- Jun 6, 2007
- 852
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The political commentators are spot on about the budget bills the Republicans and Democrats put out this past week, neither of these bills has a chance of passing Congress, they're political tools to help their party hold and win seats in the next election! Over ten years, the Republican Party's budget is seeking to cut $4.6 trillion and the Democrat Party's budget is seeking to raise taxes $975 billion these are fantasy budgets there is absolutely no chance either of the parties will pass the other party's budget so with each party holding a chamber of Congress it means these budgets will never become law so they're not worth the paper they're written on! Both parties with their behavior here extremely disappoint the American people they underscore crystal clearly that America's political system on the national level is truly broken!
The Republican budget is loaded with unreasonableness. Their plan for Medicare is a dangerous kook's plan; for starters it's dishonest in its pitch. By this it is meant that the program is sold that if you like the traditional fee-for-service plan it won't change you're be able to have it and the premium pricing from the private plans in the program will be community priced (to ordinary people community pricing means premiums won't be based on an underwriting formula that considers a seniors health status). The truth of the matter is that the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program will have to participate in the annual bidding process to determine what the Medicare premium support for the year will be and almost certainly classic HMO type of programs will become the benchmark programs because they have as their design limiting the medical providers enrollees can go to for treatment which creates more business for these medical providers which allows them to lower fees for insurance providers; the Republican plan is that the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program will be getting all their income from premiums and since the premium support will be significantly less than the monies traditional Medicare gets from the Medicare trust fund today premiums in this program will sky-rocket. And the premiums these private plan charge are in fact permitted to be based on an underwriting evaluation of a seniors health status which means heavy duty cherry picking will be going on by the individual plans to get the healthiest seniors despite Republicans efforts to stop it. For middle class seniors this plan stinks there is no guarantee the premium support will keep up with medical inflation. Republicans in the budget want to reduce individual tax brackets to two categories and lower the tax rate to 25% and 10% and do it in a budget neutral manner this is practically impossible the American people will never agree to getting rid of the home loan interest deduction and charitable deduction which at minimum is required to do this. The Republicans want to fix the maximum amount of the Pell grant for ten years, colleges and universities at least have to increase tuition by the inflation rate so Pell grants have to generally speaking keep up or college kids and their families will be in tough straits; if Republicans want to stop tuition inflation pass legislation allowing discharge of all school loan debts in bankruptcy after a borrower pays a fair percentage of one's income like five percent for twenty years this will cause lenders not to make the loans because they won't get paid back requiring colleges if they want these kids to find ways to lower and keep down price hikes in tuition. The Republicans in their budget want to block grant Medicaid this will certainly cause huge numbers of low income people to be thrown off the Medicaid rolls resulting in part in more poor people getting sicker and in emergency rooms being flooded with poor people seeking the free care; if you want to reduce growth in Medicaid spending in part ban states from running a scheme where they get their portion or a large portion of their monies to pay their Medicaid bill by taxing at a percentage rate the hospitals who benefit from increased Medicaid usage mandate only a fixed fee can be charged to Hospitals so states won't lose the incentive to keep Medicaid services usage down. The Republicans want to block grant and mandate a time limit on the supplemental nutrition assistance program (food stamps) the food stamp program isn't lavish those people that qualify for the program whose income are under the thresholds need that food stamp money their incomes aren't that high and time doesn't change that need, if Republicans want to solve this problem increase these beneficiaries work income and you can help that issue by being reasonable on the modifying the corporate tax code legislation!
