Submitted by Tennise Broeck Morse, local author of “Work or Die” – The Great Disability Benefits War.
Albuquerque is a great place to live, but it may not be so great under Project 2025.
With all the hoopla this “project” has caused, few people are looking back to 1981, when – according to the Heritage Society – it all began, with the first draft of Project 2025 being accepted by Ronald Reagan.
I’m 78. I don’t have to look back. I remember. Did you know that one of the first things Reagan did was to begin cutting a Social Security program? A new law required people getting disability benefits to be reviewed, and Reagan used the review process to remove people from the Social Security Disability Insurance rolls – many of them permanently. It was easy to do, because in a review your benefit checks ended as did your medical coverage, so people were helpless to fight back.
Reagan revised Social Security’s internal standards for disability, and then refused to respond to the media, public opinion, congress and the courts. This plan was entirely goal driven, downsize the disability insurance program, and in an unfortunate statement popularized by my generation – you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
The “eggs” he broke eventually added up to more than eight million disabled American citizens and their families. By cutting off disability benefits to people who had qualified for them, he also put an enormous financial strain on the cities and states, as welfare rolls were overwhelmed. The homeless population skyrocketed.
When Congress passed the law, it projected $218 million in savings over four years. In 1983, after some “administrative reforms,” Social Security now projected a savings of $2.7 BILLION, over 12 times what Congress intended. And each dollar “saved” put a disabled worker on the streets.
Reagan created such huge surpluses in the Disability Insurance and Medicare Trust Funds that articles were published about how this could hurt the economy. One article noted that these funds now could be used to make our overall debt picture look better, and could lead to the false belief that we could afford to cut taxes and increase our spending.
The three Social Security programs: old-age benefits, disability insurance, and Medicare – are not just an old people’s issue, or a disabled worker’s issue. They’re your issue, unless you never intend to get old or sick, or have a relative who does.
Reagan’s successful cutting of a Social Security program caused social chaos in every city and town, and in every state – whether “red” or “blue.”
Nobody told us we owed it all to what would eventually be called Project 2025. Now, we know. If this is what happened in the 1980’s, what will happen in 2025?
