Trump the Populist

Donald Trump once again is looking out for the Everyday Real American:

That’s because the Trump administration is rewriting the disability eligibility rules, ostensibly to modernize the program, in ways that will make it even harder for aging blue-collar workers like Tincher to get benefits. Hundreds of thousands just like him would become ineligible for aid.

These changes would fall disproportionately on some of Trump’s most loyal supporters in red states. Most affected would be 50- to 60-year-olds without a high school or college education who have, for decades, toiled in physically grueling jobs, including coal mining, logging, and factory and construction work. The five states where the highest proportions of people rely on these benefits are West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama. Unlike New York, California and a few others, these states do not have their own disability insurance programs for workers to turn to amid federal cuts.

“The Trump administration does not think that simply being 50 years old is a disability,” said a senior administration official who would speak only on condition of anonymity. In the 1970s, when the current rules were written, the official said, many more jobs involved manual labor, but in the internet age that isn’t true anymore. Workers in their 50s with physical injuries are thus receiving disability benefits “when they don’t need to be,” given that they could get a more sedentary job in the modern economy.

The administration has also justified cuts like these on fiscal grounds: The federal budget deficit is massive, the Social Security retirement system could become insolvent in less than a decade and savings need to be found.

But the disability program is paid for, via payroll taxes, by its own trust fund, separate from the one for the retirement program. So reductions in disability payments would not help the retirement system stay afloat. Indeed, cutting eligibility for disability could result in more disabled workers claiming retirement benefits early, actuarial experts note, which would only increase pressure on the retirement system. Meanwhile, the money in the disability fund, which is projected to remain solvent through at least the end of this century, would just sit there, unused.

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The Trump administration’s plan to transform the U.S. disability system, once finalized, would interact with other cuts to the social safety net that the president and Republicans in Congress have already authored. For example, under legislation dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and signed into law by Trump, work requirements will be added to Medicaid; people with disabilities will largely be exempt, but the best way to establish eligibility for that exemption is to qualify for Social Security’s disability program, which would become harder under the new rule. A disabled worker could instead turn to Obamacare’s individual exchanges for insurance coverage, but Republicans are allowing the tax credit that makes those premiums affordable to expire.

Tincher feels lucky he applied when he did. Being approved for disability has meant his copays are covered, he can finally afford groceries and he has time to help watch over his grandkids. Still, he also feels a tinge of guilt. “I wish every day I could still work,” he said. His dad, a coal miner, once told him to work until the day he died. “Having to ask for help is hard especially for men to do, men of my generation.”

All Tincher would say to the officials pushing the changes to the disability program, he said, is “you don’t know until you’re here, at this point in a working life.”

Finally, someone is standing up for the American worker.