Trump plan would limit disability benefits

"This is Phase One of the Republican campaign to force Americans to work into old age to access their earned Social Security benefits, and represents the largest cut to disability insurance in American history."

By Meryl Kornfield and Lisa R ein The Washington Post

The Trump administration is preparing a plan that will make it harder for older Americans to qualify for Social Security disability payments, part of an overhaul of the federal safety net for poor, older and disabled people that could result in hundreds of thousands of people losing benefits, according to people familiar with the plans.

Currently, the Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience and education to determine if a person can adjust to other types of work. Older applicants, typically over 50, have a better chance of qualifying because age is treated as a limitation in adapting to many jobs.

But now officials are considering eliminating age as a factor entirely or raising the threshold to age 60, according to three people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions. They also plan to modernize labor market data used to judge whether claimants can work, replacing an outdated jobs database that includes obsolete occupations like nut sorters and telephone quotation clerks, following a Washington Post investigation in 2022. It is unclear exactly how many Americans could lose access to disability benefits under the proposed rule changes. Jack Smalligan, senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute and a former Office of Management and Budget official through five administrations, wrote in a recent paper that if the proposed rule reduced eligibility for the disability program by 10 percent, 750,000 fewer people would receive benefits for all or part of the next decade. In addition, 80,000 fewer widows and children would receive benefits due to the loss in eligibility of a spouse or parent.

Smalligan said research has shown that a majority of older Americans who apply for disability benefits don't get another job. If the rule didn't consider age as a factor, more older disabled workers would probably start taking early retirement benefits,

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon

significantly reducing their monthly benefit amount.

Older workers who claim retirement benefits at age 62 rather than receive Social Security's disability insurance would receive 30 percent less in benefits for the rest of their lives.

"The criteria already is really tight enough that we're actually restricting some people we probably should allow," Smalligan said in an interview.

SSA spokesman Barton Mackey said the agency is working on plans to "propose improvements to the disability adjudication process to ensure our disability program remains current and can be more efficiently administered."

"This includes proposing policy updates to occupational data sources and optimizing their use to serve our customers and preserve the trust funds," Mackey said. "Once the proposal is fully developed, we will share it publicly and request public comment through the standard rulemaking process. … As with any rulemaking, we will consider and analyze public comments before deciding whether to finalize the rule."

People familiar with the proposed changes said they are a priority of Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, who sought during Trump's first term to update the disability rolls through executive action.

At the start of Trump's second term, the White House budget office urged former acting commissioner Leland Dudek to pursue rule changes shortly after he took office.

Conservatives have long argued that since Americans are living longer and fewer have jobs that require manual labor, many physically disabled workers could adapt to desk work, broadening their work options and resulting in fewer people being granted disability benefits. Social Security officials prepared to issue a similar rule at the end of the first Trump administration but ran out of time.

"We felt that so many more jobs are now available to disabled people," said Mark Warshawsky, who led work on the earlier proposed rule as the SSA's deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy during the first Trump administration. "The nature of work has changed."

Warshawsky, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, predicted that while the new rule under consideration would allow the agency to turn away more older people, more people with mental disabilities are likely to be approved.

Senate Finance Committee ranking Democrat Ron Wyden (Oregon) argued that the rule change is just the first step in broader Republican plans to cut Social Security.

"This is Phase One of the Republican campaign to force Americans to work into old age to access their earned Social Security benefits, and represents the largest cut to disability insurance in American history," Wyden said in a statement to The Post. "Americans with disabilities have worked and paid into Social Security just like everybody else, and they do not deserve the indignity of more bureaucratic water torture to get what they paid for."

The $11 billion disability program is separate from Social Security's retirement system. It is also far more difficult to qualify for benefits under the program than the disability system for veterans.

Qualifying for disability benefits is a multistep process that can take years, particularly if someone is turned down and appeals. One of the first steps in the process is determining if the applicant has a serious illness or condition on a list of impairments, such as ALS, terminal cancer or chronic heart failure.

If their condition is not dire, the applicant's age, work experience and education become factors the government must weigh to decide if their disability still allows them to work. If they are over 50, they have a better shot at qualifying for benefits because they are considered less able to adapt to new work. These factors have been responsible for making about 42 percent of applicants eligible for benefits, Social Security data from 2022 shows.

To determine the jobs a disability applicant might be able to do, the agency has long relied on a database compiled by the Department of Labor, which abandoned the list more than 30 years ago as the economy shifted away from blue-collar work to information and services.

With the aim of modernizing the jobs data it uses, Social Security has paid the Bureau of Labor Statistics more than $300 million to build a complex directory of 21st century jobs. The spending came under scrutiny from lawmakers on Capitol Hill following the earlier Post report, and as of today, the agency is still not using the modern data when reviewing disability claims.

According to two former officials, starting next year the agency plans to develop a computer-generated database using the modern jobs data to determine which jobs, if any, someone seeking benefits could perform. Disability advocates say they worry that the database will be programmed to come up with a vast array of jobs, particularly if advancing age is no longer a limiting factor, and will end up denying benefits to tens of thousands of claimants every year.

Michelle Spadafore, a senior attorney at New York Legal Assistance Group, said she frequently finds older disabled clients are not able to go back to work if they are denied benefits because they struggle to keep up with the technical and physical skills required of modern work. In addition, employers may be less inclined to hire workers nearing retirement age over younger hires.

"You wouldn't stop working because you reach a certain age and you think disability benefits are the next logical step," Spadafore said. "Nobody does that because disability benefits are almost always less money than full-time wages."

The changes come as new disability claims have declined. State-level data shows that disability applications are down 7 percent this fiscal year compared to the previous year, according to an Urban Institute analysis. Meanwhile, initial denials of disability claims are up, according to the same analysis, which found the SSA has approved nearly 3 percent fewer claims last fiscal year compared to this one.

More than 15 million Americans receive monthly disability checks as part of two programs: Social Security Disability Insurance - for those with a work history who have become disabled before retirement - and Supplemental Security Income, an anti-poverty program for poor elderly and disabled people that pays about $800 per month.

At the same time, Social Security is working on plans to rescind a Biden-era rule that expanded SSI eligibility for recipients who live with relatives or roommates receiving help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or other public assistance. Restoring stricter standards could roll back payments for about 400,000 Americans, according to an August report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Spadafore said she expects her clients impacted by this change could see their payments reduced by a third, and other cuts to SNAP as part of Trump's sweeping tax and spending plan could further devastate households.

"Any small cut in that delicate balance can be the difference between paying your utilities that month," Spadafore said.

The SSA spokesman said the change "would return us to long-standing criteria and policies to promote program integrity."

"Again, as is standard with rulemaking processes, the proposed rule will be made publicly available, and the public will be given an opportunity to comment before the rule is finalized," Mackey said.