House Votes to Approve Social Security Transformation

Moving to insulate Social Security from partisan politics and restore the public’s waning confidence in the troubled New Deal program, the House voted Thursday to make the agency independent.

The legislation, approved by a vote of 431 to 0, also will force thousands of drug addicts and alcoholics off Social Security’s disability rolls with no guarantee of treatment and end unsupervised cash payments to as many as 250,000 substance abusers nationwide.

The bill goes to President Clinton, who is expected to sign it.

Lawmakers believe that separating Social Security from the Health and Human Services Department will strengthen its leadership, insulate the $325-billion domestic program from partisan politics and rebuild faith in a retirement system that, if not changed, will run out of money by 2029.

Social Security will become independent March 31, 1995, and will be run by a commissioner and overseen by a seven-member bipartisan advisory board. The commissioner will serve for six years and can be removed only for wrongdoing.

The agency also will be allowed to take its budget request directly to Congress, without first having to send it through the White House Office of Management and Budget.

During the 1980s, the agency lost a fifth of its staff at a time when growing numbers of Americans were seeking disability benefits. Rep. Andrew Jacobs Jr. (D-Ind.) says it now lacks the necessary resources.

Some taxpayers, as a result, have been inconvenienced by busy signals on the agency’s phones and long waits for help in its network of 1,300 field offices.

Others have suffered severe hardship, including ill and injured workers who lost their homes, went on welfare, or died while waiting for their disability claims to be decided.

Social Security’s disability programs also have been hit with allegations of fraud and abuse by an exploding number of immigrants, drug addicts, alcoholics and disabled children on the rolls.

The legislation tightens up the rules for substance abusers, limiting their cash benefits to 36 months. The clock would not start ticking for substance abusers who had worked and paid into the Social Security trust funds until they had entered treatment.

But for addicts who hadn’t paid into trust funds and collected Supplemental Security Income--a welfare program for the low-income disabled and elderly--benefits would run out after 36 months regardless of whether they had received treatment.

Congressional investigators have found that some addicts have used their monthly checks to drink and drug themselves to death at taxpayer expense.

The changes are expected to save taxpayers $808 million over five years.