Disabled Nation: Small Fraction Leave Disability Because They Work or Get Better | CNS News
When President Dwight Eisenhower — a big-government Republican running for re-election — signed the federal disability program into law in 1956, he suggested this new form of welfare would increase government efficiency, rehabilitate the truly disabled and roll back government dependency.
"The law initiates new programs of grants to train more skilled social workers and to support research in ways of helping people overcome dependency," Eisenhower said.
"We will, of course, endeavor to administer the disability provisions efficiently and effectively, in cooperation with the states," he said. "I also pledge increasing emphasis on efforts to rehabilitate the disabled so that they may return to useful employment."
In fact, the disability program predictably became a one-way street to government dependency — a street that gets wider, better paved and more heavily trafficked every year.
According to the program's latest annual statistical report, which covers 2011, only approximately 0.7 percent of the people on disability that year managed to get off the program because their condition improved or they returned to work and made too much money to still qualify for benefits.
In 2011, 8,575,544 workers took federal disability benefits, and 653,877 saw their benefits terminated. Among those whose benefits were terminated, the largest group was the 338,222 who reached the federal retirement age and started collecting Social Security instead of disability. The second-largest was the 235,734 who died.
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