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89–583 2016

ENCOURAGING WORK THROUGH 

THE SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY 

INSURANCE PROGRAM 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SOCIAL SECURITY 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JUNE 19, 2013 

Serial 113–SS7 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means 

( 


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COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS 

DAVE CAMP, Michigan, Chairman 

SAM JOHNSON, Texas 

KEVIN BRADY, Texas 

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin 

DEVIN NUNES, California 

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

PETER J. ROSKAM, Illinois 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

TOM PRICE, Georgia 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska 

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois 

LYNN JENKINS, Kansas 

ERIK PAULSEN, Minnesota 

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas 

DIANE BLACK, Tennessee 

TOM REED, New York 

TODD YOUNG, Indiana 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

JIM RENACCI, Ohio 

SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan 

CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York 

JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington 

JOHN LEWIS, Georgia 

RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts 

XAVIER BECERRA, California 

LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas 

MIKE THOMPSON, California 

JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut 

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon 

RON KIND, Wisconsin 

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey 

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York 

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania 

DANNY DAVIS, Illinois 

LINDA SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

JENNIFER M. SAFAVIAN, Staff Director and General Counsel 

JANICE MAYS, Minority Chief Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES 

SAM JOHNSON, Texas, Chairman 

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

JIM RENACCI, Ohio 

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

KEVIN BRADY, Texas 

XAVIER BECERRA, California 

LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas 

MIKE THOMPSON, California 

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania 


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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Advisory of June 19, 2013 announcing the hearing .............................................. 2 

WITNESSES 

Mark G. Duggan, Ph.D., Professor, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Testimony ............................................................................................. 10 

Mary C. Daly, Ph.D., Group Vice President and Associate Director of Research, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Testimony ............................ 25 

Kevin Ufier, National Director Managed Disability, GENEX Services, Testimony ...................................................................................................................... 38 

Lisa D. Ekman, Director of Federal Policy, Health & Disability Advocates, 

on behalf of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Social Security 

Task Force, Testimony ......................................................................................... 49 

James Smith, Budget and Policy Manger, Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, Vermont Agency of Human Services, Burlington, Vermont, 

Testimony ............................................................................................................. 63 

David Weaver, Ph.D., Associate Commissioner, Office of Program Development and Research, accompanied by Robert Williams, Associate Commissioner, Office of Employment Support Programs, Social Security Administration, Testimony ................................................................................................ 74 

QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD 

David Weaver ........................................................................................................... 108 

James Smith ............................................................................................................ 115 

Kevin Ufier ............................................................................................................... 118 

Mark Duggan ........................................................................................................... 123 

Mary Daly ................................................................................................................. 127 

PUBLIC SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Health and Disability Advocates ............................................................................ 129 

National Disability Rights Network ....................................................................... 136 

National Employment Network Association .......................................................... 139 

Pamela Villarreal ..................................................................................................... 143 

Paralyzed Veterans of America .............................................................................. 149 

R. Larkin Taylor Parker .......................................................................................... 158 


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(1) 

ENCOURAGING WORK THROUGH 

THE SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY 

INSURANCE PROGRAM 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 2013 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SOCIAL SECURITY

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 

B–318, Cannon House Office Building, the Honorable Sam Johnson 

[chairman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

[The advisory of the hearing follows:] 


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HEARING ADVISORY 

Chairman Johnson Announces Hearing on 

Encouraging Work Through the 

Social Security Disability Insurance Program 

Washington, June 12, 2013 

U.S. Congressman Sam Johnson (R–TX), Chairman of the House Committee on 

Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, today announced a hearing on 

encouraging work through the Social Security Disability Insurance program. The 

hearing will take place on Wednesday, June 19, 2013, in B–318 Rayburn 

House Office Building beginning at 10:00 a.m. 

In view of the limited time available to hear witnesses, oral testimony at this 

hearing will be from invited witnesses only. However, any individual or organization 

not scheduled for an oral appearance may submit a written statement for consideration by the Subcommittee and for inclusion in the printed record of the hearing. 

BACKGROUND: 

Disability Insurance (DI) benefits provide an essential income safety net for disabled workers and their families. Between calendar years (CY) 1970 and 2012, the 

number of people paying into the DI program increased 72 percent, but those receiving disability benefits (both disabled workers and their dependent family members) 

increased by over 300 percent from 2.7 million to over 10.9 million, according to the 

Congressional Budget Office (CBO). This growth is primarily due to the aging of the 

population, more women in the workforce and eligible for DI, changes in federal policy, and changes in opportunities for employment and compensation. In its May update, CBO projects that over 12.4 million beneficiaries will receive $207 billion in 

benefits in fiscal year 2023, up from $135 billion in 2012. According to the recently 

released 2013 Social Security Trustees report, in 2016, DI program revenues will 

only be able to finance 80 percent of benefits, unless Congress acts. 

The recession and slow economic recovery resulted in an increase in disabled 

worker applications and benefit awards. Benefit awards grew from 818,000 in CY 

2007 to a peak of 1.04 million in 2010. In CY 2012, 984,000 disabled workers were 

awarded benefits. Approximately 30 percent of those receiving disabled worker benefits were under 50 years of age in 2011. 

After being awarded benefits based on an inability to work, individuals may attempt to return to work and are offered a variety of programs and support by the 

Social Security Administration (SSA). Work incentive provisions are designed to encourage return-to-work by allowing disability beneficiaries to test their capacity to 

sustain work before their benefits are ceased. The SSA also administers the Ticket 

to Work program, which provides additional return-to-work support. Among beneficiaries tracked over 10 years, 28 percent worked at some point, but only 4 percent 

had sufficient earnings to have their benefits ended. Younger beneficiaries—those 

under 40—were more likely to work than older beneficiaries. 

Overall, according to the SSA, among all workers who exited the disability rolls 

in 2011, 52 percent converted to retirement benefits, 36 percent died, 4 percent 

medically improved to the extent they no longer met the eligibility criteria, and 6 

percent returned to work. 

Increasingly, experts are researching the challenges facing the disability program 

and developing new proposals intended to help more individuals remain in the 

workforce or return to work once they begin receiving disability benefits. In the 

most recent beneficiary survey, 40 percent of beneficiaries expressed an interest in 

working. Recently, other countries, such as the Netherlands and Norway, have undertaken reforms to reduce the growth in their disability rolls by focusing efforts 


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on keeping applicants in the workforce or returning beneficiaries to work as soon 

as possible. 

In announcing the hearing, Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson 

(R–TX) said, ‘‘It’s just plain wrong that those receiving disability benefits 

who want to work are sentenced to a lifetime of near poverty with no way 

out. Social Security’s return-to-work efforts are simply failing do their job 

of helping our fellow citizens find work. We must find ways to help these 

Americans trade in their disability check for a paycheck that can provide 

a better life.’’ 

FOCUS OF THE HEARING: 

The hearing will examine the impact of the DI program on the economy, efforts 

by Social Security to return individuals to work, efforts internationally to return individuals to work, and other options to encourage work. 

DETAILS FOR SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN COMMENTS: 

Please Note: Any person(s) and/or organization(s) wishing to submit for the hearing record must follow the appropriate link on the hearing page of the Committee 

website and complete the informational forms. From the Committee homepage, 

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/, select ‘‘Hearings.’’ Select the hearing for which you 

would like to submit, and click on the link entitled, ‘‘Click here to provide a submission for the record.’’ Once you have followed the online instructions, submit all requested information. ATTACH your submission as a Word or WordPerfect document, in compliance with the formatting requirements listed below, by the close 

of business on Wednesday July 3, 2013. Finally, please note that due to the 

change in House mail policy, the U.S. Capitol Police will refuse sealed-package deliveries to all House Office Buildings. For questions, or if you encounter technical 

problems, please call (202) 225–1721 or (202) 225–3625. 

FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS: 

The Committee relies on electronic submissions for printing the official hearing 

record. As always, submissions will be included in the record according to the discretion of the Committee. The Committee will not alter the content of your submission, 

but we reserve the right to format it according to our guidelines. Any submission 

provided to the Committee by a witness, any supplementary materials submitted for 

the printed record, and any written comments in response to a request for written 

comments must conform to the guidelines listed below. Any submission or supplementary item not in compliance with these guidelines will not be printed, but will 

be maintained in the Committee files for review and use by the Committee. 

1. All submissions and supplementary materials must be provided in Word or WordPerfect 

format and MUST NOT exceed a total of 10 pages, including attachments. Witnesses and submitters are advised that the Committee relies on electronic submissions for printing the official 

hearing record. 

2. Copies of whole documents submitted as exhibit material will not be accepted for printing. 

Instead, exhibit material should be referenced and quoted or paraphrased. All exhibit material 

not meeting these specifications will be maintained in the Committee files for review and use 

by the Committee. 

3. All submissions must include a list of all clients, persons and/or organizations on whose 

behalf the witness appears. A supplemental sheet must accompany each submission listing the 

name, company, address, telephone, and fax numbers of each witness. 

The Committee seeks to make its facilities accessible to persons with disabilities. 

If you are in need of special accommodations, please call 202–225–1721 or 202–226– 

3411 TTD/TTY in advance of the event (four business days’ notice is requested). 

Questions with regard to special accommodation needs in general (including availability of Committee materials in alternative formats) may be directed to the Committee as noted above. 

Note: All Committee advisories and news releases are available on the World 

Wide Web at http://www.waysandmeans.house.gov/. 


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4 

Chairman JOHNSON. The committee will come to order. 

Good morning. Welcome to our hearing on Encouraging Work in 

Social Security Disability. The Disability Insurance program provides essential income security to people with disabilities and their 

families. And we are glad to have all of you here today. 

