A Great Disservice
I am writing in response to your front-page reports (Jan. 22-Jan. 25) on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for children.
As a social service provider in Baltimore City, I see the immense benefit that monthly SSI benefits have for families who have children with disabilities. I thought your first two articles were horribly misrepresentative.
The vast majority of families are able to obtain necessary medical supplies, housing, food and other needed items that medical assistance and other insurance programs will not cover. These items are not luxuries but are often necessary for the child's survival. The health status of many children would deteriorate without the needed medication and other supports that SSI money purchases.
Without SSI payments, many children's medical conditions would deteriorate, leading to costly in-patient services that would increase the cost of medical care for all Americans.
Many parents receiving SSI must stay home to care for their children. The SSI payments allow children, families, insurance companies and the public sector to avoid the astronomical cost associated with the institutionalization and hospitalization of children with severe needs . . .
Many of the sensationalized news reports inaccurately describe children who are told by parents to "fake" a disability in order to obtain SSI benefits. It is my experience that these stories are at the least extremely rare and at best exaggerated.
Children cannot be coached to have HIV/AIDS, medically fragile conditions or severe emotional disturbances. Despite your story, SSI benefits are very difficult to receive and take comprehensive documentation to prove a need (proof of income, physician's evaluation, school reports).
Cutting SSI benefits because of these irresponsible stories would needlessly wreak havoc on families with children in great need.
I was greatly disturbed at the lack of balance in your portrayal of those receiving SSI benefits. Next time I urge you to take a more balanced approach when doing such a story, particularly when the lives of children are at stake.
In this political climate where careful examination of public health problems has gone to the wayside in favor of politically reactionary statements, I believe that your series of articles do children with disabilities, their families and the taxpayers a great disservice. Shame on you.
Peter La Count
Baltimore
Pulitzer Quality
If Sun reporters John O'Donnell and Jim Haner don't get a Pulitzer Prize for their series on Social Security's Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Disability Income (DI), then justice is not only blind, but hearing-and-speech-challenged as well.
But I doubt that they will, because the content and conclusions of their articles are politically incorrect.
In any other time, their revelations would be called a government scandal beyond the order even of Teapot Dome and Watergate.
However, in this case, responsibility for the scandal cannot be neatly assigned to one or a few individuals.
It is rather a scandal for which an entire philosophy of government is responsible -- the philosophy which says that it is government, not the individual, which is the heart and soul, the bone and sinew of a culture and a civilization.
Richard Walter
Columbia
Small Investment
After reading the first two articles in the series "America's most wanted welfare plan" by Jim Haner and John B. O'Donnell, I find myself shocked at its sensational nature, which only caters to ignorance and inflames the passions.
This series appears to focus on the very small proportion of exceptions and to portend them as on the very small proportion of exceptions and to present them as the whole of the Supplemental Security Income program.
For example, your reporters say "checks for drug abusers are costing taxpayers $1.4 billion," which represents 2 percent of the overall $65 billion spent on Supplemental Security Income/Disability Insurance program.
Are we to assume that the whole 2 percent is suspect or are we, I believe, seeing a small portion of even the 2 percent singled out for emotional reporting?
I urge your writers to take a look at the number of tax evaders
each year who cost the Treasury many billions of dollars beyond the $1.4 billion cited here.
Why is it that working people, even if they don't pay their taxes as required by law, are somehow more acceptable in our eyes?
Why is it that when the "cheats" happen to be poor and unemployed, we view them with such extreme disdain? The rules are, somehow, arbitrarily applied.
And what of the vast majority of the SSI/DI program recipients and their stories?
Let's hear about them and the proportionately small investment it has taken to get those adults, children and the elderly back on their feet again so they can lead productive lives . . .
Julee H. Kryder-Coe
Baltimore
Injustice
As an advocate for people with mental retardation and as a former journalist, I was very distressed and upset by the extremely biased, one-sided and totally unfair series, "America's most wanted welfare plan: The disabling of America."
Yes, this series did a very thorough job of revealing abuses, fraud, misuses and exploitation. It did nothing, however, to focus on two other groups of people:
1. Those citizens with severe and profound disabilities and their families who deserve but have been totally unable to get what should be an entitlement.
2. The group of people with severe and profound disabilities who are, in fact, receiving a monthly "welfare" check to help them live a little more independently . . .
There are many, many people with mental retardation and other severe disabilities struggling to make it on the meager amount of $458 a month. Thousands more are people with severe disabilities struggling to get through and get approved by the often insensitive Social Security bureaucracy.
People with mental retardation are not the best at breaking down bureaucratic walls, unfortunately. It is no wonder that attorneys need to represent clients at this time. It is, after all, a government-made problem.
There are also thousands of families struggling to keep their children with disabilities at home, with little or no support. Why not profile their challenges and their sacrifices?
