Taxpayers Exposed as New Report Details Fraud in Social Security Disability Insurance Program

The growth in spending by the federal government has been one of the worst things that taxpayers have had to deal with over the last several years and one aspect of federal spending that has seen major increases is entitlements. The more money that is being spent on entitlement programs, the more opportunity there has been for taxpayers to be exposed to waste, fraud and abuse. A new report by Our Generation highlighted some of the most egregious examples of how the Social Security Disability Insurance program (SSDI) has been defrauded at the expense of your tax dollars.

SSDI is a federal insurance program funded by payroll taxes and overseen through the Social Security Administration. The program is aimed at providing supplemental income to individuals who are physically restricted in their ability to work due to disability, commonly physical disability. The program has seen a great deal of growth over the last two decades, and over the last five years the Disability Trust Fund has been running a deficit. The growth in the payments being distributed accompanied by the lack of job creation in this administration has been a dangerous combination for the taxpayer-funded entitlement:

In each of the five fiscal years Obama has served as president, the trust fund has run a deficit as the number of people receiving disability benefits has surged. The Disability Insurance Trust Fund has never before run five straight years of deficits.

The stunning report by Our Generation detailed some of the worst examples of fraud that have plagued SSDI. Taxpayers are losing millions of dollars. Our Generation, an advocate group dedicated to “helping citizens nationwide become better informed about the inner workings of Congress, how they are represented in Congress, and to campaign for a limit on Congressional terms,” has reforming SSDI as one of their primary focuses. This report shows exactly why it is a priority for the group, and why it should be a priority for any taxpayer concerned with waste, fraud, and abuse when it comes to government spending.

Here are some the highlights from the report, titled “10 Outrageous Examples of Social Security Disability Fraud”

• $6 million in benefits by a Social Security worker and a gaggle of doctors in Puerto Rico alleged to create such a large and sophisticated system for defrauding the federal government of Social Security disability benefits
• $1.5 million in disability benefits by a California healthcare professional who invented bogus maladies and provided false information to help scores of patients
• $144,000 in total by a Minnesota man who faked dementia to collect nearly $7,000 per month in benefits
• $128,000 in Social Security benefits by a man who illegally entered the United States and posed as a disabled Vietnam war hero
• $50,000 in improper disability benefits by a Missouri politician while serving as a state legislator

This all comes on the heels of a report just released in October by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations through work that was done by the office of Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) detailing how troubled the program is and how insolvent it will be in a relatively short period of time if action isn’t taken to prevent the continued systematic fraud that is hindering SSDI and costing taxpayers millions. Doug McKelway with Fox News reported on Coburn’s investigation:

A two-year investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has found widespread fraud in the Social Security Administration’s Disability Program.

The fraud is so rampant, and disability cases have so proliferated in recent years, that the Social Security’s Disability Trust Fund may run out of money in only 18 months, says Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., whose office undertook the investigation.

Sen. Coburn noted why taxpayers should be deeply concerned with the findings by the investigators:

“This report highlights the very problems Congress needs to focus on but too often ignores. In just two years, the Social Security Disability Trust Fund could be depleted. That means millions of disabled Americans will face benefit cuts while every American could see an increase in their payroll taxes. That is unacceptable. What is also outrageous, as this report details, is how well-healed and well-connected lawyers, doctors, and judges have gamed the system for their own benefit. Every bogus claim made on behalf of someone who is not truly disabled robs taxpayers and denies or delays benefits for someone who is truly disabled. This is an enormous and urgent problem that should demand our immediate attention.”

TPA has been recently beating the drum for entitlement reform and these reports are just further evidence that taxpayers are in serious trouble when it comes to the federal government’s ability to manage their own books and prevent the kind of waste, fraud, and abuse that has been plaguing the bureaucracy for decades. The worst part is that as these programs expand, the problems increase and elected officials continue to sit back and do little or nothing at all. Reforming SSDI is just a small part of the entitlement reforms that are needed but if examples like the ones cited in this report aren’t enough to get the attention of elected officials, than we’re in bigger trouble than anyone could have imagined.