The Democrat budget is loaded with unreasonableness. First off, the actual legislative bill is a disgrace it is so short on detail what is the Democrats plan how are you changing things. Budgets are supposed to have tables with last years spending levels and the current fiscal years spending level broken down in detail. What are the various Senate committees plans, the Democrat budget plans tells them to pursue waste, fraud and abuse the committees should already have done and be doing that they should be suggesting changes to stop overlapping programs and making programs more efficient, etc. and that should be included in the budget. You Democrats are acting like terrible economic stewards of the country you're acting like a joke a very sad joke! The Democrat budget bill says revoke $975 billion of the Sequester budget cuts and these cuts will be replaced with the work of some piece or pieces of legislation in the future, excuse me the political parties have been unable to agree for years how to cut the deficit no reasonable person can rely on future legislation being passed to replace the sequester cuts. It is readily apparent from this Sequester move the Democrats don't appreciate the gravity and wrongfulness of America's budget deficit. I predict and this isn't really going out on a limb that if the Senate passes this partisan ideologue budget the "financial rating agencies" will come out and say that if Washington passes this Senate budget we will lower America's credit rating in a manner that will significantly hurt America! Referring to what Democrats say their budget plan is not their actual bill which doesn't address many of these issues the following notes are warranted. The Democrats want to do away with the Senate sixty vote procedural rule for moving a tax increase bill forward so they can pass a tax increase piece of legislation to raise revenue to replace some of the sequester cuts and spend on various social programs and job creation programs; this is absolutely wrong a budget bill shouldn't be able to change such a critically important Senate procedural rule that sixty vote requirement was put there because the founders of our country new how harmful certain legislation could be and they wanted the protection to be in place to require a super majority of Senators to agree to a bill before it became law to protect against such harm. The Democrats want to book hundreds of billions of dollars of deficit reduction for winding down the Afghanistan War, this is outrageously wrong and disgraceful the country needs real deficit reduction this lowering of spending on the Afghanistan war is war spending meaning it is emergency spending the fact that it was included in the overall budget doesn't matter it is emergency spending like spending on hurricane and super storm reconstruction besides pursuant to Afghanistan law we have to leave and if we are optimally prudent we will completely pull out of Afghanistan and just provide financial aid to them because our presence fuels the insurgency and obstructs them from making meaningful progress on their real problems. The Democrats want to spend an additional one hundred billion on infrastructure and job creation program, Republicans will see this as economic stimulus spending that the country can't afford and is not worth it because it has little or no value beyond a short term effect which means it has no chance of passing the House.
To some extent I hold a little understanding for the Republican House leadership over this budget because they promised their rank and file membership they would come out with a budget that eliminates the deficit within ten years in order to get the last debt ceiling extension legislation passed into law but I think they deserve no understanding if they allow this budget to pass their chamber intact. Some observations from a conservative independent that wants to see the country make significant progress here, if one looks at a broad outline of what each party is trying to do with its budget one can learn what the country really needs here, Republicans cut a huge amount of federal spending with their budget and the Democrats raise a huge amount of new tax revenue with theirs which indicates that the sensible solution for the parties is to reach a grand bargain deal which will give each party a large amount of what they primarily want. That being said common sense from a practical standpoint indicates that at the House and Senate chamber alone level a grand bargain deal is not possible the Republican House caucus is not going to agree to raise taxes not now and the Democrat Senate caucus is not going to agree to make dramatic cuts to entitlement programs not now, but maybe, the memberships of each chamber could use the budget their chamber passes to move Congress "closer" to passing a grand bargain deal. Let us say that the House budget passes a budget that only cuts $ 2 (two) trillion from the federal budget over ten years with no tax revenue changes and the Senate passes a bill with $ 800 billion of new tax revenue and $ 800 billion of actual true cuts over ten years (fair deficit reduction at minimum means at least the government matches tax raises with cuts in spending at least dollar for dollar); this would lay reasonable and realistic general targets on the cutting and taxing requirements for a grand bargain deal. Further, if one considers that Congress doesn't have to pass the budget until September 31 and it is certain that in this interim period between when each chamber passes a budget and the end of September Congress will be all in at passing legislation reforming the corporate tax code closing loopholes and lowering the corporate tax rate which could produce an entirely different political landscape by the end of September. By this it is meant that the American people know that the Republican Party has said that the change to the corporate tax code is to be revenue neutral but getting a bill on this issue to their liking may necessitate some compromise here compromise that may be irresistible to wise Republicans. Success here means reducing the corporate tax rates especially the rate on foreign earned profits which would mean this money comes home and is spent on investment, dividend disbursement and wage increases in America long held hopes of the American people. Now what if during the legislative process for the tax code legislation the Republican party was faced with this offer by the Democrats which is Democrats will agree to close loopholes to lower the corporate tax rate (which is at 35% today) to say 30(thirty) % and to say 20(twenty) for foreign earned income if you agree to use $800 billion over ten years from some of the closing of tax loopholes and limiting tax deductions and exemptions (excluding charitable donations) to say $50,000 or $60,000 (fifty or sixty thousand) per year for wealthy Americans and will agree to cut federal spending $1.6 trillion over ten years with dramatic cuts to entitlement programs (during the election President Obama called for a budget cut/tax increase ratio of 2.5 to 1) and the Democrats say this is an all or nothing deal, I think the vast majority of Republican and independent voters would want the Republican party to accept such a deal they would see this as a successful deal. You know that the Simpson-Bowles commission which many Republicans have referred to as a commission that offers good leadership called for using some of the revenue obtained by closing corporate tax loopholes to reduce the deficit. My point here is that the tax code legislation process holds the opportunity to reach a grand bargain deal especially if the budgets passed by each chamber before that process starts can give the tax code legislation conference committee many of the basic elements of a grand bargain deal; it's an opportunity because the political and economic benefits the tax code legislation offer for each party creates a really strong force to put together a deal, remember Congress is full of incumbent members of Congress that have to run for reelection and what do incumbents love to do on the campaign trail that's right tout all their accomplishments in Washington and passing tax reform legislation fits this "need for accomplishments" bill to the "T"!