Society used to just institutionalize people with mental retardation as a matter of course at great personal cost to the people and at enormous fiscal cost to the taxpayer. Supplemental Security Income is designed to be one very small step in assuring personal independence.
This series was much more geared for the editorial page than for the front page. You have done a serious disservice to the people who genuinely need and deserve our public support.
And, certainly, you have done a grave injustice to the politicians and elected officials who are currently struggling with these issues . . .
Kate Rollason
Prince Frederick
The writer is executive director, the Arc of Southern Maryland.
Pandora's Box
Usually when I read a newspaper article on a subject familiar to me, there are many flaws. But your reporters are to be congratulated on the series concerning the Social Security disability program.
When I retired from there 30 months ago, the program was in free-fall toward chaos at toboggan speed, for all the reasons mentioned.
This is one debacle that cannot be blamed on the maligned government worker. Look to your nearest congressperson -- and the more liberal, the more to blame.
They are the people who reacted to every special interest group and turned the program into what it is today.
They transformed a program designed for the seriously disabled into a haven for drug and alcohol abusers, immigrants, parents eager to have their normal children declared mentally unfit and the just-plain greedy.
There can be no better example of the loosening of standards than the poorly written mental requirements for children that have cost taxpayers billions in the last four years.
Every disability examiner of any experience realized that a Pandora's Box had been opened, and many spoke up to no avail.
Anyone believing that significant changes will be made to correct these abuses will be disappointed.
Social Security is now beset by a cast of characters that will be hard to overcome, even if Congress has the will to tackle this task.
Claimants, lawyers, doctors and special interest advocates of every description have a financial interest and will fight every attempt to remove people from the disability rolls.
I predict that the newly elected conservatives will talk big for public consumption, and then make only a few minor changes. They will run from the hot potato.
Thomas H. German
Baltimore
The writer is a retired disability examiner.
Biased Report
I was shocked by the incredibly biased portrayal of immigrants and refugees in the Jan. 24 front page article headlined, "America's most wanted welfare plan."
The article implies that many refugees and immigrants are responsible for robbing "real" Americans of disability benefits and taxpayer dollars.
I don't deny that there are probably thousands of people who are making fraudulent Supplemental Security Income claims.
But to so blatantly identify immigrants and refugees as the bad guys, without carefully balancing the story with information that the vast majority of immigrants are honest and productive members of our communities and that most fraudulent claims are made by native-born persons, is irresponsible . . .
Have we forgotten that we are a nation of immigrants and that our own family members often came here to escape scapegoating and the persecution that follows?
Please give consideration to how your coverage of social problems might affect innocent persons.
Let's not create the illusion that "cracking down" on immigrants or the poor would solve our country's problems. We all share a responsibility for their creation and their solutions.
Diane Paul
Baltimore
Needy Recipients
As a former worker at the Department of Social Services, I found your articles on welfare very one-sided.
There may be and probably are some frauds among recipients, but I never found any among the many hundreds of cases I reviewed and clients I interviewed.
In fact, my constant thought was amazement that these people were able to rise in the morning with so little to hope for in the future.
Why not portray some of the recipients who are needy and try to become independent? Your articles reinforce the stereotypical idea that all welfare recipients are lazy cheats. That is untrue.
By all means encourage legislators to reform the system, but do it case by case.
Then provide training, education, affordable day care, jobs and a living wage for the able-bodied.
But let's not debunk the whole system because of a minority who are able to manipulate bad rulings.
Agnes McAvinue
Baltimore
Mean Spirit
If The Sun's misleading, mean-spirited sub-headline on American aid to refugees is any proof ("America's Most Wanted Welfare Plan: Immigrants Walk Off the Boats and Onto SSI Disability Rolls," Jan. 24), Newt Gingrich's congressional ascendancy has brought his confederates' mercilessness to Baltimore as well.
The piece, in its analysis of the few refugees who commit fraud to obtain federal disability, fails to note that Supplemental Security Income is only available to the small number of immigrants admitted to the U.S. with refugee status.
The vast number of immigrants and refugees may not even file an application for SSI. On balance, these newcomers to the U.S. contribute far more tax revenues to federal and state coffers than they draw through any type of program.
What's more, the piece fails to credit the generosity -- albeit limited -- of American refugee policy.
Every year, the United States rescues about 120,000 refugees, a fraction of the millions of people throughout the world who flee their homes because of religious, political and ethnic persecution . . .
Those refugees who return American kindness with the ingratitude of falsely obtaining disability funds certainly deserve condemnation.
But the many refugees who commit no such fraud should not be viewed with harshness, even if the middle class must make a minor charitable sacrifice.
Barry List
Baltimore
Informative Pieces
My name is Patricia Anne DeBow, I am a 61-year-old disabled black woman, currently drawing Social Security disability insurance in the amount of $416 a month, which has taken me three years to obtain.
I have been reading the articles by Jim Haner and John B. O'Donnell. The articles were well written and very informative and heart-breaking.
