NPR reports that more than three million extra people are now collecting Social Security payments because of disability, than were in 2007. A new report from the Obama administration and others suggests that as people lose unemployment benefits, they’re going after disability benefits. Unemployment claims have been trickling down over the past few months, which most agree is good.

But in tandem with that decrease, another public benefit has been increasing. Since 2007, some 3.4 million Americans have been added to the list of those receiving Social Security Disability Insurance. SSDI, as it’s know, pays out some $1,000 a month and also gives people access to Medicare and Medicaid.

About 10.6 million Americans now receive SSDI benefits, which has raised new fears that the Social Security Trust Fund may go broke as early as 2017. According to two new studies, many of those new claimants ran out of unemployment benefits before they applied for SSDI. Listen to report here:

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The Social Security trust fund should last until 2037. But the money in that fund is actually spent by the government to buy Treasury bonds. And when you think about it that way, the trust fund is more like a collection of IOUs the government has written to itself.

“A lot of people — because there is this large Social Security trust fund on paper — are tempted to believe that the financing problems are much further away than they actually are,” Blahous says.

In a book out next month, Social Security: The Unfinished Work, Blahous writes about what he calls “the mounting cost of delay” in dealing with the long-term solvency of Social Security.

It’s politically difficult to change or reduce benefits for people about to retire or who are already retired, Blahous argues. And with baby boomers reaching retirement age in droves, each year without reform excludes millions of Americans from reform.

On Social Security: Act Now, Save Later

Blahous says the government can ease the pain by enacting reforms that are very gradual — such as the Bowles-Simpson proposal to raise the retirement age from 67 to 69 over 48 years after 2020. “You can smooth out the changes so that any particular birth cohort or income group is not going to feel the changes terribly acutely,” he says.

The problem, he says, is that politicians have little incentive to enact changes that won’t be felt for 30 years. Link to Story here:

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National Public Radio (NPR) today reports that Judges who oversee some of the most emotional cases to reach a courtroom are crying out for more security. Two major groups representing immigration and Social Security judges appeared in Washington on Monday to ask the federal government to do more to protect them from violent threats.

In what may have been the worst episode, a man who was apparently angry over cuts to his Social Security benefits opened fire in the lobby of a Las Vegas courthouse in January. A security officer there died in a hail of gunfire. So did the gunman.

Judge Randall Frye, president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges, fears more violence could be on the way.

We render decisions at the end of a hearing, right there, in real time, looking eye to eye with the person who is claiming relief. So if we have to deny their case, they are right there, experiencing all that emotion. And all that potential anger if a case doesn’t go their way.

- Judge Dana Leigh Marks, president of National Association of Immigration Judges
“Over the past four years, there have been approximately 200 similar kinds of threats and, unfortunately, some of those threats have been acted on,” says Frye, who hears Social Security disability claims in Charlotte, N.C. Hear NPR story here:

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