Over the past 40 years, changes in demographics, Federal policy, 

and the availability of jobs have driven a 300 percent increase in 

the number of people receiving Disability Insurance benefits from 

2.7 million to over 10 million. Within 10 years, over 12.4 million 

beneficiaries will receive $207 billion in benefits. That is up 53 percent from the $135 billion paid last year. So it ought to come as 

no surprise that in their 2013 Annual Report, the Social Security 

Trustees again warned us that these most vulnerable beneficiaries 

face a 20 percent across-the-board benefit cut in just 3 years unless 

Congress acts. Those who depend on this critical benefit are counting on us to act, and we will. 

In the last 3 years, this subcommittee has held 10 hearings on 

disability. As we work to protect and preserve this vital program, 

we also need to consider how to help those who can and want to 

work. Work contributes to an individual’s well-being. Work sustains families. Work drives our economy. When people aren’t working, we all suffer. 

Unemployment in this country remains unacceptably high at 7.6 

percent. Those with disabilities seeking to get back into the workforce face a higher unemployment rate of 13.4 percent. But the unemployment rate only tells part of the story. It doesn’t count those 

who are no longer looking for jobs because they are out of the labor 

market. And it doesn’t consider the toll on human dignity as those 

who may want to work can be trapped by the disability program 

since earning a dollar too much could mean losing thousands of 

dollars in cash benefits. 

While not everyone receiving disability benefits can return to 

work, experts tell us more people would return to or stay at work 

if given the right kind of help to do so. Surveys show 40 percent 

of beneficiaries are interested in working, yet only one-half of 1 

percent leave the rolls annually due to earnings from work. 

And today we are going to examine the views of our expert witnesses regarding the impact of the disability program on the economy, efforts by other countries to return individuals to work, and 

new ways to encourage work. We will hear from a frontline service 

provider about the challenges facing those with disabilities trying 

to stay on the job and the help that enables them to stay at work 

or get back to work as soon as possible. We will also get an update 

from the Social Security Administration regarding its efforts to 

help those individuals return to work. 

Now more than ever, how every dollar is spent matters to our 

country and to our taxpayers. Programs that don’t achieve positive 

results must be reformed or end. I have seen firsthand how beneficiaries and employers benefit when the system works. We went 

to the Walgreens distribution center in Waxahachie, Texas, where 

they are working. There, with the help of the Texas Department 

of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, those with disabilities, including former beneficiaries, work side-by-side with the other workVerDate Sep 11 2014 14:00 Jun 30, 2016 Jkt 089583 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 I:\WAYS\OUT\89583.XXX 89583

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ers doing the same job for the same pay. Those who can and want 

to work should not be sentenced to a lifetime of near poverty with 

no way out. We can and we must achieve the results taxpayers expect and those with disabilities deserve. 

I now recognize the ranking member Mr. Becerra for his opening 

statement. 

Mr. BECERRA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding this hearing. And we thank all of the witnesses for being here. 

American workers earn their Social Security Disability Insurance. Nearly 160 million Americans contribute to Social Security, 

earning protection for themselves and their families when they retire or if they should die or if they become severely disabled. 

We should support the work efforts of disabled Americans. But 

at the same time, it is essential that we do no harm to those who 

cannot work and need the Social Security benefits that they have 

earned. This requires a careful balancing. On the one hand, Social 

Security should not be a barrier to work. That is, individuals who 

qualify for benefits but may be able to return to work should be 

able to try to work without risking their income and their health. 

At the same time, we should keep in mind that only those who 

have demonstrated that they are unable to work qualify for Disability Insurance. Although many Disability Insurance recipients 

would prefer to be working, most are simply too sick or impaired 

to sustain work. Only about four in 10 applicants, the sickest and 

most severely disabled, qualify for DI. A significant number of DI 

beneficiaries have terminal illness. In fact, about one in five men 

and about one in seven women die within a few years of becoming 

eligible for the benefits. 

By law, workers with disabilities that do not prevent them from 

working do not qualify for benefits. DI benefits replace only about 

half of a typical worker’s predisability earnings. So, few beneficiaries would give up their work for DI if they were able to work. 

Studies of actual DI beneficiaries show that while many DI beneficiaries make an attempt to work, most are not able to sustain employment. 

Another point: budget cuts and the so-called sequester law undermine the Social Security Administration’s work promotion efforts. The Social Security Administration’s budget is about $800 

million lower this year than it was in 2010 due to a series of budget cuts and the sequester. As a result, local SSA offices have lost 

more than 10 percent of their staff, including some of their most 

experienced case workers. With less staff and the loss of various 

senior, more experienced staff, Social Security often struggles to 

administer the complicated rules intended to protect beneficiaries 

who try to return to work. 

Before we institute any new rules or requirements for disabled 

workers, we need to consider carefully whether we are prepared to 

pay for the cost of assisting them. Our track record quite honestly 

is a cautionary tale on this point. 

Finally, Social Security Disability Insurance payments are just 

one small part of our overall national strategy to promote fairness 

and work for disabled Americans. DI is for those with the most severe impairments with almost no capacity to work. For the majority of disabled Americans who are able to work, we also have a 


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Federal State vocational rehabilitation system, anti-discrimination 

and accommodation requirements through the Americans with Disabilities Act. We have special education services for every child 

who needs them. We have various pathways to affordable health 

insurance, and we have a Federal income tax credit program for 

those who are disabled. 

I think our discussion here today will demonstrate that there is 

a need to improve support for those with partial impairments, a 

much larger group of people than those who qualify for Disability 

Insurance. But in such tight fiscal times, we need to be fully aware 

of the costs and trade-offs. As a rule, Americans who are able to 

work with some support are not eligible for any benefits from Social Security because Social Security is not meant to be a partial 

disability system. If we are going to talk about changing the rules 

to allow more people to combine work and Disability Insurance, we 

also need to discuss how we will pay for the added cost of coverage 

for less disabled workers. 

There is no doubt that there is room for improvement in our national policy for supporting people with disabilities, including those 

who can work and those who cannot. However, we cannot pretend 

that this can be done on the cheap, that all we need to do is make 

a few tweaks, and thousands of DI recipients will all of a sudden 

be able to support themselves through work. And we must be careful not to do so at the expense of those Americans who have no 

choice but to rely on the disability benefits that they paid for and 

have earned. 

The question I have for my colleagues and our witnesses is, what 

are we, Congress, willing to invest to support work among people 

with disabilities? Should our efforts be aimed primarily at the sickest and most disabled, the people who qualify for Social Security 

Disability Insurance? If so, the first step is to provide SSA with 

adequate resources to administer the work incentives and support 

services Congress has already authorized. Or should we cast the 

net more broadly to assist those who are struggling to work, despite the effects of their impairments, but do not meet the very 

strict eligibility criteria for Social Security? I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today as we sort through these challenges. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. 

As is customary, any member is welcome to submit a statement 

for the hearing record. 

And before we move on to our testimony today, I want to remind 

our witnesses to please limit your oral statements to 5 minutes. 

However, without objection, all of the written testimony will be 

made part of the hearing record. 

We have one witness panel today. Seated at the table are Mark 

Duggan, a professor from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, PhD. 

Mary C. Daly, another PhD, group vice president and Associate 

Director of Research, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; 

Kevin Ufier, National Director, Managed Disability, GENEX Services; Lisa Ekman, Director of Federal Policy, Health & Disability 

Advocates, on behalf of the Consortium for Citizens With Disabilities Social Security Task Force; James Smith, Budget and Policy 


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Manager, Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, Vermont Agency of 

Human Services. 

Thank you for being here. 

David Weaver, PhD, Associate Commissioner for the Office of 

Program Development and Research, accompanied by Bob Williams, Associate Commissioner for the Office of Employment Support Programs, Social Security Administration. 

Mr. Duggan, welcome. Thanks for being here. Please proceed. 

STATEMENT OF MARK G. DUGGAN, PH.D., PROFESSOR, THE 

WHARTON SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. DUGGAN. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Becerra, 

and Members of the Committee, it is truly an honor to be with you 

here today. The Social Security Disability Insurance program currently provides insurance against the risk of disability to more 

than 150 million American adults. The program represents an extremely important part of our Nation’s safety net, as it protects 

workers and their families from the risk of a disability that prevents or greatly inhibits a person’s ability to work. As shown in figure one, enrollment in the SSDI program has grown steadily since 

the late 1980s, from 2.3 percent of adults 25 to 64 in 1989 to 5.0 

percent in 2012. 

As I outlined in my written testimony, several factors have contributed to this growth in SSDI enrollment, including an aging of 

the Baby Boom population. As people at higher ages are more likely to receive SSDI has contributed as has a growth in employment 

among women, which has made more of them insured for the program. But these factors contribute less than a third to the growth 

in SSDI enrollment outlined above. 

A more important factor outlined in figure two has been an evolution of the diagnoses with which individuals have been qualifying 

for SSDI benefits resulting from a liberalization of the program’s 

medical eligibility criteria that occurred in the mid 1980s. Looking 

at the figure, you can see that conditions circulatory and neoplasms 

award rates have remained roughly flat. Strokes, heart attack, cancer, and so forth has been very little change in the award rates. 

Those are the four series in the middle. And each bar represents 

an award rate in 1983, 1989, 1999 or 2009. 

On the other hand, if one looks at, for example, diseases of the 

musculoskeletal system, an example of that would be very severe 

back pain, the award rate over this period has increased by a factor 

of five, from 0.4 to 2.0, as measured above. 

