WHAT JOE BIDEN SHOULD DO WITH SOCIAL SECURITY

2021 marks a potential new beginning for Social Security. The federal agency has been plagued recently with office closures, a colossal financial deficit and a nearly impossible disability program that does not serve the victims of the COVID pandemic or the disabled community.

What are things that President Biden should do for Social Security and the country?

The new administration should move quickly to reverse steps the Trump administration took to make it tougher to file for, and receive, Social Security disability benefits. That is especially needed as evidence grows that many COVID-19 victims will suffer long-term effects from the disease that will leave them unable to work and in need of Social Security disability income to survive. Rules should be reset to the 2000-2010 era when really qualified applicants could get approved without waiting one to two years and almost every application had to go through numerous appeals to be paid. Stop changing the rules to stop eligible individuals from getting disability payments! Stop the stall where it can take a year or two to get approved! Disabled individuals don't have the means to wait a year or two. Cut the stall.

Biden must find a way to get Social Security offices open in our communities. We need the lights turned back on and to get employees back in the offices. We can no longer cower in fear and use COVID as an excuse to close offices and neglect the national mandate to serve the people. Sorry, but working from home just doesn't cut it in a vital necessary agency.

The Biden administration must work with Congress to fix the long term problems with America's retirement and disability plans. It's a balancing act: increasing long term FICA tax, which funds Social Security, without killing an already heavily taxed economy. Biden's idea of adding slightly higher FICA taxes on incomes of over $400,000 is a sound one. But it isn't enough to solve the expected long term deficit of $53 trillion dollars over the next 75 years. Both Democrats and Republicans need to sit down and work together for a much more permanent solution that does not involve cutting benefits (which are already too low).

Social Security benefits should be increased by 10 to 15 percent, which would the greatest COVID stimulus plan possible for poor, elderly and disabled Americans. Even if the increase must be tapered back gradually at a later time, it will still restore a decent standard of living for Social Security recipients during the pandemic.

In reality, COVID will be Biden's top priority in 2021, along with rolling back all the Trump accomplishments. But Social Security has been neglected for decades and the administration has enjoyed too free a hand in making new rules designed to make benefits harder and harder to get, while it takes longer and longer. That's not the way to solve the Social Security trust funds' deficits. Biden should cut the stall and make benefits available to legitimately disabled persons who are insured under the Social Security Act.

The priority of the Social Security Administration in recent years has been to eliminate fraud: to make certain that not even one person is given a benefit they are not entitled to. That priority is backwards. The priority should be to ensure that not one American who is eligible for a benefit fails to get it.