WASHINGTON — Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security’s disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency.
Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs and can’t find new ones in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs.
The stampede for benefits is adding to a growing backlog of applicants — many wait two years or more before their cases are resolved — and worsening the financial problems of a program that’s been running in the red for years.
New congressional estimates say the trust fund that supports Social Security disability will run out of money by 2017, leaving the program unable to pay full benefits, unless Congress acts. About two decades later, Social Security’s much larger retirement fund is projected to run dry as well.
Read complete story in Monday's Times Free Press.
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Alright! Time for SS to call in all those I.O.U.s!
If they (repugnants)can crash the system, they will, so their corporate daddies can control what we eat, drink, and breathe. We have to trust a Government of the people because the alternative is servitude to giant world conglomerates.
It's hilarious to see the talking points come out. Both Democrats & Republicans have spent too much. Now, both Democrats & Republicans need to cut spending to get our financial status in good standing. The more that folks call for more spending & taxing, the more it's obvious they've never run a business or care about being financially sound.
The social security system was borrowed out long before the current wars and both parties did it. They have borrowed repeatedly for decades and spent the money. I may have to borrow money to run my budget with a mortgage but I don't take out a new mortgage every year. Both parties are more interested in fixing blame than fixing the economy and both parties have plenty of dupes out there that jump around and point fingers. It's like watching my house burn down while the fire department argues about what color hose to use to put it out. At this point I am pretty sure we are so far along the path to destruction that we will not come back. We are not all that far from the condition that Greece, Ireland, Spain, and France are in. After it all crashes we will still be plagued with people squalling like squashed cats about one party or the other having caused it. Wake up and smell the smoke and stop looking to the same stupid ideas that put us here to get us out.
But FACTS Social Security is NOT the deficit eating, draining-america-taxpayer monster the GOP would have you believe. Social Security actually adds NOTHING to the national deficit. The only problems with Social Security over the years are too many other agencies has had their hands deep inside the SS cookie jar.
holdout You're absolutely right!! Johnson, I think, was the first to borrow from the SS Trust Fund. Some say Kennedy may have borrowed to help finance NASA. But it was Reagan, if I remember correctly, who hit SS up for over 5 trillion. Bush dipped in to finance his two wars on a shoestring budget and make up for the tax breaks he gave to the rich.
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