Another important driver of the growth factor in SSDI enrollment is the sensitivity of the program to economic conditions. As 

outlined in figure three, applications to the SSDI program are highly responsive to the unemployment rate, with applications rising 

during economic downturns and falling when the economy improves. Several other factors have contributed as well. But my research and the research of many others suggests that the SSDI 

program is having a large and growing important impact on the 

U.S. labor market. 

In order to receive an SSDI award, a person must be deemed unable to engage in substantial gainful activity. Once on the program, 


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SSDI recipients have little incentive to return to work, as earnings 

beyond the SGA threshold will lead to a termination of benefits. 

And given that the present value of an average SSDI award is 

$270,000, including Medicare benefits, that is a risk many SSDI recipients will be reluctant to take. 

The growth in SSDI has coincided with a significant reduction in 

employment rates among individuals with disabilities. For example, from 1988 to 2008, the employment rate of men in their 40s 

and 50s with a work-limiting disability fell from 28 percent to 16 

percent. As shown in figure four, there has been a growing gap in 

employment rates between workers with and without disabilities 

that has coincided with the growth in SSDI enrollment. 

Previous research has also shown that workers have become 

much more likely to respond to adverse demand shocks in the economy by applying for SSDI rather than seeking a new job. This is 

going to serve to reduce both the unemployment rate and the labor 

force participation rate below what it otherwise would be, and it 

also reduces employment, as SSDI recipients so rarely leave the 

program to return to the workforce. 

My analysis of the application data shown in figure two indicates 

that more than 2.5 million people have applied for SSDI as a result 

of the economic downturn. The steady increase in SSDI enrollment 

since the 1980s has contributed to a differential decline in labor 

force participation among both men and women in the U.S. relative 

to other industrialized countries. 

One way to improve incentives for workers in the SSDI program 

is to intervene sooner for individuals with work-limiting conditions 

so that they can continue to work. Many people with more subjective disorders, such as back pain, could benefit from such early 

intervention. 

In a recent paper, David Autor and I have proposed adding a 

front end to the SSDI system that would include early intervention 

for rehabilitation-related services with the goal of keeping workers 

with work-related disabilities in the labor market. 

An additional approach would be to improve work incentives for 

people on the SSDI program to return to the workforce. Recent evidence from Norway indicates that programs that increase the incentive to work among people on Disability Insurance can lead to 

a large growth in their labor supply. 

The lack of progress and improving work incentives in SSDI 

stands in marked contrast to the Temporary Assistance to Needy 

Families program. Reforms introduced in the late 1990s led to substantial gains in employment among past, current, and potential 

future TANF recipients and to a steady drop in program enrollment and expenditures. Based on my own research and that of 

many others, I believe similar progress is possible within SSDI and 

the need for such progress is, indeed, urgent both because of a 

pending expiration of the trust fund and the trends in the U.S. 

labor market as described above. 

Thank you. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, sir. You sped that up and 

made it on time. Congratulations. 

Mr. DUGGAN. I did. I was watching that clock. 

[The statement of Mr. Duggan follows:] 


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f 

Chairman JOHNSON. Dr. Daly, welcome. Please proceed. 

STATEMENT OF MARY C. DALY, PH.D., GROUP VICE PRESIDENT AND ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, FEDERAL 

RESERVE BANK OF SAN FRANCISCO, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 

Ms. DALY. Thank you. Chairman Johnson and Members of the 

Committee, it is an honor to be here. I will say that my remarks 


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today are my views and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve System. 

That said, I wanted to make three points this morning. The first 

point is referenced in figure one and basically is the following: That 

the growth in the DI program that we have witnessed over the last 

couple of decades is not completely explained by factors that are 

transitory, such as the aging of the population, the entry of women 

onto the DI program because of their increased eligibility, or the 

increase in the normal retirement age. 

In fact, if I control for those three things, similar to Professor 

Duggan, what we find is that the red line, which shows growth controlling for those factors, has continued to rise. And that is the portion that is unexplained by these transitory variables. And if you 

extrapolate out that growth, you think that the program might be 

in an unsustainable position. 

The second point I would like to make is that, in the United 

States, we are not alone in having these types of challenges. In 

fact, our European counterparts faced similar challenges more than 

a decade ago. They had rapidly rising disability recipiency rates 

that were not explained by demographic or health trends. They undertook particular reforms in those areas to try to curb the growth 

in the benefit roles and stem the tide of new beneficiaries in particular. 

I want to focus on figure two on two countries. There are other 

countries you could use as an example, but these two countries I 

think paint a nice picture. I want to refer your attention to Sweden 

and the Netherlands. Both of those countries had very rapidly rising disability recipiency rates and recipiency rates that, on average, have been far higher than the United States. When the OECD 

evaluated these rates, they concluded that the difference in the 

U.S. and these countries is that these countries have much more 

generous systems that replace a larger share of earnings. 

The important thing though in this chart for today’s discussion 

I believe is to look at the last decade of the experience. And you 

see notably that, in Sweden and the Netherlands, caseloads have 

begun to come down. The recipiency rates falling. In contrast, the 

U.S. recipiency rate continues to rise. So the question before us is, 

how did they do this? And what happened? 

And for the rest of my remarks, I want to focus on a 30,000-foot 

level view of what they did. So, in both the Netherlands and Sweden, they began the program with fundamental reforms. They had 

tried many times to tweak the existing system and reduce caseloads and found those attempts lacking. So they attempted fundamental reform. 

The very first stage of fundamental reform was to modernize the 

definition of disability and no longer consider it to mean incapacity. 

They had programs similar to ours, that in order to get any kind 

of services, you had to prove that you were unable. They said, this 

is not the right expectation. It is not good for people with disabilities. And it is certainly not good for our economy when we need 

all the productive assets to be able to contribute. 

With that in mind, they then made the following observation: 

They said just because we observe that many people with even severe disabilities do not work is not empirical evidence that they 


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cannot work. So we don’t want to confuse—this is their words, not 

mine—we don’t want to confuse what we observe today under a 

particular program design with what is possible in the future if we 

change the program design. 

Importantly, both countries attempted different program designs. 

They took different trajectories. In the Netherlands, they 

incentivized employers by making them pay for the first 2 years of 

support for disability if you put your worker into a disability system, and you are experience rated if you move them onto long-term 

benefits. You have to pay a higher DI premium. 

In Sweden, they work through the state adjudicators to put time 

limits at 3, 6 months, 12 months and 30 months. They would have 

checkpoints, evaluate your functional capacity. And if people were 

able to find jobs and work up to that capacity, their earnings were 

subsidized. If they didn’t, they considered that noncompliance and 

would remove them from the benefit system. 

The point of both of those projects or both of those reforms is 

this: Early intervention matters. Getting in right when a person 

has an impairment is the critical component of those reforms. And 

enforcing that with a social expectation that you work if you have 

a disability unless you can’t and you demonstrate you cannot, but 

then also having a commitment—and I think we heard this earlier 

in the opening remarks—a commitment to support work, very similar to what we did with TANF, if you recall, that the expectation 

is that you work, but there is support for work. 

The other thing I would note is that they had much less success 

in reducing the stock of existing beneficiaries. Both those countries 

have now said that that is a much more difficult problem to solve 

and that the returns on investments are best made to reduce the 

flow of new beneficiaries onto the system. 

I will conclude by saying that the important metric I think for 

evaluating any reform is to ask, did people with disabilities suffer? 

Were people made worse off? And in these countries, they were not. 

Incomes remained and the same, and employment rates rose. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. 

[The statement of Ms. Daly follows:] 


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Chairman JOHNSON. Mr. Ufier, you are now recognized. 

STATEMENT OF KEVIN UFIER, NATIONAL DIRECTOR MANAGED DISABILITY, GENEX SERVICES, WAYNE, PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. UFIER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. 

I appreciate this opportunity to testify concerning the best practices for returning employees back to work who have medical impairments and facilitating return to work for these employees on 

their stay-at-work programs. 

Many of GENEX Services’ business clients include individuals, 

small employers, mid-sized companies, Fortune 500 corporations. I 

would like to discuss our perspective of what we have seen in 

terms of what disability is and assessing employees to stay at 

work. 

Disability is not merely having a medical condition. Disability is 

a medical-legal construct. A medical diagnosis alone does not 

equate to the adjudication of disability or a lifetime entitlement to 

unemployment, though many individuals perceive disability benefits as everlasting once they begin. 

Disability is usually considered of a limited duration, except in 

those instances where there is a rapidly deteriorating condition 

without a reasonable expectation of improvement exists for terminal cases. For our customers, disability episode can result in millions of dollars a year beyond just the sick time benefits. Most importantly, the episodes result in lost productivity, lost revenue for 

employers. Employers and insurers engage GENEX to develop 

strategies to help keep people at work under stay-at-work—returnto-work programs or rapid return to works. 

We understand that motivated employees who want to return to 

work are the best candidates to be successful in returning to work. 

We also recognize that the sooner the intervention by employers 

and claim administrators in providing support through processes of 

return to work promote better improved outcomes. 

When employers provide return-to-work programs and immediate 

support of an employee upon a disability event, there is an expectation that the employee will make an effort to immediately attempt 

to return to work or start on that process. Typically, the return-towork programs will have formal written policies in place that encourage return to work once the employee is on disability. These 

are known as transitional return-to-work programs. The employer 

should provide the training of operations and other essential staff 

concerning the return-to-work process. Employer management, 

human resource, and benefit team members know their assigned 

roles and responsibilities in the process. There is usually an internal corporate sponsor that promotes the program internally, basically a champion within the company. 

The return-to-work process permits increased incremental ability 

for someone to try to go back to work through a scheduled duration. Often an option of light duty is written into a program that 

will allow for safe work functioning during a period of adjustment 

back to the work environment. The return-to-work program always 

applies accommodation principles to provide for minimum risk of 


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additional loss of functioning during the attempt for return to 

work. Each individual worker will have their own return-to-work 

plans specific to the requirements of their own job and their own 

medical restrictions. 

