> Posted by Joshua Goldstein aka Mr. Provocative
Last week some Democrats blasted conservative U.S. Senator Rand Paul for saying that many people who receive Social Security disability benefits are gaming the system. “What I tell people is, if you look like me and you hop out of your truck, you shouldn’t be getting a disability check. Over half of the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts — join the club,” he said, drawing a few laughs from the audience. “Who doesn’t get a little anxious for work every day and their back hurts? Everybody over 40 has back pain.”
Hyperbolic and a little mean. Okay, a lot mean. And Rand Paul’s opposition to the Senate’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an outrage, but we should not overlook that on this issue of fraud and waste in the Social Security disability system, there is a lot of truth to what he says – and the system is in need of reform.
In my view he is making a very legitimate point about an important government benefits system that some experts believe is veering dangerously close to bankruptcy. Less than one percent of those who collect disability benefits ever go back to work. This strains credibility and puts the program’s long-term solvency at risk. One telling example: as unemployment benefits run out during a serious economic downturn, it is not uncommon to see a spike in disability claims. Put simply, people who could work but don’t have work escape to the shelter of another government program to pay their bills. This is wrong. And it is a problem for all of us, not least for persons with serious disabilities who really can’t work and who even Paul agrees, a just society is duty bound to support.
The U.S. experience (and as I understand it the Canadian experience as well) should serve as a warning to lower-income countries that are in the early stages of designing social welfare systems to cover citizens with disabilities. It is imperative for them to ensure that in their systems, going back to work is not inadvertently disincentivized.
And it simply defies plausibility that so few people are able to go back to work. The kind and reasonable explanation for this is that many people with disabilities want to seek work at times when their condition has moderated, but fear that earned income or savings will be held against them if they fall back into a more compromised state and seek to collect benefits again. These fears need to be allayed.
At the same time, this understandable rationale explains away only some of the long-term collectors of disability benefits. Another explanation points to less attractive aspects of human character that affect the disabled and the abled alike. Let me explain.
In my work as a disability rights advocate, I try to avoid the unfortunate tendency to idealize (or overstate the virtue and character of) the persons I lobby for – a dangerous occupational hazard for those with a righteous cause. Moving away from a charity, pity based model to a human rights model means to recognize the full spectrum of humanity of the person with disability: the capacity for industry and goodness as well as the capacity for sloth and evil. It cannot be emphasized enough that membership in a vulnerable minority (whether gay, woman, a person with a disability, etc.) whose group has suffered from ongoing discrimination, does not automatically endow a person with virtue or offer a special dispensation for a lack of achievement. Clearly some opportunists take cover and comfort in an aggrieved group identity to avoid owning up to their own personal failings. And some of the best-intentioned advocates go along with this canard.
That is why at the Center for Financial Inclusion we argue for equal opportunity in receiving financial services, not special preference. Just because one happens to be a member of a vulnerable minority doesn’t mean that person has an inherent “right” to receive a loan or another financial product.
Indeed, we make it clear to disability organizations we collaborate with that the person who has a disability has to meet the common criteria and standards that all clients are held to and is not granted or denied a loan as a “representative” of a minority but as an individual who happens to be creditworthy. Period.
In my view, many activists do their best to blur the distinction between the individual and the “class” or “special interest group” that a person may belong to. This does a grave disservice to those members of said group who simply want their equality and human rights to be honored.
Sometimes the obvious needs repetition: there are people in the U.S., Ghana, Paraguay, etc. who happen to have a disability (or who are a woman, or gay, etc.) who are also liars and lazy, and they should be held accountable as citizens regardless of their identification with a group that may have suffered historic discrimination.
Have you read?
A How-To Guide to Realizing Disability Inclusion at MFIs is Now Available
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Attitudes toward Persons With Disabilities in Indian Microfinance Institutions
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January 22, 2015 at 1:41 pm
Chris
“One telling example: as unemployment benefits run out during a serious economic downturn, it is not uncommon to see a spike in disability claims. Put simply, people who could work but don’t have work escape to the shelter of another government program to pay their bills. This is wrong.”
Did you ever stop to consider that losing one’s job may be a triggering event that brings on, or exacerbates, pre-existing mental health problems such as depression?
