Editorial: A disabling system

Saturday, Dec. 15, 2007 | 7:39 a.m.

The federal government's backlog of Social Security disability appeals is getting worse, and there is little relief in sight.

A recent story by The New York Times says the number of unresolved appeals has reached 755,000 - more than twice the number in 2000.

The average wait for a hearing is about 500 days, compared with 288 days in 2000. But a significant number of people are waiting up to three years to see whether previous rejections of disability claims will be overturned on appeal, the Times reports.

Unfortunately, many claimants already have been forced into bankruptcy or lost their homes by the time their appeals are heard. Some have even died before their claims were resolved.

The reason for these delays is relatively simple: The number of aging and disabled Baby Boomers is steadily rising, while the Social Security Administration's funding and the number of judges it has for claims resolution have remained static.

Another problem, which also stems from inadequate funding, is that state and regional offices for the agencies don't have enough staff to properly handle initial claims. Two-thirds of the people who appeal initial rejections of their disability claims win their cases on appeal.

Agency officials told the Times they would need an additional $100 million to hire 150 more judges to handle the backlog. But President Bush's 2008 budget calls for funding the agency at its current level. Congress passed a $275 million funding increase for the agency in November as part of a larger appropriations bill, but Bush vetoed the bill because he considered it extravagant.

This just doesn't make sense. It's not as if the Bush administration couldn't see this coming. The Baby Boom generation, which encompasses people born from 1946 through 1964, makes up 25 percent of the U.S. population. Members started turning 55 in 2001, so it only stands to reason that as more of them age, the number of disability claims will increase.

This is just not a fiscally responsible way to run a large government agency that has a $9.6 billion budget and receives 2.5 million disability applications a year. More important, these yearslong waits are no way to treat people who, because of age or physical disability or both, no longer can take care of themselves and look to their government for the help it is supposed to provide.