Transitional work is not permanent. It is meant to be a short duration. The goal is always to return a person to their own job full 

time. Conditioning programs, such as work hardening, can be utilized to accelerate the work capacity when appropriate. When an 

individual worker has developed restrictions or limitations prior to 

filing a disability claim, many employers utilize a stay-at-work program to encourage continued productivity at work, yet accommodating the employees for a designated function and for a short period of time. Stay-at-work programs include many of the same elements as transitional work but are deployed prior to the actual disability event. Many programs also employ ergonomic programs, 

which is assessing the interaction between the work site and the 

human psychology and physical activities. And that can be invaluable in preventing additional limitations to the individual that is 

going back to work as well as preventing, even, disability. 

In general, employers and claims administrators should engage 

the workers as soon as possible about continuing to work in some 

capacity or planning to return to work. Steps include setting up expectations that employees will go back to work, have employers involved in the return to work for employees, monetary incentives for 

work return to work, pay for adaptive equipment, day and elder 

care issues, dedicated support or professional staff promoting return to work within the organization, and corporate human resource operational structure which outlines roles and responsibilities for return to work. This outlines our philosophy that we have 

experienced at GENEX. And I thank you for the opportunity to express these views. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, sir. 

[The statement of Mr. Ufier follows:] 


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Chairman JOHNSON. Ms. Ekman, welcome aboard. Please go 

ahead. 

STATEMENT OF LISA D. EKMAN, DIRECTOR OF FEDERAL POLICY, HEALTH & DISABILITY ADVOCATES, ON BEHALF OF THE 

CONSORTIUM FOR CITIZENS WITH DISABILITIES SOCIAL SECURITY TASK FORCE 

Mr. EKMAN. Good morning. 

Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Becerra and Members of 

the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify at this 

hearing on encouraging work through the SSDI program. 

My name is Lisa Ekman, and director of Federal policy for 

Health & Disability Advocates, and I am testifying today on behalf 

of the cochairs of the Social Security Task Force of the Consortium 

for Citizens with Disabilities. The SSDI program provides vital income security to millions of people with impairments so severe that 

they are unable to perform substantial work, many of whom would 

live in abject poverty and be homeless without them. 

And only, as Ranking Member Becerra said, people with the 

most significant disabilities receive SSDI benefits. Of the 57 million 

Americans with disabilities and the 38 million with significant disabilities, only about 14 million receive any type of income support 

through the Social Security system. 

The U.S. already has one of the strictest if not the strictest definition of disability in the developed world. The people receiving 

benefits are diverse, including for example people with heart disease, end stage renal failure, significant intellectual disabilities, severe mental illnesses, severe physical disabilities, advanced stage 

cancers, debilitating arthritis, deafness, and blindness. And the 

vast majority of the people receiving SSDI simply do not have the 

capacity to work at any meaningful level. 

Many factors must be present for people with significant disabilities to be able to obtain and sustain work. The person’s health and 

impairment must allow them to do so. And this is the most important factor. More than eight out of 10 people with disabilities who 

weren’t working, in a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics survey, said 

it was their disability itself that prevented them from doing so. But 

they also must have access to affordable housing and transportation, health insurance, and the services and supports required to 

work, including personal attendant care and assistive technology 

for many. 

The Social Security system does not provide nor should it provide 

any of the items on that list besides income support. SSDI does exactly what it was designed to do, replace wages for people who are 

no longer able to work due to a severe impairment. And although 

we strongly support efforts to increase employment of people receiving SSDI and people with disabilities who do not receive SSDI, 

we do not believe such efforts will result in significant numbers of 

people achieving economic self-sufficiency or no longer requiring 

SSDI benefits if they already do. 

Contrary to assertions made by some, SSDI is not a disincentive 

to work for people with work capacity. Many SSDI beneficiaries do 

work, but it rarely results in earnings that allow people to leave 

the rolls and stay off of them. Researchers examined earnings of 


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a group of beneficiaries for 10 years and found that 28 percent of 

them attempted work and 4 percent had benefits terminated due 

to earnings. The same Bureau of Labor Statistics survey mentioned 

before found that income support from any government program, 

including SSDI, had absolutely no effect on the work efforts of 92.5 

percent of people with disabilities surveyed. 

And SSDI benefits are modest, the least generous of all OECD 

countries, except for South Korea. Wage replacement rates are very 

low, as Mr. Becerra pointed out, less than half of what their 

prebenefit wages for more than a majority of beneficiaries. And 

many people live near or below poverty, despite receiving SSDI 

benefits. 

We cannot examine SSDI in a vacuum. We have to look at the 

entire disability support system. And we should not blame SSDI for 

the failure of other programs in that system. We need to look at 

Medicaid, which provides health care and supports and services, 

such as personal attendant care; the Department of Labor programs, which provide training and job search assistance; and the 

vocational rehabilitation program, the sole mission of which is to 

assist people with disabilities to obtain or maintain employment. 

We also need to look at the funding for these programs, which are 

already inadequate and provide more funding to them to help accomplish the goals of helping people with disabilities work. 

It is the role of these other programs to help people with disabilities work. SSA does not have the infrastructure or expertise to do 

so. Any new programs to delay or prevent workers who develop 

workers from applying for SSDI should not be administered by or 

funded through the Social Security system. The best time to intervene is at least several years before people apply for SSDI. And we 

explain the reasons for that fully in our testimony. 

In addition, the Social Security Administration already lacks sufficient resources to do their existing workload, let alone to take on 

a new role. And the resulting overpayments, due in large part to 

inadequate staff, are a major disincentive to work and could be 

avoided by increasing SSA’s budget and dedicating staff to this important workload. 

We do believe there are improvements that could be made to the 

SSDI work incentives, and we outlined those in our testimony. 

In conclusion, when considering the reforms suggested here 

today, we urge Congress to evaluate them based on the principles 

contained in our written statement, avoid any proposal that could 

have the unintended consequence of having less people be hired 

who have disabilities, such as experience rating SSDI taxes, and to 

use caution in making international comparisons with other countries with less stringent disability definitions, much more generous 

benefits, much more expensive social insurance and pension programs, and provide already much more adequate services and supports. Thank you. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. 

[The statement of Ms. Ekman follows:] 


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Chairman JOHNSON. Mr. Smith, please, go ahead. 

STATEMENT OF JAMES SMITH, BUDGET AND POLICY MANAGER, DIVISION OF VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION, 

VERMONT AGENCY OF HUMAN SERVICES, BURLINGTON, 

VERMONT 

Mr. SMITH. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Becerra, and 

Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to 


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talk to you about a major disincentive to return to work for SSDI 

beneficiaries. 

My name is James Smith, and I have worked directly with SSDI 

beneficiaries since 1986. Over the years, I and my staff have talked 

with thousands of SSDI beneficiaries about their efforts to return 

to work. Based on this experience, I am convinced the current SSDI 

work rules undermine their efforts because they do not make work 

pay. 

In fact, the rules do the opposite. In particular, I am referring 

to the so-called cash cliff built into the SSDI work rules. The cash 

cliff works as follows: If a beneficiary earns above the so called substantial gainful activity or SGA level, the amount that is already 

below the poverty line, that single dollar results in a complete loss 

of SSDI cash benefits. 

In my written testimony, I provided you with a typical case study 

of how the SGA cash cliff works. In this case, Joe’s total monthly 

income is actually reduced if he increases his working hours from 

15 to 20 hours per week. He would actually have to work 31 hours 

simply to match the income he had working 15 hours a week. At 

the same time, he would risk complete detachment from the program. Because Joe has schizophrenia and his illness is unpredictable, this is a very risky proposition for him. As a result, Joe does 

not attempt to increase his earnings, and continues to receive his 

full SSDI benefits. Nobody wins. 

Joe’s case is not an exception or an outlier. My staff and I see 

this issue play out every day. The obvious alternative to the SSDI 

cash cliff is a gradual $1 for $2 earnings offset, whereby benefits 

are decreased by $1 for every $2 of earnings. So the beneficiary is 

always better off the more they work. 

To its great credit, Congress has already implemented an earnings offset in the SSI program. The SSI earnings offset has been 

in place for over three decades and provides SSI beneficiaries with 

a clear incentive to work. So this is by no means a new or untested 

approach. 

While the merit of an earnings offset for SSDI seems common 

sense, until recently, there has been no research data to support 

it. However, data from a four-State pilot, including Connecticut 

Wisconsin Utah and my State Vermont, provides clear evidence 

that an earnings offset for SSDI benefits would result in increased 

earnings. Just over 1,800 SSDI beneficiaries participated across the 

State, using a rigorous random assignment experimental design. 

Overall, the studies showed the offset led to a 25 percent increase 

in the number of beneficiaries earning above the annualized SGA 

or cash cliff amount. So, clearly, the 1 for 2 did increase beneficiary 

earnings. 

The question is, what were the policy implications? How do we 

improve the SSDI work incentives and still be cost-effective? First, 

implement a graduated 1 for 2 earnings offset to always make work 

pay. Second, Congress should consider starting the threshold for 

the offset at less than SGA. Right now, Social Security pays 100 

percent of a beneficiary’s benefits unless the beneficiary earns 

above the SGA threshold. Therefore, most work activity does not 

result in any savings to the program. If you were to start the offset 


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at, for example, 50 percent of SGA, you would be much more likely 

to generate savings to the program, just like the SSI program. 