What is going to happen if each of the parties continues on the trajectory they are in with these budgets? In the next two or three weeks the Republican House will pass their ideologue budget bill and the Democrat Senate will pass their ideologue budget bill and all through the Spring and Summer rank and file members of Congress will go around the country and on TV defending their party's bill and dig their heels in deeper and become more firmly entrenched with their party's bill and compromise will become impossible and what Congress will do at the 11th hour is continue with the current budget with minor modifications to make the budget compliant to the 2011 debt ceiling legislation; a multitude of knowledgeable people in the political and media world would completely agree with this assessment if they were candid! One can see the foolishness mounting already Republican members of the House especially the leadership are becoming so proud of themselves if they are able to pass a budget that eliminates the deficit in ten years if they do this their budget will be completely worthless it will never become law the American people don't want the dramatic changes such a budget would bring. If this predictable gridlock scenario unfolds the country will continue to add $750 billion plus a year to the deficit, the country's entitlement programs will continue to be long-term unsustainable in short the country will continue to be shackled with serious economic problems. If rank and file members of Congress don't want the above scenario they are going to have to start being their own person start following their own conscience and work with members across the political aisle and pass budgets out of their chamber that the conference committee can work with where the gap between the House and Senate bills can be bridged. Some thoughts on this issue, after the last election Eric Cantor who one can truthfully say is fully in the right wing of his party publicly said he is in favor of scrapping the heretofore Republican Medicare premium support plan and sticking with the present Medicare system but just tighten up the price controls meaning follow Simpson-Bowles recommendation and stop the current obstruction of standard insurance cost controls of "copays" created by medigap/medicare supplemental insurance plans in the Medicare system. Why doesn't the House pursue this Cantor initiative, the White House has said they could work out a deal on this issue? Further, on the whole Medicare issue the country needs long-term savings because with the ever increasing retirement of the baby boomers the cost of this program will escalate and the truth is that the Medicare Administration as terrific as many of the individual staff are is an unwieldy bureaucracy in part meaning that they never really challenge medical providers on the utility of the medical services they provide and you know in the media almost on a weekly basis a study or an assessment comes out which essentially says you know the standard of care for this or that medical condition might not be the optimal level of care meaning that an excellent insurance administration could do a hell of a lot better than the Medicare administration in reducing costs and maintaining the quality. One of the excellent ideas of Obamacare was the medical loss ratio that individual health insurance providers must comply with this initiative requires providers to pay like eight-five percent of the premiums they take in on paying medical claims meaning they can only make like fifteen percent profit any over amount they have to give back to enrollees. Why doesn't the federal government mandate such a medical claim loss ratio on Medicare advantage programs and say to the providers the excess above the medical loss ratio has to be turned back to the Medicare Trust Fund not the enrollees and we will split the excess with you two-thirds for the trust fund one-third for the insurance provider; this will cut Medicare spending and help the deficit! Very little has been said about the Social Security pension entitlement program of late in Washington and it seems like nothing has been said about reforming the Social Security disability system but good judgment would indicate significant savings could be made from changes in this latter program. Last year the Wall Street journal ran a series of articles about the joke the Social Security Disability appeals system is with many judges approving like ninety percent of their appeals, this writer personally knows two men that are on Social Security disability for mental health related matters and there is no denial they have mental health issues but this is the God honest truth these men hold the qualities of shrewdness and cunning that would rival the most shrewd and cunning politicians in Washington the bottom line is that these guys without a doubt are capable of working granted it would probably be menial labor but nevertheless gainful work, why does the number of Social Security cases increase in times of recession when people can't find work this disability program is supposed to be for people who can't work not for people who can't find work (can't the program be tightened up to stop this gaming of the system), why does this disability system not have a conditional acceptance program by that it is meant that there seems to be a lot of borderline cases why isn't there a system for these borderline cases where even if the judge approves your application youre going to be audited a few times a year to be sure your health is such you can't work and if it turns out the evidence shows you can work your acceptance into the program is revoked, and why doesn't this system have mechanism to incentivize, in part it could be financial, people who have Social Security disability who it turns out actually can presently work to leave the program.
