Cotton calls for improved disability payment oversight

WASHINGTON — U. S. Sen. Tom Cotton on Monday called for changes to the federal program providing disability insurance to millions of Americans, promising to introduce legislation aimed at shoring up the system.

In a speech at the Heritage Foundation, the Arkansas Republican said the government spends more than $ 200 billion per year on disabled workers, including Medicare benefits.

“We all know the challenges of the Social Security Disability Insurance: It’s grown far too large — well past the rate of demographics — there’s a lack of program integrity, and those who should recover never leave the program,” Cotton told the audience.

Nationwide, 10.1 million people had qualified to receive the aid as of September, according to the Social Security Administration. That figure included 8.9 million workers, 1.7 million dependent children and 144,000 spouses.

In Arkansas, 7.5 percent of the working- age population receive the payments, Cotton said.

In some of the nation’s poorest counties, one- fifth of the working- age population has qualified for disability payments.

“When a county hits a certain level of disability usage, disability becomes a norm. It becomes an acceptable way of life and an alternative source of income to a good- paying, full- time job — as opposed to a last- resort, safety- net program to deal with catastrophic injury and illness,” Cotton said.

“There’s nothing compassionate about accepting these rates of disability usage. It’s bad for the communities affected and its worse for the disability recipients.”

Cotton said the legislation he’s drafting would require the Social Security Administration to distinguish between people who are “genuinely and permanently disabled” and those who are temporarily disabled “but expected to recover.”

It would also raise the amount of money that disability recipients who are expected to recover can make without forfeiting their benefits as they transition back to the workforce. Cotton said he would also set time limits for this category of recipients, allowing them to reapply for help if their recovery takes longer than anticipated.

No date has been set for filing the bill.

Cotton’s message was well- received at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think- tank.

Terry Miller, a foundation official who introduced Cotton, said the latest bipartisan budget agreement amounts to “a short- term financial patch” for the disability program. The deal, reached last month, uses $ 150 billion from the Social Security trust fund to bail out the disability insurance, which otherwise faced insolvency next year, he added.

Miller called Cotton “one of the heroes who voted against the reckless budget fix” and said Cotton was discussing “real reforms that could improve the efficiency and integrity of the disability insurance program.”

But Democratic Party of Arkansas Chairman Vincent Insalaco said Cotton’s proposal “would undermine the safety net for the least fortunate among us.”

In the written statement, Insalaco said: “Instead of blaming Arkansans who rely on Social Security and its disability insurance, the Democratic Party is focused on protecting these important safety nets for families and seniors.”

Heritage officials said Monday that it would be difficult to get Congress to approve changes.

When the system was overhauled in the 1980s and the review process was strengthened, “there was a huge backlash and congressmen received many, many, many phone calls from constituents who had been relying on those benefits,” said Romina Boccia, a Heritage research fellow who focuses on federal spending.