Third, eliminate the trial work period. Right now, Social Security 

pays 100 percent of benefits during the 9-month trial work period, 

regardless of how much a beneficiary is earning. With an offset, 

savings would be generated from the first month a beneficiary goes 

to work, just like the SSI program. 

Four, allow beneficiaries continued attachment to the SSDI program regardless of work activity. This would be as long as they 

continue to be medically eligible. Disability can be unstable and unpredictable. Beneficiaries with schizophrenia or multiple sclerosis, 

for example, may have periods of time when they can work 40 

hours a week and other periods where they cannot work at all. 

Continued attachment would give beneficiaries the security they 

need to try to work, without the fear of being completely cut off. 

Finally, implementing a graduated offset would eliminate a 

major barrier to the success of the ticket-to-work program. Unless 

the SSDI work rules always make work pay, the ticket-to-work program will never achieve its full potential. 

So, in summary, what I propose is to support return to work by 

always making work pay within the SSDI program. You can potentially increase savings to the SSDI program by starting the offsets 

at a point less than SGA, simplify the work incentives for both 

beneficiaries and Social Security, and align the SSDI program work 

rules with the goals of the ticket to work program. Thank you. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, sir. 

[The statement of Mr. Smith follows:] 


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Chairman JOHNSON. Dr. Weaver, welcome. Please proceed. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID WEAVER, PH.D., ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER, OFFICE OF PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH, ACCOMPANIED BY ROBERT WILLIAMS, ASSOCIATE 

COMMISSIONER, OFFICE OF EMPLOYMENT SUPPORT PROGRAMS, SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION 

Dr. WEAVER. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Becerra, 

and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity 

to discuss our responsibility to help beneficiaries with disabilities 

to return to work. 

My name is David Weaver, and I am the Associate Commissioner 

for Program Development and Research. Joining me today is Bob 

Williams. He is the Associate Commissioner for the Office of Employment Support Programs. 

Congress has included a number of incentives in the Social Security Act to encourage disability beneficiaries to work. My written 

testimony provides further detail. Generally, these incentives provide beneficiaries with continued benefits and medical coverage 

while attempting to return to work or pursuing an employment 

goal. As illustrated by the work incentive chart in my written testimony, our work incentive provisions are complex and difficult for 

disability beneficiaries to understand and for us to administer. 

Simplifying these rules would help our beneficiaries and would 

streamline our administrative process. 

Since the beginning of the disability program, State vocational 

rehabilitation, or VR, agencies have been the primary providers of 

employment support for our beneficiaries with disabilities. The 

1999 legislation that created the ticket-to-work program expanded 

the universe of service providers and gave beneficiaries choices beyond the State VR agencies to obtain services and supports needed 

to secure and maintain employment. 


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Under our current ticket program rules, any adult disability beneficiary is eligible to participate in the ticket program. Individuals 

eligible to participate in the ticket program may choose to receive 

services from a State VR agency or an employment network. We 

contract with employment networks, or ENs, to provide or coordinate the delivery of employment support services to our disability 

beneficiaries. Some State VR agencies also act as ENs. 

In order to become an EN, an entity must apply and meet our 

qualifications. In addition, ENs must meet performance standards 

that are part of every agreement that we sign with the ENs. As 

of May 31, 2013, there are 44,452 tickets assigned to 653 ENs. 

The Ticket Act created two other programs to supplement the assistance available at our field offices. The Work Incentives Planning and Assistance, or WIPA, program and the protection and advocacy for beneficiaries of Social Security program. The two programs authorize grants to organizations with ties to the disability 

community at the local level. These programs are useful tools in 

our return-to-work efforts, and we thank you for your continued 

support of them. 

The Ticket Act authorized us to test how certain statutory 

changes to the disability program would affect beneficiary work activity. Pursuant to this demonstration authority, we initiated four 

demonstration projects, including the Benefit Offset National Demonstration, or BOND, and the Youth Transition Demonstration, or 

YTD. The BOND will measure the effect of reducing Title II disability benefits by $1 for every $2 a beneficiary earns above substantial gainful activity, or SGA. The YTD identified services, implement service interventions, and test modified Supplemental Security Income and resource exclusion, intended to lead to better 

education and employment outcomes for youth with disabilities. 

Demonstration projects are the best vehicle for identifying promising program changes and measuring their effects on disability 

beneficiaries and potential beneficiaries. For example, we completed a four State pilot for the BOND in 2008, which we used to 

inform the design of a nationwide BOND. The pilot also yielded 

some preliminary outcomes, such as more beneficiaries earning 

above SGA and more beneficiaries receiving higher benefit 

amounts. 

We also found that YTD services increased the paid employment 

rate for disabled youth relative to control groups from 24 percent 

to 43 percent in West Virginia, and from 13 percent to 23 percent 

in Miami, Florida. Based on these research findings, we have asked 

the WIPAs to focus outreach in the coming year to families with 

disabled youth. The YTD demonstration shows that WIPA services 

to this population can increase employment among disabled youth. 

Our authority to initiate disability demonstration projects under 

Title II of the act expired in December 2005. The President’s budget for fiscal year 2014 includes a legislative proposal that would authorize us to test ways to help people with disabilities remain in 

the workforce. In addition to providing new authority to test early 

interventions, it would re-establish and broaden the Title II demonstration authority that we previously had. Thus, we would be 

able to further test effective ways to boost employment and support 

current disability beneficiaries who are seeking to return to work. 


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We urge you to support this important proposal. We are proud 

of the role our disability programs play in the Nation’s social safety 

net. It is not realistic to expect every disability beneficiary to become financially independent by working. However, we must find 

ways to improve work outcomes for those who can. Thank you for 

the opportunity to testify at today’s hearing. 

Bob Williams and I are happy to respond to any questions. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, sir. We appreciate your testimony. 

[The statement of Dr. Weaver follows:] 


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Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you all. 

As is customary for each round of questions, I will limit my time 

to 5 minutes, and I will ask my colleagues to also limit their time 

to 5 minutes. 

Mr. BECERRA. Yes, sir. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Dr. Daly, you referred to the transformation of the DI program from a last-resort cash income program for those not able to hold any substantial gainful employment 

to a long-term unemployment program. What are the causes of that 

transformation? 


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Ms. DALY. By my read of the evidence, the program has become, 

as Professor Duggan has indicated, more cyclically sensitive. Am I 

supposed to answer now, by the way? 

Chairman JOHNSON. Sure. 

Ms. DALY. I realize I don’t know the rules. 

Chairman JOHNSON. You are following them perfectly. 

Ms. DALY. Absolutely brilliant. 

So the programs become more cyclically sensitive. When academics evaluate why it has been more cyclically sensitive, I think 

they form a consensus—academic economists, anyway—form a consensus that the eligibility rules that allow vocational and functional criteria to be part of the decision and not just the medical 

criteria allow people when they get displaced in downturns to think 

about moving on to benefits—disability benefits as opposed to 

searching for work. So that makes the program potentially another 

avenue since we don’t have long-term unemployment insurance in 

the United States, another avenue for getting income support that 

is outside of the original intention of the disability program but is 

obviously a good way, a potentially good way, to guarantee yourself 

an income when work is hard to find, especially when you have impairments. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Dr. Duggan, do you have anything to add 

to that? 

Mr. DUGGAN. Thanks for the question. 

I agree with what Dr. Daly, with the thrust of her comments. 

I think an additional point worth making is there are a number 

of factors that show there is a strong connection between economic 

conditions and enrollment applications to this program, the sensitivity of it to the unemployment rate. Also over time, we have seen 

a steady decline in employment rate among individuals with disabilities. That is just sort of ongoing, and beyond that, a real shift 

in the conditions with which people are qualifying for benefits into 

somewhat more subjective, which is not to say that they are not 

valid, but it is just somewhat more subjective conditions. And recent research by Till von Wachter and others has show that the 

employment potential of the individuals in these rapidly growing 

diagnoses is much higher than among let’s say a person with late 

stage cancer or ALS or something else. So there really has been a 

steadily growing effect of the program on the labor market. 

Chairman JOHNSON. And you told us that 2.5 million extra 

people have applied for disability. How does that growth impact 

our economy? And how do we reverse that trend? 

Mr. DUGGAN. Yes. So if one just sort of traces out the additional applications that have occurred over the last several years 

as a result of economic conditions, it is about 2.5 million, perhaps 

a bit more. And I think that is going to—research by David Autor 

and myself in the past has shown that has led to—that kind of response leads to a reduction in the labor force participation rate and 

in the unemployment rate. So the unemployment rate right now, 

if you look economy-wide, we see this unemployment rate coming 

down from 10 to 7.5 percent, but labor force participation has come 

down even more, so that the employment population ratio hasn’t 

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tion’s overall unemployment rate and the overall labor force participation rate. 

And I think there is a lot of concern about this among people I 

think across the ideological spectrum. Is it going to be the case that 

this recent decline in the labor force participation rate is pretty 

problematic, given the demographic changes that are now going on? 

Chairman JOHNSON. We can’t get them back to work, is what 

you are saying? 

Mr. DUGGAN. I think there is some potential to get these individuals back to work through the programs that were mentioned 

in some of the other testimony today. 

But I agree that the biggest bang for the buck is going to be from 

intervening with people somewhat sooner. And the path to that potentially is really high. With the typical DI award, if you look at 

what the Federal Government disburses—and this doesn’t even 

take into account the foregone tax revenue from the person not 

working—is $270,000. If we can figure out a way to sort of get in 

there sooner with people so that they can return to work, that is 

going to have a huge payoff for the economy. 

But I do think that improving incentives among existing recipients is something worth doing, and there is evidence that it can 

make some progress, too. But I think it alone is not going to be 

enough to reverse things. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Yeah. 