The Republican budget is loaded with unreasonableness. Their plan for Medicare is a dangerous kook's plan; for starters it's dishonest in its pitch. By this it is meant that the program is sold that if you like the traditional fee-for-service plan it won't change you're be able to have it and the premium pricing from the private plans in the program will be community priced (to ordinary people community pricing means premiums won't be based on an underwriting formula that considers a seniors health status). The truth of the matter is that the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program will have to participate in the annual bidding process to determine what the Medicare premium support for the year will be and almost certainly classic HMO type of programs will become the benchmark programs because they have as their design limiting the medical providers enrollees can go to for treatment which creates more business for these medical providers which allows them to lower fees for insurance providers; the Republican plan is that the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program will be getting all their income from premiums and since the premium support will be significantly less than the monies traditional Medicare gets from the Medicare trust fund today premiums in this program will sky-rocket. And the premiums these private plan charge are in fact permitted to be based on an underwriting evaluation of a seniors health status which means heavy duty cherry picking will be going on by the individual plans to get the healthiest seniors despite Republicans efforts to stop it. For middle class seniors this plan stinks there is no guarantee the premium support will keep up with medical inflation. Republicans in the budget want to reduce individual tax brackets to two categories and lower the tax rate to 25% and 10% and do it in a budget neutral manner this is practically impossible the American people will never agree to getting rid of the home loan interest deduction and charitable deduction which at minimum is required to do this. The Republicans want to fix the maximum amount of the Pell grant for ten years, colleges and universities at least have to increase tuition by the inflation rate so Pell grants have to generally speaking keep up or college kids and their families will be in tough straits; if Republicans want to stop tuition inflation pass legislation allowing discharge of all school loan debts in bankruptcy after a borrower pays a fair percentage of one's income like five percent for twenty years this will cause lenders not to make the loans because they won't get paid back requiring colleges if they want these kids to find ways to lower and keep down price hikes in tuition. The Republicans in their budget want to block grant Medicaid this will certainly cause huge numbers of low income people to be thrown off the Medicaid rolls resulting in part in more poor people getting sicker and in emergency rooms being flooded with poor people seeking the free care; if you want to reduce growth in Medicaid spending in part ban states from running a scheme where they get their portion or a large portion of their monies to pay their Medicaid bill by taxing at a percentage rate the hospitals who benefit from increased Medicaid usage mandate only a fixed fee can be charged to Hospitals so states won't lose the incentive to keep Medicaid services usage down. The Republicans want to block grant and mandate a time limit on the supplemental nutrition assistance program (food stamps) the food stamp program isn't lavish those people that qualify for the program whose income are under the thresholds need that food stamp money their incomes aren't that high and time doesn't change that need, if Republicans want to solve this problem increase these beneficiaries work income and you can help that issue by being reasonable on the modifying the corporate tax code legislation!
The Democrat budget is loaded with unreasonableness. First off, the actual legislative bill is a disgrace it is so short on detail what is the Democrats plan how are you changing things. Budgets are supposed to have tables with last years spending levels and the current fiscal years spending level broken down in detail. What are the various Senate committees plans, the Democrat budget plans tells them to pursue waste, fraud and abuse the committees should already have done and be doing that they should be suggesting changes to stop overlapping programs and making programs more efficient, etc. and that should be included in the budget. You Democrats are acting like terrible economic stewards of the country you're acting like a joke a very sad joke! The Democrat budget bill says revoke $975 billion of the Sequester budget cuts and these cuts will be replaced with the work of some piece or pieces of legislation in the future, excuse me the political parties have been unable to agree for years how to cut the deficit no reasonable person can rely on future legislation being passed to replace the sequester cuts. It is readily apparent from this Sequester move the Democrats don't appreciate the gravity and wrongfulness of America's budget deficit. I predict and this isn't really going out on a limb that if the Senate passes this partisan ideologue budget the "financial rating agencies" will come out and say that if Washington passes this Senate budget we will lower America's credit rating in a manner that will significantly hurt America! Referring to what Democrats say their budget plan is not their actual bill which doesn't address many of these issues the following notes are warranted. The Democrats want to do away with the Senate sixty vote procedural rule for moving a tax increase bill forward so they can pass a tax increase piece of legislation to raise revenue to replace some of the sequester cuts and spend on various social programs and job creation programs; this is absolutely wrong a budget bill shouldn't be able to change such a critically important Senate procedural rule that sixty vote requirement was put there because the founders of our country new how harmful certain legislation could be and they wanted the protection to be in place to require a super majority of Senators to agree to a bill before it became law to protect against such harm. The Democrats want to book hundreds of billions of dollars of deficit reduction for winding down the Afghanistan War, this is outrageously wrong and disgraceful the country needs real deficit reduction this lowering of spending on the Afghanistan war is war spending meaning it is emergency spending the fact that it was included in the overall budget doesn't matter it is emergency spending like spending on hurricane and super storm reconstruction besides pursuant to Afghanistan law we have to leave and if we are optimally prudent we will completely pull out of Afghanistan and just provide financial aid to them because our presence fuels the insurgency and obstructs them from making meaningful progress on their real problems. The Democrats want to spend an additional one hundred billion on infrastructure and job creation program, Republicans will see this as economic stimulus spending that the country can't afford and is not worth it because it has little or no value beyond a short term effect which means it has no chance of passing the House.
