Background: Privatization has always been the goal of certain members of Congress who would like to get the U.S government out of the retirement and disability business. Unfortunately, that means turning the system over to other interests. In the case of Social Security retirement, that means turning it over to Wall street (because, obviously, getting rid of regular retirement plans and replacing them with 401(k)s was such a wonderful idea). In the case of disability, it would probably mean turning things over to the individual states, many of which have a long history of being hostile to such programs. As an example, statistics are very clear that in many southern states the denial rates on disability claims are significantly higher.
What makes this story especially interesting is that Mr. Trump has openly run on a promise not to attack the Social Security system. He has even gone so far as to say that he would like it expanded.
From the article:
"At last week's 2016 Fiscal Summit of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Clovis walked back Trump's pledge to leave Social Security and Medicare untouched. "After the administration has been in place, then we will start to take a look at all of the programs, including entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare,” Clovis said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We’ll start taking a hard look at those to start seeing what we can do in a bipartisan way." Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks disputed that Clovis' words even "remotely" hinted at cuts. But he has argued strongly in the past for privatizing Social Security and Medicare as a way to cut their costs. In 2014, while running in Iowa for the U.S. Senate, Clovis told the Des Moines Register that he was "a strong believer in bringing private models to both Medicare and Social Security." For those "below the age of 45 .... we need new systems for both." He also favored block-granting Medicaid -- an "easy step," he said, that would allow "states to administer the program based on state needs." Medicaid experts have observed, however, that some states have taken advantage of flexibility in Medicaid eligibility to cut off all but the most destitute families. Alabama and Texas, for example, limit Medicaid to families earning less than 18% of the federal poverty level, or $3,629 a year for a family of three. Mashburn long has been an advocate of cutting social programs. In a 2012 interview with Ben Domenech of the right-wing Heartland Institute that Jilani unearthed, he also plumped for block-granting Medicaid. Notably, he also took a swipe at disability recipients, particularly children on the Supplemental Security Income disability program."
Link to page: Trump and Social Security
I am a former disability examiner and I publish the website Social Security Disability Resource Center, or SSDRC for short. I also maintain a facebook page for SSDRC (Social Security Disability Blog.
Archives for this blog.
Neither this blog, nor the facebook page, nor my website are affiliated with the Social Security Administration.
