Since 2003, I have been serving as a Senate appointee (appointed by Senator Daschle) on a bipartisan federal advisory committee called the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Advisory Panel.  The Panel, created in the 1999 Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act, is charged with providing advice to the President, the Commissioner of Social Security, and the Congress, regarding the implementation of that legislation and the functioning of the work incentives that predated the legislation in the Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare programs.
 
The panel sunsets at the end of this year and we are in the process of finalizing the recommendations in our final report. In October, the panel circulated a draft final report that included a number of far-reaching recommendations designed to transform our four largest federal programs (Social Security Disability Insurance, Supplemental Security Income, Medicare and Medicaid) serving people with disabilities so that they more consistently encourage adults with disabilities to work to their full potential, save money, and become as economically self-sufficient as possible.

Some of the key recommendations in that October draft included:

* Allowing people with significant disabilities to keep their coverage for health care and long-term services and supports as their income goes up or they move from state to state, with workers buying into this coverage at a rate that is proportional to their income;

* Changing the statutory definition of disability for SSDI and SSI so that people do not have to swear that they are unable to work in order to qualify for income supports and health care;

* Creating a new “Transition to Economic Self-Sufficiency” (TESS) Program for youth and young adults between ages 14 and 30 with expanded supports and services designed to help  young people get on a path that will lead to the greatest economic self-sufficiency for them over the course of their adult lives;

* To help with TESS program implementation, doubling the budget for Vocational Rehabilitation and Independent Living with the new funds being targeted to serve TESS program participants;

* Launching a social marketing campaign to raise societal expectations regarding the capacity of people with disabilities to work and participate fully in community life;

* Implementing a job creation strategy that leverages the power of the federal government as an employer and a contractor to create more jobs that pay a living wage for people with significant disabilities; and

* Promoting strategies for reaching workers with adult-onset disabilities with flexible supports while they are still connected to the workforce that will enable them to return to work without having to apply for long-term federal disability benefits.

Having chaired the subcommittee of the Panel that developed these recommendations, I was excited that we were able to get some of these ideas out there in a draft form.  When our full Panel met at the end of October, many of these ideas received support from a majority of the panel members, although the wording of the Panel's final recommendations will have more of an emphasis on the need to test some of the most controversial ideas before they are implemented on a large scale.

Unfortunately, in the weeks leading up to the Panel meeting, some key members of Congress sent letters to the panel that called into question the need for “transformation” of the Social Security programs.  The Democratic Chairs of the House Ways and Means full committee and subcommittees on Income Security and Family Support and Social Security (Charles Rangel, Jim McDermott and Michael McNulty) sent a letter to the Panel on October 23 arguing that the “fundamentals” of the Social

Security programs were sound “and do not require transformation.”  They continued, “[t]he Social Security and SSI disability programs have been a great success at achieving the goals for which Congress created them: allowing individuals who have no or limited work capacity due to disabling impairments to live with some measure of financial security, dignity and independence.”  The Democratic Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, sent a similar letter to the panel on October 29 stating that the Finance Committee (which has jurisdiction over SSDI, SSI, Medicaid and Medicare) “does not support transformative change of the Social Security disability programs,” including the specifics outlined in our draft report.

In the course of our work on the Ticket Panel, we made a strong effort to hear directly from people receiving SSDI and SSI to get their ideas for how the programs and their corollary health programs could be improved.  Last February, we hosted a summit meeting where we heard from beneficiaries from every state.  A copy of the report that captured the recommendations from that summit is on the Ticket Panel website at http://www.ssa.gov/work/panel. Having heard from numerous beneficiaries at the summit and at the quarterly panel meetings over the last four years, I am convinced that beneficiaries are not satisfied with the federal disability programs in their current form and feel constrained in achieving financial security, dignity and independence by programs that continue to punish them for trying to lift themselves out of poverty.  The Panel’s final report includes a recommendation that Social Security establish a permanent National Disability Beneficiary Work Council and National Disability Beneficiary Work Advocate within Social Security so that beneficiaries can have a stronger role in setting the course for the future of policy development regarding the Social Security disability programs.

Although I am disappointed in the Congressional letters reacting to our draft report, I am grateful for the leadership of the Ticket Panel’s chairperson Berthy de la Rosa Aponte and the majority of the Panel members who understand the need for transformational change in our largest federal programs.   I encourage readers to visit the panel website at the url above after the December 3 release of our final report and send me your reactions.  This kind of fundamental change is never easy, but I remain convinced that modernizing our largest disability programs is essential if we truly want to realize the goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act and build a disability middle class.