\n<\/p>\n
On Nov. 13, a small team of advocates for people with disabilities stepped through White House security and into the narrow, bustling corridors of the West Wing, unsure what to expect. They\u2019d managed to get a short meeting with James Blair, who is one of President Donald Trump\u2019s deputy chiefs of staff, in the hopes of preventing a planned policy change. In recent weeks, ProPublica and The Washington Post had reported that officials at the Social Security Administration were working on a proposed regulation that could result in at least 830,000 mostly older blue-collar workers being denied disability benefits.<\/p>\n
The advocates, led by Jason Turkish, co-founder of the Social Security disability rights group Alliance for America\u2019s Promise, had sent the White House team ProPublica\u2019s Oct. 31 article and other materials. The reporting showed that if the Trump administration enacted this regulation, the harm would disproportionately fall on some of the president\u2019s most loyal supporters: 50- to 60-year-old coal miners, factory workers and other manual laborers, especially in West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama. The administration\u2019s logic for cutting these workers\u2019 eligibility was that even if they have a severe physical disability, they should be able, in the modern economy, to find a more sedentary job at a computer or perhaps driving for Uber or DoorDash. Disability advocates countered that people who\u2019ve worked in grueling fields for decades, some of whom don\u2019t have a high school education \u2014 and who grew up before the digital age \u2014 would face severe obstacles to such a career change, including age discrimination in the hiring process, the lack of desk jobs in rural areas and the difficulty of mastering unfamiliar skills at this point in their lives.<\/p>\n
A few doors down from the Oval Office, Turkish and his colleagues turned a corner into Blair\u2019s office. Sitting across from him was a second person, one the advocates hadn\u2019t expected to encounter: Russell Vought, the powerful White House budget director. He looked displeased.<\/p>\n
After several minutes of dialogue about the disability regulation, according to Turkish and another person present, Vought said, \u201cI know that this is being written about.\u201d But, he added, the rule change \u201cisn\u2019t going to be happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a startling announcement from an often uncompromising senior official in an administration with little history of changing its mind in response to journalistic scrutiny and pressure from advocates for the vulnerable. But that\u2019s what Turkish and three other sources say has happened: The Trump administration has decided not to pursue the disability cuts that it has been working on all year \u2014 and in fact since at least 2019, when officials during Trump\u2019s first term were close to finalizing a similar regulation.<\/p>\n
Turkish, who is also president and managing partner of one of the nation\u2019s largest law firms that represents disability claimants and beneficiaries, said in an interview that Vought and Blair seemed to have absorbed the recent reporting on the issue. He said they acknowledged the anxiety that disabled workers were experiencing \u2014 people like Christopher Tincher, a former coal miner who lost his leg on the job at a wastewater treatment facility in Arkansas and was featured in ProPublica\u2019s story. Both officials were unambiguous, Turkish and another person present confirmed, that the regulation would not proceed in any form.<\/p>\n
Turkish\u2019s takeaway is that in the West Wing, vulnerable Americans with disabilities like Tincher don\u2019t get talked about enough. \u201cTo have his story read by senior White House staffers, to remember what this program is, to remember that Social Security disability is not partisan,\u201d was crucial, Turkish said.<\/p>\n
Afterward, they walked out together, back through the corridors, and Vought was walking in the same direction. He didn\u2019t say another word the whole way, according to one of the people present.<\/p>\n
Spokespeople for the Social Security Administration and the White House Office of Management and Budget did not respond to questions from ProPublica, including whether they would contest the advocates\u2019 assertion that the planned regulation has been nixed. A top Social Security Administration official confirmed in a meeting yesterday that the regulation has indeed been called off, according to a person present. It\u2019s not clear why officials have said this in meetings, including with advocates, but haven\u2019t made any public announcement.<\/p>\n
At the White House meeting, according to two participants, Blair told Turkish to go to Frank Bisignano, the commissioner of the Social Security Administration, and \u201cask him point blank\u201d if the regulation is in fact no longer being pursued.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Turkish said, he did just that and met with Bisignano. Also present at this second meeting were the longtime lobbyist Andrew Woods as well as Mark Steffensen, the Social Security Administration\u2019s general counsel. Bisignano, according to both Turkish and Woods, asked them what the White House had said about the disability issue \u2014 and he, too, \u201cdecisively\u201d confirmed that the regulation would not proceed.<\/p>\n
The commissioner, they said, made clear that his focus is on modernizing the Social Security Administration, not cutting disability benefits. \u201cI take him at face value,\u201d Turkish said, adding that Bisignano may not have been actively involved in crafting or discussing the regulation and decided against pursuing it when it \u201creached his level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turkish and Woods say Bisignano told them to convey to the disability advocacy community that \u201cthere is no daylight between this office and the White House with respect to us not moving forward\u201d with the regulation. On Monday, Bisignano should be able to tell them that himself: He\u2019s considering participating in a town hall with advocates and people with disabilities.<\/p>\n
Turkish has told other advocates in a group email that his organization will \u201cremain vigilant to ensure these assurances are honored.\u201d<\/p>\n
The regulation that the Trump administration had been drafting \u2014 which remains listed on a federal bulletin with a scheduled publication date in December \u2014 would have made two major changes to the Social Security Administration\u2019s disability system, according to four officials from the agency who had knowledge of the plans. First, it would\u2019ve modernized the job listings that Social Security\u2019s disability adjudicators use to decide if there\u2019s work available in the U.S. economy that a manual laborer could still do despite physical impairments. This proposed change, which would\u2019ve updated severely outdated jobs data, arose from a bipartisan effort that\u2019s been in the works since the Obama administration.<\/p>\n
The second provision was the controversial one. It would\u2019ve almost entirely removed age as a criterion in these decisions, making a disabled 50-plus-year-old no more eligible for assistance than a 20-something. This would have had collateral effects: Losing eligibility for disability would block such workers\u2019 access to Medicare, which they\u2019re currently eligible for at an earlier age precisely because they\u2019re disabled. And if workers were to be increasingly denied benefits in their 50s, many would be forced to draw down any savings they have, which could lead them to apply for Social Security\u2019s retirement benefits early, in turn diminishing their and their spouses\u2019 benefits until they die.<\/p>\n
New polling by a Trump-aligned firm has suggested that older Trump voters would overwhelmingly oppose such changes to disability eligibility. In the wake of Democrats\u2019 strong showing in recent elections, two people with knowledge of the situation said that the administration may have been particularly sensitive to these views. As one lobbyist put it, it\u2019s all about the \u201celevation of an issue, and getting it on the right desks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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