Dr. Daly, do you want to add to that? 

Ms. DALY. I do want to add to that and put a calculation on this. 

Myself, as part of my role in thinking about unemployment rates 

in the United States, at the Federal Reserve Bank, we calculated 

how much—if we use historical allowance rates on disability for the 

number of applications we have, it accounts for about a quarter of 

the decline in labor force participation that we have seen. So that 

would be, if history is any guide, that would be a permanent decline in labor force participation in the United States, as Professor 

Duggan has noted, because those individuals rarely come off the 

rolls. 

I will say one more thing about that. If you look back at Sweden 

in particular—but you can look at other countries. Sweden is a 

good example. After the great financial crisis that they had in 

1990, their incapacity rate went from something like 8 percent to 

16 percent. And those were permanent reductions in their labor 

force until they dramatically reformed their system. So I think 

these are real issues that add to the urgency of reforms in addition 

to the insolvency. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, ma’am. 

Mr. Becerra, you are recognized. 

Mr. BECERRA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you all for your testimony. It is very enlightening. 

Mr. Duggan, I think what I gather from your testimony is that 

early intervention is very important. And improving incentives to 

keep people working—very important because once they get into 

this nose-dive of becoming disabled and feeling disabled, it is 

tougher to get them to sort of come out of that and stay up in the 

air flying. 


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Ms. Daly, I think the same sort of thing, periodic evaluations in 

my notes here. Early intervention matters. Support work. And you 

asked a really important question: Did people suffer or were they 

made worse off as a standard to sort of decide whether we are 

doing something better or not? 

And then, Mr. Ufier, you mentioned all the services that your 

company is providing to try to keep people at work, even if they 

are starting to tip into that area of disability. 

All that, I think we have to sort of internalize and do more of. 

But from what I hear Dr. Weaver and Mr. Williams say, SSDI, as 

Ms. Ekman says, doesn’t do any of that. Social Security Disability 

Insurance is simply to pay someone who is now fully disabled. It 

is the vocational rehab programs and all the rest that are really 

there to do that. And so my sense, from everything I hear you saying is, we have got to really beef up the work we are doing to give 

people the incentive to stay working and to make sure we capture 

them before they become too disabled to stay at work or at least 

work for good periods of time. So I think we have a lot of work to 

do, as Mr. Ufier is doing with his company, to try to make sure we 

are doing everything we can from letting anyone fall over the cliff 

and become permanent—you know disabled to the point where you 

can’t work. 

So a quick question, Mr. Ufier. What kinds of services—give us 

very quickly because I am going to run out of time. What are the 

most important services that you think we need to provide folks to 

stop them from tipping over to becoming folks who just won’t go 

back to work? 

Mr. UFIER. It is an early intervention, being involved right at 

the beginning of a claim when an individual goes out, employers 

being involved. So some kind of pressure on the employers to be 

immediately involved within the first weeks of disability. I deal 

with a lot of the private sector, which is short-term and long-term 

disability. So as soon as a person goes out, there is involvement 

from the employer to engage the employee to stay at work and to 

think about, okay, you can’t work at the moment, but you will in 

the near future. Let’s see what we can do about that. 

Mr. BECERRA. So what does ‘‘see what we can do about that’’ 

mean? What kind of services do you offer? 

Mr. UFIER. We would be offering medical intervention with assessing how limited the person is functionally. As I mentioned, disability is not just having a diagnosis but how that diagnosis impairs a person to return to work. So perhaps up front, a person 

may have a diagnosis, a back injury. But what is the likelihood? 

How long will they stay out of work? 

Mr. BECERRA. So a medical diagnosis, probably follow up, 

rehab? You are investing money to keep that person at work. 

Mr. UFIER. Absolutely. 

Mr. BECERRA. So this is not free? 

Mr. UFIER. No. 

Mr. BECERRA. Your company is paying money to—you are probably figuring, it is better to keep an experienced, capable employee 

on board than try to train someone to do all this stuff anew. 


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Mr. UFIER. Yes. We use nurse case managers and voc rehab 

people up front rather than later in the process to say, let’s keep 

you at work. 

Mr. BECERRA. But you have to invest money to make this work. 

Now, Dr. Weaver and Mr. Williams, my biggest concern is that 

we keep cutting the budget of the Social Security Administration 

at a time that we are talking about investing more to keep people 

at work to make sure that we intervene early and that we do everything we can to keep someone from tipping over, based on their 

disability, to the point where they can’t work. How do you manage 

if 10 percent of your Social Security Administration offices—I 

mean, 10 percent of the staff in your Social Security Administration offices in the field have been cut? 

Dr. WEAVER. Thank you for the question. I think staffing is an 

issue at the agency. You mentioned the reductions in our workforce. Particularly in this area where we talk about the complex 

work incentives in the law. As our Inspector General said, it is a 

very work-intensive process. You actually have to put staff on these 

cases to make sure that beneficiaries don’t have their benefits inappropriately stopped. And they can take advantage of all the employment supports that Congress has put in the law. So, in general, 

I would say that our experience with administering the employment supports and work incentives already in law has been difficult. 

Mr. BECERRA. So, Ms. Ekman, you probably deal more with 

folks who have these disabilities, and they are on that verge of becoming unemployable. What does SSA need to do to try to deal 

with the fact that they are getting cut? 

Mr. EKMAN. Well, first, thank you, Ranking Member Becerra. 

I think first, I will reiterate that we do not believe that the Social 

Security Administration is the right agency to perform early intervention or provide these work services to people who are still in the 

labor force. We think it is a few years before, at least, application. 

We find that people try to work for as long as they can, often beyond when it is healthy for them, exhaust their savings, and all 

their other resources, trying not to apply before they walk through 

Social Security’s door. 

So I think the Congress needs to give Social Security more resources to perform program integrity work as well as to process 

earnings reports and to make sure that the person gets the right 

payment at the right time. It can take up to 8 months on average 

to process a report. And by that time, a person may have tens of 

thousands of dollars of overpayments, which will require them in 

most cases to quit their job and go back on benefits. So it is very 

counterproductive. And providing enough resources to handle that 

workload would go a long way towards supporting work. 

Mr. BECERRA. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Mr. Renacci, you are recognized. 

Mr. RENACCI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank all the witnesses for their testimony. 

As I listen to all the testimony, I am thinking that we have got 

to get to a way of making SSDI better. And I want to start with 


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the one thing that I know the Chairman mentioned in his opening 

statement. In a most recent beneficiaries’ survey, 40 percent of 

beneficiaries said they were interested in working and getting back 

to work. Yet in 2010, only 0.5 percent left the rolls due to the earnings from work. That is where we should start. We should figure 

out how we can make things better for those 40 percent. 

If we can get 25 of the 40 percent back to work, that is a 10 percent savings, and that is what the taxpayers are looking for. That 

is what they are asking Congress to do, figure out ways to make 

the program work better. 

I want to talk about two individuals in my district. And these are 

the two that I want to focus on and then maybe ask some questions 

on how we can do it better. One that I talked about in a previous 

hearing, I remember golfing with a guy who was on SSDI every 

week, swinging the golf club, walking with his cart. And he was on 

SSDI. So he is definitely somebody that can get back to work out 

of that 40 percent. But he didn’t want to get back to work. 

And I also had another individual in my district who recently 

contacted me. He just is on his medical leave. And he had his third 

back surgery. And he just received SSDI. He is telling me that he 

wants to go back to work. His intent is to get back to work. And 

the problem is that he has now received his SSDI payments, and 

he is concerned because he is going to fall into what we have talked 

about, this problem of, you receive it, you lose your skills in work, 

and you start to go down this path of, well, I am just going to accept the payment. So those are the two that I kind of want to talk 

about. 

And the first one, Dr. Duggan, how do we help that second individual? The first individual definitely shouldn’t be on SSDI. The 

second one that I am talking about, how do we help that person? 

Mr. DUGGAN. Well, thanks very much for the question. So we 

have heard a bit of discussion of this program in Vermont that improved incentives among SSDI recipients there to work and that 

that did generate significant employment gains there. So, basically, 

allowing people who are on the SSDI program, rather than having 

this cliff in benefits, if they go over it, they are gone for good potentially, having this benefit offset that enhances individuals’ incentives to work. 

The recent evidence from Norway, they did an intervention that 

was not even—didn’t even enhance incentives as much as that one, 

and it had a big payoff in terms of increasing employment among 

Disability Insurance recipients. So I think there is some scope for 

us with modifications to the program to help get people back to 

work so that it pays for them to do it. 

And the evidence again and again and again shows that financial 

incentives matter. This is an area in which if a person works and 

they can keep more of that earnings, that is going to inspire them 

to push harder to get back to work and that will enhance our economic growth. So I think there is a lot that we could do there. 

Mr. RENACCI. Dr. Daly, you referred to a Swedish disability 

program, and I know one of the other witnesses said that we 

shouldn’t be comparing to some of the other countries. Do you 

agree with that? 


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Ms. DALY. No, I don’t agree with that. I would agree with the 

following statement: We shouldn’t just go and take an off-the-shelf 

program from another country that is quite different from us and 

adopt it wholesale and think that that would work. But I do think 

that looking to other countries and seeing where they have got 

similar experiences to ours and see that they have been successful. 

And I will point to Sweden as an example, that at the same time 

they were scaling back their disability program, they were actually 

also scaling back their unemployment, long-term employment insurance programs and their welfare programs. And they were 

doing this because they were trying to move away from a culture 

that they had had in their country where too many working age 

people, that is their words, not mine, were moving on to some sort 

of a transfer program. 

