Read on Twitter
All right. I caught up on my work, went for a walk, made dinner, and did some meal prep. So let me talk about what Congress did to ruin my week.
As many of you know, there are waiting periods once you're approved for a Social Security disability program. Specifically, there's a 5-month waiting period for the cash benefits and a 2-year waiting period for the Medicare benefits.
I feel it's important to say at this point that the United States has one of the strictest disability insurance definitions in the world. If you're getting SSDI or the other SS disability programs, you have a disability with extensive functional limitations.
And you have spent at least a year, often more, proving the fact that you have these functional limitations and this disability.
There are two exceptions to the Medicare waiting period. If you have atoamyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or end stage renal disease (ESRD), you don't have to wait to get health care. For all other conditions, I dearly hope you live in a Medicaid expansion state.
The 5-month waiting period is a little more complicated and over the years, we've gotten in an exception for people who try working more and can't and for dependents (Social Security is the system that kicks in when the primary breadwinner dies or becomes disabled).
But the ALS community, who have a lot of resources and a lot of allies on Capitol Hill, have been advocating for an elimination of the cash benefit waiting period for their folks for a while.
There are also bills that would eliminate the waiting periods (both cash benefits and health care) for all Social Security Disability beneficiaries. Props to @SenBobCasey and @RepLloydDoggett for the #StopTheWait Act!
But the ALS bill has a lot of steam and earlier this year hit some big milestones. They had enough sponsors in the Senate and in the House to pass easily.
I am so happy for them. No one should have to wait for benefits that they have paid into the system for and already sat through the incredibly burdensome disability application process to obtain.
But certain Republican members of Congress thought that it was necessary to not just fix this problem for people with ALS, but to figure out a way to pay for it out of the rest of the Social Security system.
Senator Lee, who you might notice voted no on the ALS bill when it came up in the Senate yesterday, wanted to pay for it by requiring that no one receiving disability insurance benefits ever receive unemployment.
I don't think that's a good idea. While both North Carolina and Wisconsin prohibit that normally, they change their tunes this past year. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/14/pandemic-unemployment-benefits-denied-wisconsinites-disability/5364693002/
Because, you know, people with disabilities often can't work enough to pay their bills, but they still want to contribute however they can and we should be supporting that. https://www.wbtv.com/2020/03/31/disabled-working-denied-unemployment-north-carolina/
But Senator Lee identified another problem with the ALS bill that I think is very legitimate. He initially thought that all conditions that met the compassionate allowance list should be included: https://www.ssa.gov/compassionateallowances/conditions.htm
I agree strongly with Senator Lee on this. We have a list of conditions that the Social Security Administration basically says we shouldn't f*** around with and we should get them what they need. I don't think there should be a waiting period for anyone, including CAL folks.
But then Senator Lee got this scored by the Congressional Budget Office and realized exactly how expensive it is to provide health care and cash benefits to people. So he withdrew his amendments.
Which left us with the other amendment to pay for this very necessary fix to the Social Security system.
Senator Grassley proposed that we pay for this change by increasing the minimum withholding required from Social Security beneficiaries when they experience something called an "overpayment."
A lot of people who receive Social Security disability benefits of some kind required to report their income very regularly. This includes not just income from jobs, but "income" that you might get via assistance from your family or other types of financial assistance.
And this is complicated. Even if you submit your paperwork on time, often SSA doesn't get it processed quickly enough and you end up with an overpayment that you can't afford.
And for SSI, which is a means tested program, it's assumed you have financial challenges and you're never asked to repay more than 10% of your benefit.
But for Social Security disability programs, they can take your entire benefit. Even if you're only getting $900 a month. They can garnish all of that.
And Senator Grassley's amendment (you can read it at the link below) proposed setting a minimum payment for all Social Security disability overpayments at 10% of benefits: https://www.congress.gov/amendment/116th-congress/senate-amendment/2689
Because it isn't enough that current Social Security beneficiaries are required to prove that they are in financial need to reduce their overpayment withholdings.
I didn't think this was a good idea either. Neither did a lot of other people and organizations: http://c-c-d.org/fichiers/CCD-Letter-on-Minimum-Withholding_12-1-20.pdf
But that was the amendment that went to the floor yesterday when they were voting whether or not to approve the ALS bill.
Now before this vote, I spent an extraordinary amount of time explaining this incredibly complex issue to staff on Capitol Hill. But only three Republicans voted against Grassley's amendment.
And Senator Cotton went on record that he only voted against it because he knew that the amendment would be a poison pill in the house. (It would be. It only hurts the lowest income Social Security beneficiaries and is bad policy.)
And this is a perfect example of a broader problem in American politics. 96 senators voted yesterday that they think that the SSDI benefit waiting period is wrong. But 49 of them really thought we should cut benefits for other people to pay for that fix.
Making sure that people have the benefits that they paid for costs $. And we need to have a serious conversation about actually taxing higher income folks (Social Security taxes don't apply to income above $142,800) and all FICA taxes.
But obviously we all agree that waiting periods shouldn't exist. We just strongly disagree about how to pay for it. But I would bet most Americans agree with me that we shouldn't be punishing the lowest income people for policy fixes that we all agree should happen.