It really is appalling to read how people who have never contributed to the Social Security program can sign up for the benefits and receive $458 each month.
Patricia A. DeBow
Havre de Grace
Welfare, not SSI
Congratulations to your reporters John O'Donnell and Jim Haner on their excellent expose of the waste and fraud in Social Security's give-away programs.
If these people mentioned have a real need, it should be through the welfare system, not Social Security. It is best equipped to sort out the malingerers.
It's a gross injustice to the millions of Americans, including myself, who have worked for years, paid into the system and now need the return on our investment.
The Supplemental Security Income program should be stopped immediately . . . This cheating probably results in the deserving ,, receiving less than they actually should be paid.
Walter Farnandis
Ellicott City
Family Values
While reading the recent Sun articles about welfare reform, something kept bothering me.
At first I questioned my compassion for those less fortunate than myself. What seemed to irritate me the most was large families on welfare -- especially recipients who continued to add children their under-financed families.
Then it came to me. I have two children of my own and would have liked to have had more, if I could have afforded a larger family.
After my first child's birth I took a part-time job in the evenings and Saturdays. After our second child was born, my wife started working part-time.
Income from the extra jobs helped pay the bills and kept us ahead, at the cost of time away from our home and children.
The only financial assistance we received was the income tax deduction that came with each child. Which is OK, since I've always felt responsible for my family's growth and maintenance.
However, I never had an employer raise my pay because of my family's increased size.
The idea that welfare benefits should increase with a family's growth is just as irrational as my wife and I producing more children than we could afford . . .
My parents never had medical insurance, nor could I afford it 14 of my first 20 years of marriage. I'm not proud of this.
In fact, had it been offered free by the government, I suspect I might have done whatever necessary to continue receiving it, maybe having children I could not afford.
Ron Walker
Baltimore
Misleading Points
Your series of articles on welfare reminds us that some people will stoop to anything, whether SSI recipients or journalists.
We read of over 700,000 immigrants, or one out of every eight beneficiaries, receiving SSI payments amounting to almost $4 billion in monthly payments.
You tell us they are the fastest growing group of SSI recipients behind children and a product of an almost unprecedented boom in immigration.
We read casually of immigrants who "walk off the boat and on to SSI disability rolls. . ." "without working so much as a day . . ." "a tide of mentally stressed refugees streaming through America's golden door."
First of all, you fail to distinguish between immigrants and refugees.
Refugees, of whom the largest groups since World War II have been Germans, Cubans, Southeast Asians and citizens of the former Soviet Union, have been deemed a special category and have been eligible for various types of federal assistance.
Yearly Immigration and Naturalization Service reports, however, routinely show that only 1 to 4 percent of all immigrants receive food stamps or SSI payments and only 7 to 10 percent receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
Second, taking the 1990 Census figures of just under 20 million foreign-born in this country, the 700,000 immigrants on SSI amount to only 4.5 percent of all immigrants, hardly a reason for anti-immigrant hysteria.
Third, INS reports also routinely count a higher percentage of immigrants in the labor force than native-born. In fact, it has been frequently calculated that what immigrants pay in taxes far exceeds what they receive in transfer payments.
Immigrants renew this country because they are ready to work. Even a Californian can tell you that . . .
I do not doubt the numerous cases of fraud you exposed in your series.
However, spotlighting those individuals with their hands in the cookie jar and then proceeding to make generalizations of a large group of people is dangerously misleading . . .
Sun readers deserve all the facts, the complete perspective . . .
Sanjay Mathur
Baltimore
Telling Numbers
The front-page article about a family in Louisiana receiving $46,716 tax free from Social Security was as interesting for what it did not say as for what it did say.
The initial question that might be raised is how much a family would have to earn to bring home net $46,716? It would have to be in excess of $65,000.
On the other hand, working with the $46,716 figure: A working person earning that much gross would have had $2,896 deducted for Social Security before he even brought home his pay check.
Allowing for seven children and parents for an exemption of $22,050 and the standard deduction of $6,350, there would be a taxable net of $18,316 on which federal income tax of $2,749 would be due. This represents a total of $5,645 in federal taxes alone.
This letter should not be construed as wanting to deny aid to the poor or others requiring help. However, the mathematics of the situation demonstrate that the present system demands an overhaul.
ichard Lelonek
Baltimore
Good Reporting
I wanted to compliment Jim Haner and John O'Donnell on their series on the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program.
As a Social Security Administration employee for over 20 years, I was impressed with the job of research and writing done by these gentlemen. They managed to present an even-handed view of the issues and a balanced history of the program changes. Their errors were few and minor.
Even the people who write SSI policy that I've discussed the series with were favorably impressed.
It's the kind of reporting that I'd like to see more often, and a series of this complexity and scope is what makes reading the newspaper, rather that just "doing" TV news, worthwhile.
Vivian M. Schimberg
Baltimore