Duluth News Tribune - Nolan: Disability Cuts Not a Solution

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By Bradley Slater

Rick Nolan agrees that fraud in the Social Security system needs to be addressed. The 8th District congressman just doesn't agree with how the new Republican House majority is going about it.

"We have virtually nobody examining these spurious disability claims," Nolan said during a phone interview earlier this week from his Washington, D.C. office. "The answer is not to cut disability payments. The answer is to get the unscrupulous (people) who are abusing disability and get them off the program."

Last week, the House of Representatives quietly passed a rule change that prohibits the transfer of money between the program's retirement fund and Social Security Disability Insurance fund unless taxes are increased or benefits are reduced. Without a transfer, the disability fund is predicted to be depleted in 2016, meaning between 9 million and 11 million disabled American workers face up to a 20 percent cut in benefits.

A co-sponsor of the rule change, Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., wrote before the Congress began its new session this month that "Social Security retirement funds have been raided far too many times for far too many years. My intention by doing this is to force us to look for a long-term solution for SSDI rather than raiding Social Security to bail out a failing federal program. Retired taxpayers who have paid into the system for years deserve no less."

Nolan countered in his weekly column this week, saying that since 1968 the two funds have transferred money 11 times without negative outcomes. The Democrat from Crosby, Minn., said he believes the rule change was made to drive a GOP agenda to privatize Social Security.

"Calling the integrity of Social Security into question by inventing a crisis for the disability fund could advance that agenda," he wrote.

Nolan currently is helping his 39-year-old daughter -- a mother of four -- assess treatment options as she faces stage IV lung cancer. It's a fight that is informing his longstanding advocacy for public trust in Social Security.

"As one who has witnessed the importance of Social Security disability for people who are truly disabled -- including a young mother with incurable cancer -- I think it's necessary to have a re-examination of Social Security disability," he told the News Tribune. "People that are teaming up with doctors and lawyers and securing disability and are found to be out working here and there and everywhere for cash -- that's got to stop."

Nolan said "everyone knows somebody in their community" who is abusing disability insurance. He cited the infamous case from the previous decade of a Minnesota beauty pageant queen who was sentenced to four years in prison after she was prosecuted for collecting disability insurance for neck pain and headaches while at the same time using her aerobic expertise in pageants and as an instructor.

The Social Security Administration reported 126,696 disabled workers received benefits in Minnesota as of December 2013.

In February last year, Carolyn Colvin, acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, told the House Ways and Means Committee's subcommittee on Social Security that fraud was a regrettable reality of the system, but that the administration had developed expertise in fraud detection while working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General.

"In fiscal year 2013, we made over 22,500 disability fraud referrals to the OIG," she testified last year. "The OIG opened about 5,300 cases based on these referrals. To date, the OIG has referred over 100 of these cases to the United States Attorneys' Offices for criminal prosecution."

Those numbers don't appear to satisfy lawmakers. The Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee chairman, Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, authored the rule change passed last week. He has called the disability program "fraud-plagued" and said the intent of the rule change was to protect retirement benefits.

Nolan said a typical county has more law enforcement officials than there are federal officials investigating the validity of disability claims. He offered that a true examination of disability fraud would include more investigative manpower with a broader authority to address lawyers and physicians and others who are complicit with fraudulent claims.

"There's quite a collection of interests that benefit from this," Nolan said, while also acknowledging, "I used to get angry with people who were abusing this, and the anger usually is targeted at recipients, but you need to expand that."

Nolan's concern with a rule that discourages money transfers between the funds is that it will undermine public confidence and yield a Social Security system that turns its money over to Wall Street investors.

Nolan said he believes it's those power interests who already are part of the problem with fraudulent claims.

"It if were a matter of taking on unscrupulous recipients it'd be easy," Nolan said. "They don't contribute to campaigns; don't vote as a general group. But when you start taking on the pillars of the community who end up being some of the primary beneficiaries, you're trying to change something that benefits some very powerful interest groups."

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