John,

Social Security is best known as a retirement program. But its disability and survivors benefits are just as important.

Imagine that you are hit by a car tomorrow, and suffer life-altering injuries that prevent you from working. You’re faced with crushing medical bills, and you’ve lost your income. In such situations, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits are a crucial lifeline. Donald Trump wants to rip that lifeline away.

In a new proposed rule, Trump and his Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney are targeting people with disabilities, because they perceive them as politically vulnerable. Their proposed rule would result in hundreds of thousands of Americans losing their earned Social Security benefits.

But if they are allowed to get away with this attack on people with disabilities, it will be only the beginning. They want to destroy every part of Social Security, including retirement benefits, and turn it over to their criminal friends on Wall Street.

Read Alex’s email below to learn more about the Trump administration’s cruel policy and then click here to submit your official comment to the Social Security Administration opposing this proposed rule change.

If we let the politicians in Washington DC take away some people’s earned benefits, it means they can take away all of our earned benefits. Thank you for fighting with us.

Michael Phelan
Social Security Works

--ALEX'S EMAIL--

John,

We should be making it easier for workers to claim the Social Security benefits they’ve earned with every paycheck, not harder. So why has the Trump administration proposed a new rule that’s designed to rip benefits away from hundreds of thousands of Americans with disabilities?

That’s the Republican strategy. Divide the American people.

While Social Security is best known as a retirement program, disability and survivor’s benefits are equally essential. That’s why we’re rallying our allies across the country to fight back against this proposed rule change and save the lives of thousands of Americans.

Click here to submit an official comment and stop the Trump administration’s cruel policy before it’s implemented.

We know what the effects of the Trump proposal would be, because Ronald Reagan implemented a very similar benefit cut back in the 1980s. And Reagan’s policy ripped away the benefits of 200,000 Americans with disabilities.

The Trump administration proposal¹ would require millions of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries to re-prove their eligibility for benefits as often as every six months—far more frequently than is currently the case.²

The New York Times reported that during the Reagan administration “people with obvious physical and mental disabilities” lost their benefits “without having been interviewed” by the Social Security Administration.³ This led to the loss of 21,176 lives of people who relied on their Social Security benefits to survive.⁴

And, while Reagan was eventually forced to reverse his attack on Social Security after massive public outcry, the Trump administration is bringing back this cruel policy with no regard for history or human life.

There is no justification for this policy. The United States already has some of the strictest eligibility criteria for disability benefits in the world. More than half of all claims are denied.⁵

Join Social Security Works and our allies in fighting back against the Trump administration’s brazen cruelty. Submit an official comment to the Social Security Administration to oppose the proposed rule change that will result in hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries losing their earned Social Security benefits.

Donald Trump himself might not be a diligent student of history, but his advisers—like Mick Mulvaney,⁶ Trump’s chief of staff and a longtime enemy of Social Security—know exactly what they are doing. They want to resurrect Reagan’s Social Security cut knowing full well that it killed people.

We must stop Trump’s plan. The Social Security Administration is collecting comments on the proposal until the end of this month. Click here to submit your official comment today.

Thank you for fighting back against attempts to undermine and destroy our Social Security system.

Alex Lawson
Social Security Works