Hey matchewed and fixer, I'm pretty low-tech and don't know how to quote from two posts at once so I'm going to put your posts in italics below:
Not that I'm out right disagreeing with what has been said in the articles you linked Frugal in DC, but I find it particularly funny that you accuse NPR of a bias as you link sites which nearly all have a bias towards either Social Security, disability, or low income.
That aside. I read some of the articles you posted. Where do they "debunk" the article? The first article from offthecharts claims that if you adjust the numbers they look different. That would be a factual statement. But why do we need to adjust the numbers in the first place?My guess is that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) adjusted for gender and age to try to show changes based on the other factors mentioned in the NPR piece. So for example, if the premise is that there has been a huge increase in the SSI/SSDI rolls because of fraud or because former welfare recipients are now on disability instead, you would see a substantial increase in the adjusted numbers. As far as other critiques of the NPR piece, see also my other responses below.
They say it is because disability has increased due to demographic factors, I read the NPR piece and I'm not sure where they disagree. NPR never says it is not due to demographic factors. Same with the second article.The issue that many have with the NPR piece is that it tries to link anecdotes with broader trends that the SSA had already predicted. The NPR piece also makes broad and unfounded mischaracterizations. For example, one section of the NPR piece has a graph showing the increase in the number of low-income people on disability right below a graph showing a decrease in the number of families on welfare as part of a section that seemingly implies that SSDI/SSI is the new welfare. However, being poor is not enough criteria to qualify for disability benefits.
Another graph depicting demographic changes is shown as part of a section on what the author calls a disability-industrial complex. The premise of this section is that disability cases are sometimes approved during appeal because while the applicant may have an attorney representing him or her, there is no attorney representing the government. The author tries to depict a disability appeals hearing as a trial. A hearing is actually presided by an administrative law judge whose job is to resolve a dispute between a government agency and someone affected by a decision of the agency. Appeals hearings are explained on SSA’s website -
http://www.ssa.gov/appeals/hearing_process.html#what_happens .
The third article states that if you look over the 10 years the percentage isn't that big. While the NPR article is saying over the last 40 years it has grown a large amount. It looks like the CBPP pointed out the trend over the last 10 years of children receiving SSI to try to take into account the time periods right before, during, and after the Great Recession. The author of the NPR piece implies that children of poor families have an incentive for their children to continue to receive SSI so they can support their entire families. If this were the case, you would expect a definite increase during the past 10 years as more families entered poverty due to the recession, but it looks like this was not the case. The CBPP graph showing SSI shows the growth in the number of children receiving SSI (same as the NPR graph, but on a different Y-axis scale), but it also shows the large decrease in the number of people ages 65 and over receiving SSI; this is not something that the NPR piece points out.
I do agree that the remainder of the section on children is not all that helpful because it dives into an anecdote that while powerful in the message is lacking in any sort of valuable information.This is the section that gave me heartburn and prompted me to call my local NPR station to express my concerns. As a longtime financial contributor, I want to see my money go towards programs that meet NPR’s criteria for fairness and objectivity. I have also observed over the years that parents of children with special needs go to great lengths to make sure their children do their absolute best and become contributing members of society. I recommended to my local station that they air a piece to provide more context regarding children with disabilities. The program director was nice enough to put me in touch with the producers of a local talk show that the station produces. I worked with them to provide ideas for a segment on educating children with special needs that aired a few weeks ago - see
http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2013-04-10/educating-special-needs-kidsI don't want to go through article by article with you over this but I do have to say that the actual data presented in the NPR story is from government statistics. Yes there are fluff anecdotes but they're necessary for readability, and yes they can have their bias. But aside from the fluff, when we're looking at data directly from the people who dish out the money vs. that same data adjusted by an entity that has a bias already, such as an organization dedicated to advocating for low income peoples, I'm going to have to look at the unadjusted data and ignore fluff and adjusted data.I just checked again and the data presented in the articles I linked to are also from government statistics. Anecdotes are fine, but it’s not accurate to make broad generalizations and perpetuate stereotypes about a whole segment of society based on a handful of anecdotes. I don’t know if I would say that advocating for the basic needs of vulnerable populations means that someone or an organization is biased. Unfortunately people in poverty and people with disabilities do not have organizations with deep pockets that can do things like underwrite news programs. All they have is grassroots efforts and press releases like the one I linked to from CCD. The views of people with disabilities were not considered in the NPR piece.
If you have any direct concerns with the information presented in the NPR article by all means share it. But please present different perspectives as such and not as expert debunkery. I'm sure I can go across the political spectrum and find some experts who say that it is much much worse than what NPR has stated.I encourage you to read the letter from the former SSA commissioners, the CCD press release, and the Shriver Center that I linked to earlier if you feel that the articles from the two non-profit think tanks are simply different perspectives. I would say that executives who ran the SSA and dozens of organizations that work one-on-one with people with disabilities have pretty good knowledge of disability safety net programs and how they impact recipients.
I’m not sure what you mean by across the political spectrum since the organizations I mentioned in my post are not political. Assuming you mean right-of-center organizations, I checked the websites for the Heritage Foundation, Brookings, and American Enterprise Institute (AEI). As far as I can tell, Heritage had a blog post on the NPR piece but nothing else directly on the issue. Brookings has a couple of studies with proposed reforms such as early intervention, improving the disability determination system, and privatizing disability insurance - see
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/02/disability-insurance-reform and
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2010/12/disability-insurance-autor . One of the co-authors of the study on privatization is David Autor, who is interviewed in the NPR piece. AEI and Brookings co-sponsored an event on disability insurance a few weeks ago -
http://www.aei.org/events/2013/04/19/disability-insurance-inherent-problems-practical-solutions-and-action-for-reform-part-2/ . The video is not showing up on my computer. I understand that one of the presenters, Richard Burkhauser, mentions the NPR piece at some point during the event. Apparently he refers to the NPR piece as an opinion piece rather than a news piece, but I can’t see the video so I’m going off what I read in someone’s Twitter feed.
I'll agree that it looks like NPR gave misleading numbers regarding the growth of the program. It shouldn't have been comparing raw counts of beneficiaries over time. I'm glad these other sources have pointed that out. It's also good to know that readjustments between the SS trust funds are an expected and routine event.
I'm still unsettled, though, by the heavy bias in the "debunking" articles, and from the few I read it seems they are pushing to prevent change to the program because that change might harm someone it shouldn't. What we should be asking is would reform help more people (by freeing up govt funds, getting not-really-disabled people back to work, etc.) than it hurts? You'd think liberal groups would be more open to that kind of social analysis.Again, I would say that executives who ran the SSA and dozens of organizations that work one-on-one with people with disabilities have pretty good knowledge of disability safety net programs and how they impact recipients. I’m not sure if I would call this bias. I think organizations that work with the disabled are deeply concerned that misleading news pieces during these times of austerity will lead to indiscriminate cuts. I think it’s always a good idea to look into changes and reforms that make safety net programs more effective and efficient while protecting vulnerable populations.
Disability organizations are definitely open to reform and have advocated reform policies throughout the years, to no avail. One of the proposed reforms would allow parents of children with disabilities to open accounts similar to college 529 plans for their children. It is my understanding that young adults with disabilities can only have $2,000 worth of assets so they can qualify for safety net programs. These savings accounts would allow parents to bequeath funds to their adult children while allowing them to remain eligible for basic services such as job supports and companion care. However, even this one straightforward reform does not seem to be a legislative priority; although bills are introduced in every Congress, they never pass. Perhaps all the news coverage about SSI and SSDI will prompt more talk of possible reforms, we shall see.