I've finally had a chance to read the terms of the budget deal passed in the middle of the night by the Senate yesterday. It's not that I have been wasting time; rather, it is that it has been hard to get the actual measure over the internet. Here are a few important items from the bill:
1. We've been told that the measure contains "reforms" for Social Security and Medicare. That's a silly overstatement. For disability claims, Social Security will now require (starting a year from now) that claimants be examined by a licensed medical practitioner. Up until now, the Social Security Administration was apparently allowed to consider non-licensed people. Of course, no one says how often that happened. Nor does anyone provide data as to how many claims will be blocked due to the requirement to get a doctor to look at the claimant. If there really are a lot of phony claims, it seems a pretty good bet that there will not be a shortage of licensed medical practitioners to "verify" the phony claims, so no big change there. There is also a new federal felony for defrauding Social Security. This felony is in addition to the existing criminal penalties for such conduct. It won't deter anyone. Then there is the big additional funding for the disability trust fund. Congress got that additional funding by just taking it from the regular Social Security Trust Fund. There is no savings, no additional revenue; they are just swapping cash from one account to another.
2. The bill authorizes the sale of over 80 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That oil cost the government roughly $600 million to buy when it went into the reserve. Now, it is authorized to be sold when the market price is about half that amount. Further, when the additional oil goes on the market, it will put further downward pressure on the price of oil. Now is the wrong time for that.
3. The bill orders the penalties imposed by the government to be increased in a major way. Now, instead of there just being more regulations, the costs for non-compliance just jumped.
4. There is really no clear indication of any meaningful offsetting cuts. The additional spending is really fully additional.
The deal is a disgrace.
1. We've been told that the measure contains "reforms" for Social Security and Medicare. That's a silly overstatement. For disability claims, Social Security will now require (starting a year from now) that claimants be examined by a licensed medical practitioner. Up until now, the Social Security Administration was apparently allowed to consider non-licensed people. Of course, no one says how often that happened. Nor does anyone provide data as to how many claims will be blocked due to the requirement to get a doctor to look at the claimant. If there really are a lot of phony claims, it seems a pretty good bet that there will not be a shortage of licensed medical practitioners to "verify" the phony claims, so no big change there. There is also a new federal felony for defrauding Social Security. This felony is in addition to the existing criminal penalties for such conduct. It won't deter anyone. Then there is the big additional funding for the disability trust fund. Congress got that additional funding by just taking it from the regular Social Security Trust Fund. There is no savings, no additional revenue; they are just swapping cash from one account to another.
2. The bill authorizes the sale of over 80 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That oil cost the government roughly $600 million to buy when it went into the reserve. Now, it is authorized to be sold when the market price is about half that amount. Further, when the additional oil goes on the market, it will put further downward pressure on the price of oil. Now is the wrong time for that.
3. The bill orders the penalties imposed by the government to be increased in a major way. Now, instead of there just being more regulations, the costs for non-compliance just jumped.
4. There is really no clear indication of any meaningful offsetting cuts. The additional spending is really fully additional.
The deal is a disgrace.
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