In the twelve-month stretch from October 2022 through September 2023, 30,000 people died while waiting for federal disability determinations, according to Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley. Martha asked Harris what she would do as president for people, like herself, who are waiting for disability decisions while in desperate need of health insurance.
Delays in those decisions, driven in part by understaffing and a Covid-related rise in disability rates, have driven the typical wait time from four months in 2019 to seven months today, often coupled with the need to appeal an initial rejection, which can take years. The processing times represent a mounting crisis for the more than 1 million Americans who apply for disability in a given year.
Until Democrats fall out of love with means testing I don’t see this changing quickly or at all, unfortunately. But try getting people to accept that means testing almost always costs more than just making the programs open with few/no strings attached and watch the meltdowns start.
That’s nothing to do with Democrats in particular.
Republicans aren’t getting rid of means testing and Democratic leadership for the most part doesn’t want to. Also, means testing for welfare was a huge part of Democratic campaigning in the 90s and has been embraced within the party since then.
Any evidence that means testing is popular among the Democratic party these days? The '90s is a long time ago now.
Are you asking whether it’s popular among Democrats in washington? I think we can see that by the bills that they bring to the floor, and by the speeches that they make.
Are you asking whether it’s popular with Democrat voters? That’s a different question.
Did you miss the whole “if we did universal student loan forgiveness that means we’d be giving money to millionaires too, so that means we can’t do it at all 😏” song and dance? If you did I envy you because it still pisses me off.
Buttigieg himself used this reasoning in the 2020 primaries, and it’s not like there was a real outcry about it. Getting rid of means testing for anything other than children’s school meals isn’t even on the table.
And as Harris has so succinctly put it, do you think the Democratic Party of today fell out of a coconut tree? It’s the result of policies made by people in the 90s, many of whom are either still in power or have died in office only within the past few years. The policies of the 90s have a direct bearing on the party of today.
I wouldn’t support the handwaving away of it being a long time ago as a reason to overlook the dismantling of welfare for political gain for Democrats any more than I would if Republicans did it.