White House Releases Report On SSDI

On Friday, the White House released a report entitled, "Social Security Disability Insurance: A Lifeline for American Workers and Their Families" to explain "how this critical program works, who it helps, and its importance for working families."

The report stresses how the SSDI program, now almost 60 years old, provides vital assistance to 9 million disabled workers and 2 million auxiliary beneficiaries: spouses and dependent children. Additionally, it reminds readers that SSDI is projected to be unable to pay full benefits to workers in late 2016 and without action from Congress these "11 million SSDI worker-beneficiaries and family members could face an abrupt 19 percent cut in monthly benefits in late 2016."

In order to address the Disability Insurance Trust Fund shortfall, the report states the President hopes to use an interfund transfer to reallocate money from the retirement trust fund to the disability trust fund:

"(T)he President has proposed a straightforward solution to rebalance tax rates between the Social Security trust funds to ensure that Social Security continues to provide full SSDI benefits. The Social Security program currently has sufficient funding to provide full benefits to retirees, workers with disabilities, and their families for almost the next two decades, if payroll tax rates are allocated between the two parts of Social Security based on funding needs, allowing policymakers time to develop long-term policies to strengthen the Social Security program as a whole."

However, many in Congress have expressed disinterest in any interfund transfer plan unless it's accompanied by long-term policies to address programmatic challenges.

The 2015 Social Security Trustees Report is expected to be released later this week and will provide a current update on the status of the trust funds.