush administration, Ryan favored a White House proposal to partially privatize Social Security. In the Republican budgets that he has authored, however, he has mostly left out specific Social Security changes. During the Obama administration, negotiators from the two parties have come close to striking a deal to change the way inflation is calculated in setting Social Security benefits, a move that would effectively reduce the size of benefits, which many advocates opposed.
“There’s a strong desire by many to create a sense of crisis,” Kingson said. That environment, he warned, could “create opportunities to make major changes to disability or open up Social Security to benefit cuts.”