January 23, 2015 at 2:14 pm
James Militzer
Paul claimed that “Over half of the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts.” You follow up by saying that “there’s a lot of truth” to Paul’s critique, primarily objecting to the fact that it sounds mean.
Other analysts have arrived at a significantly different opinion. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik, for instance, called Paul’s remarks “outstandingly ignorant and cynical,” due to his use of numbers that are “flagrantly wrong.” Your readers might wish to read his point of view: http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-rand-pauls-supremely-cynical-attack-on-social-security-20150119-column.html.
I’m sure you have a point, overall, about weaknesses in the program – there are always going to be people who game the system, and many advocates are uncomfortable discussing this. How big a problem this is remains unclear, and you haven’t provided much hard evidence of it. But I wouldn’t use Paul’s numbers as a starting point for this discussion, even if it makes for a provocative headline or news hook. He’s simply not a trustworthy source on this issue.
January 24, 2015 at 12:14 pm
Joshua Goldstein
Both of these are excellent and worthy comments. Chris makes a great point that unemployment can lead to mental health issues that may rise to the level of a disability. And to both of these thoughtful contributors, I should say that in citing Ron Paul, I am not holding him up as an exemplar of virtue or insight. Not at all. But in our most mean spirited and partisan congress, I am trying to make the point that underneath the rhetorical excesses, there may be more place for a rational exchange of views than it may first appear.
January 26, 2015 at 12:34 pm
James Militzer
Thanks Joshua, but if a rational exchange of views were the goal, I imagine Paul would’ve used accurate numbers rather than snarky soundbites and wild hyperbole. That’s why I don’t share your apparent optimism that the debate he is helping to spark will lead to an honest discussion – let alone to any outcome that ultimately strengthens the program. It seems quite possible that gross exaggerations about massive social security fraud are part of a strategy to push through dramatic cuts to the program by pitting beneficiaries of its retirement benefits against those of its disability support, as this article discusses: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/gop-social-security-divide-and-conquer-retired-disabled.
It would be a pity if commentators who value Social Security and its benefits inadvertently helped amplify the arguments of those who are more interested in starving the program than in improving it.
January 26, 2015 at 2:30 pm
Joshua Goldstien
James, you are certainly right that Paul may be raising this issue for all the wrong reasons. And it may have been a mistake on my part to have used a quote from him as the lead to get a discussion on this subject going. I really wanted this piece to be a starting point for a discussion of not just the uses and abuses of group identity for persons with disabilities but for all groups seeking some kind of justice and redress of grievances.
January 27, 2015 at 12:10 pm
James Militzer
Thanks Joshua. You do raise some valid points, especially about the common tendency to hide behind group identity to avoid owning up to personal failings – or even to claim unearned privileges. After getting into this discussion with you, I tried to get a better idea of how much this is happening with Social Security. For what it’s worth, here are some stats from the Washington Post fact-check on Paul’s statements: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/01/23/rand-pauls-claim-that-over-half-of-the-people-on-disability-are-either-anxious-or-their-back-hurts/
“The Government Accountability Office, in a 2013 report on the $128 billion program, documented $1.29 billion in potential overpayments to 36,000 people in 2011 – but these were people who were working and had earnings in excess of $1,000 a month. So it’s hard to call them “malingerers.” The number of people who received overpayments represented just 0.4 percent of beneficiaries, GAO said.”
I find that it reassuring that most overpayments apparently go to people who are working and earning too much to qualify, rather than those who are just sitting around collecting checks. That doesn’t dilute your main point about human nature, but perhaps puts it in a less urgent context, at least as it applies to Social Security.
Anyway, I’ll stop giving you a hard time now ;-). Thanks for taking the time to engage.
January 30, 2015 at 4:51 pm
John Gitau
I think Josh is objective, and knows that advocacy bereft of touchyness is evidence of stable maturity. Those who feel inferior, I guess are ever attentive to any pointer to the inferiority in order to play defensive or cry foul. I don’t think Josh is the type that cries out for mercy when his proteges are under attack. He is never under any illusion that those under his advocacy umbrella are infallible. Is owning up to that a mark of less advocacy commitment? Should he sacrifice honesty at the alter of hardline advocacy? In fact, I find Michael Hiltzik perspective alarmist, wanting to see a snake in every rope. He lives under Chinua Achebe’s saying that ” an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb”. Josh is the one entitled to behave that way but he doesn’t because he is above petty fear.