Trump aims to renew GOP war on disability aid

Republicans’ hostility to Social Security in general has been well-documented over the years.

- MICHAEL HILTZIK COLUMNIST

MANDEL NGAN AFP/Getty Images THE PRESIDENT signs a proclamation honoring the Social Security Act. With him is Frank Bisignano.

Less widely recognized is their antagonism for one component of the program: disability coverage.

As a target, disability had ebbed as disability rolls declined, along with unemployment, during the economic recovery of the last few years. But it’s back.

Despite promising repeatedly not to cut Social Security benefits, President Trump is contemplating a change in disability standards that could deprive as many as 750,000 potential recipients of their eligibility for benefits over 10 years. That’s the judgment of the Urban Institute, which undertook a painstaking analysis of the changes under discussion at the White House and the Social Security Administration.

Such a change, amounting to a 20% cut in the share of applicants who qualify for disability benefits, would be “the largest-ever cut to Social Security Disability Insurance,” argues the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “It would be even larger than the Reagan-era disability cuts, which the Reagan administration was forced to reverse amid fierce opposition from governors, courts, beneficiaries, and advocates.”

According to government disclosures and outside reporting, the administration is contemplating two major changes to disability standards, which it describes generally as “improvements to the disability adjudication process.”

‘One is likely to be largely innocuous: removing numerous outdated occupations, such as “nut sorters’ and “egg processors,” from its database and adding occupations that have emerged during the digital age, such as web designers.

This effort, which has bipartisan support, is important because disability judges sometimes have approved or disapproved disability benefits based on the putative availability of old jobs that no longer truly exist.