So I think it is not just the case that these countries have much 

better benefits elsewhere and people move from disability to those 

other benefits. It is actually the case that they are trying to—they 

call it labor market activation—they are trying to re-enter numbers 

of people back into their labor market. 

I will also conclude, if I may, with the idea that the main thing 

to take from other countries is that the observation—I said this in 

my testimony, I want to reiterate it—the observation that people 

with disabilities currently don’t work in the United States is not 

the same as evidence that they cannot work if they are given the 

opportunity to do so. So I think that is an important lesson we can 

learn from other countries. 

Mr. RENACCI. Thank you. 

Mr. Ufier, I am going to run out of time, but as an employer, I 

just wanted to make this comment. You know, there were two 

types. When an employee got hurt at work, that was Workers’ 

Compensation. Then there was the employee who became disabled, 

and usually, that person just moved off the work roll, and we 

weren’t able to get back with them and try and bring them back 

to employment. They had moved on already. The person on Workers’ Compensation, you know, we were able to work through. 

So I am out of time, but at some point in time, I would love to 

hear how you really handle those differences. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Mr. Kelly, you are recognized. 

Mr. KELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to go back to Ms. Daly. Why did Sweden—what was 

their driving force? What did they look to reform what they were 

doing? What was the mover for that? 

Ms. DALY. Really they had—really the biggest mover was that 

they were looking at 20 percent of their working age population 

being on some sort of a government transfer program, and they— 

that is fiscally unsustainable for any nation, so they were taking 

a thorough look at those programs, and that what they recognized 

is that the disability program was a program that people thought, 

I have paid in, I pay my taxes, I deserve to have this type of support, but that it was getting away from the overwhelming evidence 

that in the modern world of disability, that people with disabilities 

can work. 


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And so they were driven fiscally, but they actually felt that in 

their own review of their—in their own policy, they felt it was holding to their core values, which is that no citizen should be sidelined 

from the opportunities to participate in the labor market and gain 

a productive life, and they should be making those investments. 

Mr. KELLY. And I would think that all would agree. 

Sometimes we have a difficult way, we define people, we try to 

paint them all with the same brush. There are certainly people 

that cannot go back to work. I understand that. 

But what I have a difficult time trying to wrestle with today is 

we have had so many advances in technology, the way we treat 

people after an injury. And I agree, you were talking about early 

intervention, early detection, early intervention is the best thing 

for anybody. It doesn’t matter whether it is a disease or some type 

of an injury, you have to get to it early. The earlier to it, the better 

chance of fixing it. 

But, again, going back to this, and because I think it is really 

important what you said about the Netherlands and Sweden, it 

says—and on page 7 of your testimony, in the past decade, the 

Netherlands and Sweden fundamentally reformed their disability 

programs by changing the culture in social expectations regarding 

people with disabilities. 

And I think that is what we constantly wrestle with, because 

sometimes it is the social expectations. I am an employer, and I 

have had people who have gotten hurt on the job. They can’t work, 

they can’t work; I understand that, but I do know this from growing up and from participating in athletics: The longer you are away 

from school, the harder it is to go back; and the longer you are off 

the field, the harder it is to get back on field and want to play 

again. So I think that early intervention and getting them back on 

the field, but all of you are dealing with the same thing. 

Now, again, disabilities are defined differently. Some people are 

never going to be able to return to work, I get that, but I think the 

whole process we are talking about now is are we incentivizing people to go back to work or are we disincentivizing people by the programs that we have right now? Again, not painting everybody with 

the same brush, but explain to me, when you say the ‘‘social expectations,’’ what are we talking about there? 

Ms. DALY. So if you look at documents written by the Netherlands and by Sweden, by policymakers, and these were bipartisan 

documents, and also at the OECD level, the OECD itself has written these documents, the very first paragraph in many of these 

documents says the following: People with disabilities deserve the 

opportunity to work. People with disabilities want to and can do 

work, and—and this is where they put it in underlined or all 

capped type—people with disabilities have the responsible to try to 

work. 

So that is what I mean by changing the social expectation. And 

the reason I think European countries are a good example of this 

to look to is that traditionally the European nations have been 

more generous with their safety nets—Ms. Ekman mentioned 

this—and more willing to have that be a social contract that they 

would sign. And they actually are saying it is not good for the individuals with disabilities, and it is not good for our economy, so this 


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is what I mean by changing the culture. And the results have been, 

as I said, to increase the employment of people with disabilities, 

maintain or increase their incomes and not move them onto other 

welfare-type benefit programs. So, you know, they are in the first 

5 years of their reform, so I don’t think we should call these all victories, but I think it is useful evidence to look to. 

Mr. KELLY. Well, I have got a lot of friends, and I—like Mr. 

Renacci, who have gone through these things, but I will say this: 

It is the excitement about waking up in the morning and being 

able to get out of bed and go somewhere and do something productive that really drives, not just Americans, but all human beings. 

And when we have these programs that we can get people back 

into the workforce where they are contributing members of society, 

and by the same token, those that can’t, I understand that—don’t 

label them as not wanting to go back to work or not having that 

desire to go back to work. Listen, there are some people that just 

can’t, and those are the people that we want to help, but the other 

way, we got to get them early, and we got to get them back on the 

field as soon as we can. I think that is the best way to work. 

Mr. Williams, I do want to say something to you. You have overcome a great deal of adversity, and I think that just having you 

here today and having you present sets a great example of what 

it is that drives the human spirit to make them, make them do 

things and maybe they will say, it is going to be harder for me than 

somebody else, but I don’t care, I am still going to achieve. So I applaud you for what you have done with your life. Thanks so much. 

And I yield back. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Thank you all for your participation. 

Mr. Griffin, you are recognized. 

Mr. GRIFFIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to associate myself with the remarks of Mr. Kelly. 

Thank you all for being here. 

Thank you, Mr. Williams. 

This is incredibly important, because I hear about this issue a lot 

back home. And what I have learned from being here 2 and a half 

years and from being in politics before is that anecdotes are not the 

end of the story, but usually, they indicate something. If you are 

hearing things on the ground, they indicate something is going on. 

And they are not all 100 percent truthful, but they indicate that 

there is some truth out there associated with the anecdotes that I 

hear. 

And I will tell you that in this area, when I am home in Arkansas, I hear anecdotes about abuse with regard to this program all 

the time. And I know that they reflect an ongoing problem. You 

don’t hear numerous stories, and say, well, those are a very small 

percentage; that almost never happens. I hear about these instances, like the golfer, because they are relatively common; so 

much so, that I hear jokes about, well, maybe I will just get on disability. And you hear that kind of joke all the time. It is almost 

like the American people know that this program doesn’t work the 

right way on the whole, and so they know it is relatively easy to 

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portantly, it impacts the people who need it, as Representative 

Kelly pointed out. 

And I want to mention, in addition to the golf situation, there are 

several anecdotes that I have come across, and I finally decided 

that if I were to ignore them, it would be malpractice on my part. 

And there is one lady who volunteered to handle all of the arrangements, all of the emailing, all of the phone calls for a high school 

reunion. And the comment that she made was, I am on disability, 

so I can handle all this. Well, there are jobs where she could use 

those skills. 

The other individual is an individual who had been a veterinarian for years, and he said, he pulled his back or something, and 

he hasn’t worked in years. And he is always engaged with me on 

policy issues and everything—just in his free time, because he has 

lots of it. And he rides motorcycles and does all kinds of stuff, and 

he is on disability, and I know him very well. There is another 

lady, actually related to the vet, who is in a similar circumstance. 

This is common. And my constituents that need disability because they can’t ever go back to work are as angry about it as everybody else, because it is really not fair at the end of the day. 

And I wanted to ask you, is there some sort of financial incentive 

to report the fraud in this area, like a qui tam incentive? I guess 

the first question is, how do people that can play golf the way Mr. 

Renacci’s friend did, how do they get complete disability? How does 

that happen? Are the rules such that allow it? Is there fraud going 

on? Are there employees that just don’t know what they are doing, 

and they just say, you are approved? How does that happen? Deception? Anybody? Does anybody have any idea how that happens? 

Dr. Weaver? 

Dr. WEAVER. Sure. I will respond. I mean, we—there is a fraud 

hotline operated by our Office of Inspector General. We provided 

numbers to Congress to try to quantify that issue. We don’t think 

fraud is rampant in our programs. Generally, people in our programs have pretty serious health impairments. We try to follow the 

definition Congress put in law that the individual can’t work a substantial gainful activity for up to 12 months due to an impairment 

or an impairment that will result in death. So I do think we feel 

like we run the program as Congress has written the definition, 

but we do have—there is a fraud hotline. We don’t think fraud is 

rampant in our programs. 

Mr. GRIFFIN. Okay. We need to write a better definition, it 

sounds like. It looks like I am out of time. 

Mr. Chairman, would it be possible to have 30 more seconds? 

I know that all these can’t—they look fraudulent to me, the ones 

that I mentioned, may or may not be. I guess we all have different 

definitions of disabled and fraud. Some—yes, ma’am. 

Ms. EKMAN. I wanted to make a couple of points. One is that 

disability and ability to work change over time. So just because at 

this point someone is able to golf or ride a motorcycle doesn’t mean 

when they were approved for benefits, they could have or that they 

could have worked. 

So one of the things that Congress could do to help with that 

problem is to get more resources to the Social Security Administration to perform what—the continuing disability reviews that are reVerDate Sep 11 2014 14:00 Jun 30, 2016 Jkt 089583 PO 00000 Frm 00106 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 I:\WAYS\OUT\89583.XXX 89583

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quired by statute. The Social Security Administration cannot do 

them with the resources that they have. So a huge—— 

Mr. GRIFFIN. Bigger budget. 

