WTF stick your hand into another hornets nest when you are cratering in the polls and have Epstein and the Economy to deal with?
The Social Security Administration has abandoned plans to block thousands of older Americans from qualifying for disability benefits after an uproar that reached senior officials in the Trump White House, according to people familiar with the decision.
The agency is also halting a plan to use modern labor market data to help judge whether disability claimants can work, a project that has cost the federal government more than $350 million so far. The new datawould have replaced a long-outdated jobs database that until recently included obsolete occupations such as nut sorters and telephone quotation clerks.
The policy affecting older people would have fundamentally altered who qualifies for the two federal disability programs by eliminating or limiting a person’s age as a factor to consider. It fulfilled a long-held goal of Trump officials to tighten the federal safety net and had been on track to be announced in the Federal Register as soon as December.
But widespread opposition mounted following an article in The Washington Post in October that reported the new policy could result in a loss of future benefits for hundreds of thousands of people.
Jason Turkish — an attorney representing disabled people and co-founder of the advocacy group Alliance for America’s Promise — said SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano and other administration officials assured him in meetings over the past week that the proposal would not move forward. A former Social Security executive familiar with the disability program confirmed that Bisignano has scrapped the proposed rule.
“The commissioner took a decisive, unambiguous role in concretely ruling out that this mega-regulation would move forward,” Turkish said.
A White House spokesperson said that “the White House has not seen any such proposal. However, President Trump remains fully committed to protecting and strengthening Social Security while making it easier for millions of Americans to engage with the Social Security Administration.”…
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The about-face follows months of turmoil at the agency that issues retirement and disability benefits to 72 million Americans. Thousands of staff cuts, voluntary departures and reassignments, service failures, and an aggressive takeover by Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service early in the Trump administration have led to widespread customer complaints and low morale in the agency’s workforce….
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A cut in disability benefits could have significant political consequences, advocates and lawmakers have warned, pointing to Trump’s campaign promise to not touch Social Security….
Note…
Some Republicans may talk about messing with Social Security, But?
That just isn’t something that will happen….
The political risk is TOOO Great….
Midterms are less than a year ahead….
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