To some extent I hold a little understanding for the Republican House leadership over this budget because they promised their rank and file membership they would come out with a budget that eliminates the deficit within ten years in order to get the last debt ceiling extension legislation passed into law but I think they deserve no understanding if they allow this budget to pass their chamber intact. Some observations from a conservative independent that wants to see the country make significant progress here, if one looks at a broad outline of what each party is trying to do with its budget one can learn what the country really needs here, Republicans cut a huge amount of federal spending with their budget and the Democrats raise a huge amount of new tax revenue with theirs which indicates that the sensible solution for the parties is to reach a grand bargain deal which will give each party a large amount of what they primarily want. That being said common sense from a practical standpoint indicates that at the House and Senate chamber alone level a grand bargain deal is not possible the Republican House caucus is not going to agree to raise taxes not now and the Democrat Senate caucus is not going to agree to make dramatic cuts to entitlement programs not now, but maybe, the memberships of each chamber could use the budget their chamber passes to move Congress "closer" to passing a grand bargain deal. Let us say that the House budget passes a budget that only cuts $ 2 (two) trillion from the federal budget over ten years with no tax revenue changes and the Senate passes a bill with $ 800 billion of new tax revenue and $ 800 billion of actual true cuts over ten years (fair deficit reduction at minimum means at least the government matches tax raises with cuts in spending at least dollar for dollar); this would lay reasonable and realistic general targets on the cutting and taxing requirements for a grand bargain deal. Further, if one considers that Congress doesn't have to pass the budget until September 31 and it is certain that in this interim period between when each chamber passes a budget and the end of September Congress will be all in at passing legislation reforming the corporate tax code closing loopholes and lowering the corporate tax rate which could produce an entirely different political landscape by the end of September. By this it is meant that the American people know that the Republican Party has said that the change to the corporate tax code is to be revenue neutral but getting a bill on this issue to their liking may necessitate some compromise here compromise that may be irresistible to wise Republicans. Success here means reducing the corporate tax rates especially the rate on foreign earned profits which would mean this money comes home and is spent on investment, dividend disbursement and wage increases in America long held hopes of the American people. Now what if during the legislative process for the tax code legislation the Republican party was faced with this offer by the Democrats which is Democrats will agree to close loopholes to lower the corporate tax rate (which is at 35% today) to say 30(thirty) % and to say 20(twenty) for foreign earned income if you agree to use $800 billion over ten years from some of the closing of tax loopholes and limiting tax deductions and exemptions (excluding charitable donations) to say $50,000 or $60,000 (fifty or sixty thousand) per year for wealthy Americans and will agree to cut federal spending $1.6 trillion over ten years with dramatic cuts to entitlement programs (during the election President Obama called for a budget cut/tax increase ratio of 2.5 to 1) and the Democrats say this is an all or nothing deal, I think the vast majority of Republican and independent voters would want the Republican party to accept such a deal they would see this as a successful deal. You know that the Simpson-Bowles commission which many Republicans have referred to as a commission that offers good leadership called for using some of the revenue obtained by closing corporate tax loopholes to reduce the deficit. My point here is that the tax code legislation process holds the opportunity to reach a grand bargain deal especially if the budgets passed by each chamber before that process starts can give the tax code legislation conference committee many of the basic elements of a grand bargain deal; it's an opportunity because the political and economic benefits the tax code legislation offer for each party creates a really strong force to put together a deal, remember Congress is full of incumbent members of Congress that have to run for reelection and what do incumbents love to do on the campaign trail that's right tout all their accomplishments in Washington and passing tax reform legislation fits this "need for accomplishments" bill to the "T"!