Ms. EKMAN. Within—they would need a bigger budget to do it. 

And Congress has previously given funds dedicated to that purpose, and they have also cut them in the past few years. So if we 

really are worried about that, I would say, give more resources to 

Social Security to do CDR’s on time. 

And the other thing is that, you know, just because someone, as 

I said, looks like they are able to do something on a certain day, 

a lot of disabilities are cyclical or they get worse and they get better, and it does not mean that someone is committing fraud because on that particular day, they are able to drive or, you know, 

ride a motorcycle or play golf. And so I think it is important to 

draw a distinction between fraud and changes in health conditions 

that Social Security doesn’t have the resources to accurately monitor. 

Mr. GRIFFIN. Well, I know these individuals, and so I will say 

this: I don’t know, you know—whether they are committing fraud 

is another issue, but I can tell you that the people I am talking 

about are able and have been able, and if you are playing golf and 

you are on disability, that is fraudulent to me, but, you know, that 

is not the legal definition. 

Mr. Duggan, you wanted to jump in? By the way, this is the 

same Social Security Administration that uses a 1976 cost accounting program. So, you know, I think there is some stuff that can be 

done on your side. Maybe we need to enable you, but—— 

Mr. DUGGAN. So I think that the data that I showed earlier 

pretty clearly indicates that the characteristics that the medical 

conditions with which people are qualifying for disability has 

changed enormously over time. 

If there is one thing to take away from the SSDI program, it is 

that in the last two or three decades, it has shifted from a program 

that provides benefits to people with stroke, heart attack, cancer 

and so forth to one that differentially provides benefits for more 

subjective conditions, like mental disorders and back pain. 

To me, as I look at all the available data—and SSA is fabulous 

in their production of data, I have to say. I am just—you know, I 

know a lot of people there, and they do a great job with the data. 

One thing that you can get, just anyone here could go to the SSA 

Web site and see that 40 percent of SSDI awards are made on appeal. So basically you have a person who applies, they are rejected. 

They apply again; they are rejected. They appear before an ALJ. 

And it is pretty striking to me that 72 percent of the cases that 

appear before ALJ’s, cases that have been rejected not once, but 

twice, are overturned, those initial decisions. 

And what to me is especially problematic on the incentives front 

is that those people have been rejected twice and appear before 

ALJ’s are the very people with perhaps the biggest employment potential among the people who are applying for SSDI, and yet we 

are giving them the absolutely worst incentives of everyone, because we are basically having them languish through this long 

process. So I think that there is a lot of scope for us to sort of 

rethink what is happening with this program. But those numbers 


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don’t lie. I mean, that—it is a totally different program than it was 

20 years ago. 

Mr. GRIFFIN. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Chairman, I would love to join with you in getting whatever 

ideas we have here and putting them into legislation. I think this 

is an area ripe for reform, and I think we could have a bipartisan 

agreement on that. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Well, we need to reform the ALJ program 

to start with, and you probably agree with me. 

Mr. DUGGAN. Yes. 

Chairman JOHNSON. But, you know, our Inspector General, the 

IG, is doing a good job at checking on these people who claim a disability, and they are undermanned as well. I am sure you all who 

are familiar with the system know that. 

Mr. Becerra, you had one comment? 

Mr. BECERRA. Yes. And thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I think, bipartisanly, when we find these bad apples—and we 

saw those videos, Mr. Chairman, in some of the previous hearings 

where some of these folks were walking into the disability office 

with canes and walkers and then leaving, you know, virtually 

doing kicks and all the rest. I think, bipartisanly, we want to descend on those folks. We want to slice and dice those bad apples 

so that they are ground to a pulp, and they do not show up, because they ruin it for everyone else who really is disabled. As Mr. 

Kelly said, there are some folks who just cannot work. And we 

have to go after them. 

And I would say this with all due respect to my colleagues, to 

Mr. Griffin and Mr. Kelly, we talk about these anecdotes as if they 

are the rule. If we know someone who is abusing of the system and 

playing golf, we are Members of Congress, we are sworn to uphold 

the laws of the land. Why aren’t we reporting those folks ourselves? 

If we—— 

Mr. GRIFFIN. Well—— 

Mr. BECERRA. Yeah. If I could just finish, if I could just finish. 

And I hope I do incite some conversation about this, because, you 

know, I hear these stories, and we all hear the stories, oh, that, 

you know, so and so is abusing of the system and playing golf and 

on full disability. Give me the name of that person, I will report 

him, but I don’t want even—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. Even if they are a Republican? 

Mr. BECERRA. I don’t care if they are—I don’t care if they are 

D or R. They are making it tough for the folks who are truly—— 

Mr. RENACCI. Will the gentleman yield for 30 seconds? 

Mr. BECERRA. I will. I will. I absolutely will yield, but if I could 

just make the point. I think we have to, as I just said, descend on 

those folks that are giving a bad rap to an essential program that 

people paid for. People don’t get Disability Insurance unless they 

paid into the program, and people don’t get it unless they are extremely disabled. If we find those bad apples that we catch on 

video abusing the system, you know, as I said, I want to lock—I 

want to throw them in the—you know, wherever and lock the key 

and, as I said, slice and dice them, because we can’t afford to have 

those folks. But we cannot, we cannot stand here or testify in public, because there is a camera here, and we cannot try to give the 


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American people the impression that of the millions of people who 

are receiving disability benefits, not all of the millions, because 

there are lots of millions more who are disabled under the definition of the Americans Disabilities Act and et cetera, who are receiving benefits, but not disability benefits. But for those who are receiving disability benefits who have proven that they are the most 

disabled of Americans, I would hate for us to tank a system that 

they have paid for simply because of those bad apples. And so I 

think absolutely on a bipartisan basis, we should descend on those 

folks. 

And with that, let me yield, Mr. Renacci. 

Mr. RENACCI. Thank you, Mr. Becerra. 

I do want to explain that comment. You know, I probably haven’t 

golfed for years since I have been in Congress. I have only been 

here about 2 and a half years. This was about 10 or 12 years ago. 

But I think the key to that was as we were all golfing, we all wondered how this individual was able to get Social Security, because 

I could tell you, if I was golfing today and that occurred, I would 

be reporting him, but this is—I think the American—— 

Mr. BECERRA. If you give me his name, I will still report him. 

Mr. RENACCI. Well, I am not even sure where he is anymore. 

Mr. BECERRA. Let’s find him. Let’s go after that guy. 

Mr. RENACCI. The question here for the American people is, the 

American people see this and they are fed up with it. 

Mr. BECERRA. Absolutely. 

Mr. RENACCI. And people were fed up 10, 12 years ago. I assumed that as an American back then who wasn’t in Congress that 

he must be okay, he must have been able to get it, it must be a 

program he is allowed to have. Today, I know different, and that 

is the problem in America. 

Chairman JOHNSON. We are going to let Mr. Kelly make one 

last comment and then we are going to close this down. 

Mr. KELLY. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

And I want people to take this personally. There is not a better 

example in the room right now of somebody who has disabilities 

but refused to let that stand in the way of going back to work, and 

that is you. And I mean that sincerely. 

Mr. BECERRA. That is right. Bipartisanly. 

Mr. KELLY. And I know. We talk about bipartisan issues, but 

then we try to slice and dice each other so that one can be the hero 

and one can be the villain. It is not good enough in this body anymore to do the right thing. It is okay to do the right thing, but you 

got to make the other side look really bad. 

Listen, the whole purpose of this hearing today, and Mr. Young 

said something in a hearing yesterday that—a saying, and he said, 

Well, now we have run out of money, so we just have to start 

thinking. The whole purpose of this hearing is how do we sustain 

this, because I am not painting anybody with the same brush. I 

know how difficult it is for people who are hurt to get back to work, 

but I also know the path we are on right now is unsustainable. And 

I keep saying this thing, that unless Congress acts, unless Congress acts. Well, depending on which side you are sitting, what 

does it mean by ‘‘Congress acts’’? Is it throwing more money in the 


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program or is it making the program more sustainable by really 

thoughtful responses and regulation reform that we need to have? 

You are all working to get people back to work. And again, I said 

about Mr. Williams, what you do every day, you get up with a purpose in your life. I can’t imagine putting people in a position they 

get up that want to go to work, and we have made it impossible 

for them to see the benefit of working anymore, because we have 

disincentivized that whole process. So, again—— 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Can I respond? 

Mr. KELLY. Please. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. What has not been said today is there are about 

4 million Americans with disabilities who are employed. Most make 

less than $20,000 annually. 

I would suggest that a critical question we will need to grapple 

with is, how do we reward those workers? And it is not just about 

services. It is creating opportunities for them to get and keep good 

jobs and careers that can lead to better self-supporting futures. 

Mr. KELLY. Well said. And listen, you are a champion. You are 

a champion. And I am going to tell you, you may be hampered 

physically, but mentally you have absolutely no problems extolling 

the human spirit and the desire to somehow overcome whatever we 

have to overcome every day to add to the value of this country. So 

thank you so much. 

And, Mr. Chairman, thank you for what you have done, and I 

yield back. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. 

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today and for your 

testimony, and also our members who are present today. 

You know, work is important for Americans, their families and 

this economy. We can and must achieve the results taxpayers expect for those with disabilities that they deserve. 

With that, the subcommittee stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:27 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

[Questions for the Record follows:] 

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David Weaver 


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James Smith 


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Kevin Ufier 


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Mark Duggan 


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Mary Daly 


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[Public Submissions for the Record follows:] 

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Health and Disability Advocates 


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National Disability Rights Network 


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National Employment Network Association 


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Pamela Villarreal 


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Paralyzed Veterans of America 


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R. Larkin Taylor Parker 

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