Monthly SSDI benefits are determined using the same formula that Social Security uses to calculate retirement benefits. Thus, changing the formula to strengthen the retirement program would also affect disability payments. Moreover, because disabled adult children of retirees receive benefits through the retirement program and not SSDI, any changes in government-paid retirement benefits would affect them. GAO's Misleading Report. Although understanding how Social Security reform could affect disability payments is a serious issue that reformers must address, the GAO report also contains questionable assumptions that make its conclusions unreliable.
Current law prohibits increasing taxes, holding payroll taxes at today's levels.
Under current law, SSDI's trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits after about 2037. Instead of reducing lifetime disability benefits as the GAO estimates, the plans actually would increase lifetime benefits over those provided by current law by as much as 25 percent to 45 percent. The GAO appears to say that the reform plans would hurt SSDI recipients more than doing nothing. However, doing nothing will result in even greater SSDI benefit reductions. The GAO correctly points out that changing government-paid retirement benefit formulas without retaining the existing formula for SSDI benefits would reduce disability payments.