What is going to happen if each of the parties continues on the trajectory they are in with these budgets? In the next two or three weeks the Republican House will pass their ideologue budget bill and the Democrat Senate will pass their ideologue budget bill and all through the Spring and Summer rank and file members of Congress will go around the country and on TV defending their party's bill and dig their heels in deeper and become more firmly entrenched with their party's bill and compromise will become impossible and what Congress will do at the 11th hour is continue with the current budget with minor modifications to make the budget compliant to the 2011 debt ceiling legislation; a multitude of knowledgeable people in the political and media world would completely agree with this assessment if they were candid! One can see the foolishness mounting already Republican members of the House especially the leadership are becoming so proud of themselves if they are able to pass a budget that eliminates the deficit in ten years if they do this their budget will be completely worthless it will never become law the American people don't want the dramatic changes such a budget would bring. If this predictable gridlock scenario unfolds the country will continue to add $750 billion plus a year to the deficit, the country's entitlement programs will continue to be long-term unsustainable in short the country will continue to be shackled with serious economic problems. If rank and file members of Congress don't want the above scenario they are going to have to start being their own person start following their own conscience and work with members across the political aisle and pass budgets out of their chamber that the conference committee can work with where the gap between the House and Senate bills can be bridged. Some thoughts on this issue, after the last election Eric Cantor who one can truthfully say is fully in the right wing of his party publicly said he is in favor of scrapping the heretofore Republican Medicare premium support plan and sticking with the present Medicare system but just tighten up the price controls meaning follow Simpson-Bowles recommendation and stop the current obstruction of standard insurance cost controls of "copays" created by medigap/medicare supplemental insurance plans in the Medicare system. Why doesn't the House pursue this Cantor initiative, the White House has said they could work out a deal on this issue? Further, on the whole Medicare issue the country needs long-term savings because with the ever increasing retirement of the baby boomers the cost of this program will escalate and the truth is that the Medicare Administration as terrific as many of the individual staff are is an unwieldy bureaucracy in part meaning that they never really challenge medical providers on the utility of the medical services they provide and you know in the media almost on a weekly basis a study or an assessment comes out which essentially says you know the standard of care for this or that medical condition might not be the optimal level of care meaning that an excellent insurance administration could do a hell of a lot better than the Medicare administration in reducing costs and maintaining the quality. One of the excellent ideas of Obamacare was the medical loss ratio that individual health insurance providers must comply with this initiative requires providers to pay like eight-five percent of the premiums they take in on paying medical claims meaning they can only make like fifteen percent profit any over amount they have to give back to enrollees. Why doesn't the federal government mandate such a medical claim loss ratio on Medicare advantage programs and say to the providers the excess above the medical loss ratio has to be turned back to the Medicare Trust Fund not the enrollees and we will split the excess with you two-thirds for the trust fund one-third for the insurance provider; this will cut Medicare spending and help the deficit! Very little has been said about the Social Security pension entitlement program of late in Washington and it seems like nothing has been said about reforming the Social Security disability system but good judgment would indicate significant savings could be made from changes in this latter program. Last year the Wall Street journal ran a series of articles about the joke the Social Security Disability appeals system is with many judges approving like ninety percent of their appeals, this writer personally knows two men that are on Social Security disability for mental health related matters and there is no denial they have mental health issues but this is the God honest truth these men hold the qualities of shrewdness and cunning that would rival the most shrewd and cunning politicians in Washington the bottom line is that these guys without a doubt are capable of working granted it would probably be menial labor but nevertheless gainful work, why does the number of Social Security cases increase in times of recession when people can't find work this disability program is supposed to be for people who can't work not for people who can't find work (can't the program be tightened up to stop this gaming of the system), why does this disability system not have a conditional acceptance program by that it is meant that there seems to be a lot of borderline cases why isn't there a system for these borderline cases where even if the judge approves your application youre going to be audited a few times a year to be sure your health is such you can't work and if it turns out the evidence shows you can work your acceptance into the program is revoked, and why doesn't this system have mechanism to incentivize, in part it could be financial, people who have Social Security disability who it turns out actually can presently work to leave the program.
