The venerable news program 60 Minutes has been investigating the Social Security Disability Insurance program (SSD) and aired its report on October 6, 2013. Reporter Steve Kroft reported on the increase in individuals who receive SSD benefits and the looming 2016 estimate of when the SSD trust fund will run out of money. He notes that SSD “serves nearly 12 million people — up 20 percent in the last six years — and has a budget of $135 billion.”
The 60 Minutes report
Steve Kroft interviewed a number of individuals, starting with Senator Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, the Ranking Minority Member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation. Senator Coburn states the statute says “If there’s any job in the economy you can perform, you are not eligible for disability. That’s pretty clear.” A physician by training, Coburn had his staff review a couple hundred of SSD files to determine if any should not have been approved for benefits. They determined “that 25 percent of them should never have been approved — another 20 percent, he said, were highly questionable.”Read More