{"id":37868,"date":"2013-10-08T06:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-10-08T10:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=37868"},"modified":"2013-10-08T06:29:43","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T10:29:43","slug":"i-hate-to-say-i-told-you-so-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=37868","title":{"rendered":"I Hate to Repeat Myself . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

. . . but I will.\u00a0 From just over a year ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A year ago, just short of 9 million individuals were receiving Social Security disability compensation.\u00a0 Five months ago<\/a>, that number was up to around 11 million.<\/p>\n

The number just keeps on climbing.\u00a0 At the end of August, per the Social Security Administration the number of individuals receiving Social Security disability payments was just over 14 million<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The program also appears rife with fraud.\u00a0 It looks like about half of all newly approved claims actually are bogus under Federal law – just like a year ago.\u00a0 (Federal law regarding Social Security Disability compensation requires that the individual be unable to perform work of any type<\/em> to be eligible for payment.)\u00a0 It appears the same could easily be true of about half of all such Social Security disability claims, period.<\/p>\n

It’s now costing Uncle Sam more to pay Social Security Disability benefits than it does to run the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Labor Department – combined<\/span><\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 The annual outlay for Social Security Disability payments is now approximately $135 billion.<\/p>\n

Apparently CBS has now finally figured out the above<\/a>.\u00a0 So it’s not just the conservative part of the blogosphere that’s noticing the issue any more.<\/p>\n

Yes, some people are so physically or mentally “messed up” that they legitimately rate Social Security disability payments.\u00a0 But IMO, a huge fraction of the recipients appear to be using the program as nothing more than an undeserved, alternate form of permanent unemployment compensation.\u00a0 Further, in many cases it seems they’re being aided and abetted in what appears to be blatant fraud by compliant Social Security officials – and by lawyers who in some cases end up getting paid literally millions by the Social Security Administration.<\/p>\n

The Social Security Disability “Insurance” Fund is in absolutely horrible financial shape.\u00a0 As you might expect, it’s in far worse shape than the rest of Social Security.<\/p>\n

For the Social Security disability program, the proverbial “well” runs dry in 3 years<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, give or take; some sources estimate the fund will be exhausted in as little as 18 months.\u00a0 So I’m guessing we can look forward to another push to raise Social Security taxes yet again some time in the next 3 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. . . but I will.\u00a0 From just over a year ago. A year ago, just … I Hate to Repeat Myself . . .<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}