I have conversed with Alex Cockburn (he wrote a blurb for my book) about this, and we agree. Few realize that last year when Clinton signed welfare reform he changed the eligibility rules for disabled children's SSI. Now SSI is the poor's equivalent of SSDI(disability) for workers. It is a part of the social safety net. The change resulted in tens of thousands of disabled children losing their SSI and Medicaid. Clinton knew this because he was warned but he signed the bill anyway. Shortly after, he signed a bill eliminating addicts from SSI and immigrants from SSI and foodstamps. As a SSA, Medicare, Medicaid watcher, I can vouch for the fact that the neo liberals are onto the austerity ruse but they have been rolling back benefits bit by bit, changing eligibility rules, paying less for Medicare services, workign towards making managed care mandatory for the Medicaid population, denying treatment that is medically necessary, undoing protections - on and on. This year the congress has proposed to cut back the meager $471 SSI benefit for adults if two or more adults live under the same roof. Disabled people of course do try to live together and share expenses because how else could one survive on $471 per month. It is a visious and cruel thing that is happening and Chomsky was dead right to warn people that the roll back forces were on the track.. They are hittng disabled people in the gut. Medicare is cutting back on home care payments which is making for profit businesses providing home care drop their Medicare clients - not enough reimbursement from the government they calim to make it worth it.
Not to be self promoting, I have made next to nothing on this book, but I forcast this situation with the neo liberals doing the dirty job to the disabled and unfortunately the evidence just keeps mounting. One man who had his home care dropped recently said that the government just hoped that he would die. The squeeze is on and it is very real - public health care is under the biggest threat it has seen in a long time and the severely disabled and the ill are like the canaries in the coal mine. We will be the first casualties.
Now if privatization occurs that will draw millions out of the trust fund leaving disabled people in a tough spot. We will be perceived as even costlier, because the pie would have shrunk.
Marta Russell
Carrol Cox wrote:
> On Social Security: Cockburn predicted (shortly before or after the 96
> election) that Clinton's next great achievement after destroying public
> aid (and probably in the middle run shortening millions of lives) would
> be to destroy Social Security. So far the prediction looks good.
>
> Not too many weeks ago the WSJ in an editorial predicted that by opening
> the issue of Social Security Clinton had unleashed a project he could
> not control. Their explicit assumption was that Clinton did *not* want
> to destroy Social Security, but that his actions would achieve that
> goal. This minuet between the WSJ and the Clinton Administration, like
> the Dukakis campaign of 88, could provide a field day for conspiracy
> theorists. Clinton does the dirty work; the WSJ provides the cover by
> accusing him of being a liberal.
>
> Carrol