From: Al and Masha Sten-Clanton 
Subject: Re: ACB Washington Connection (fwd)
On Sat, 27 Sep 1997 hheagy@delphi.com wrote:
> As far as the 30-thousand dollars in earnings is concerned, I
> think we have every right to have it if the senior citizens have
> it.  Why should we have been disconnected from the 65-69 year old
> bracket just because the government felt they should have more
> earnings power? 
I know of no intrinsic linkage between blind folks as a group and senior
citizens as a group.  Blind people on SSDI as a class have more in common
with other people on SSDI:  like many of them we must use alternative
techniques for making our way in the world,and must face the barrier of
bad
attitudes; like the rest, blind people on SSDI have been deemed unable to
work.  The linkage with retirees was created in 1977 only because we
persuade Congress to adopt it so blind folks could get more bennies.
Understandable, and I sure agree that we needed better bennies than we had
at the time.  But we should realize that there's nothing magical or
particularly "historic" about that linkage.  Certainly, if Congress had
instead worked to improve benefits for people with disabilities so that
they were better than those for seniors, we sensibly would have sought to
break the linkage ourselves in order to get our piece of the better pie.
If we can stop thinking of the linkage with seniors as the key, we can
more freely and carefully craft an approach to benefits that contains real
work incentives without making a mockery of the notion underlying
disability insurance.
 Frankly, I think we should be in the 70 and
> older bracket which totally eliminates the earnings test.  Even
> if we get good jobs we have technology maintenance to pay > and other 
expenses others do not have.  It does us no good to
> work if all our earnings are consumed by blind related expenses.
When I first heard that we wanted the earnings limit removed, I thought it
was much too big a hand-out to ask for.  I actively supported it for a
time because it was Federation policy, because I thought it would rid us
of some beaurocratic nightmares, and because of the costs of blindness.
It never looked quite right to me, though.  Now, and for some time, I
wish I'd stuck to my first opinion throughout--though I certainly would
not have actively opposed our effort ouside the outfit.  It is worth
noting that how much money one gets has nothing to do with the costs of
blindness:  it depends on how many quarters one has worked, and I guess on
some other things.  Not only does this mean that the help one gets with
blindness cost may have nothing to do with how high those costs are, but
it shafts people like my wife, and others I know, who haven't worked
enough in jobs in which people pay into the trust fund.  No solution will
be perfect, but we can do better than that.
Also, job-related blindness costs are often handled by theemployer or by
the rehab agency.  (I think they belong with rehab, unless we could get
some stypend designed specifically to deal with blindness costs or
disability costs generally.) 
Finally, as my wife pointed out in BlindTalk about two years ago,
disability insurance is supposed to be insurance for when you have a
disability that prevents you from making a living.  I don't know of a
private disability insurance policy that will pay somebody full
benefits--or any benefits--if he or she earns much money at all.  What
we're telling the congress is that we should be able to earn at least a
decent wage while getting full benefits that are awarded because we're
deemed unable to work.  Remove the earnings limit altogether and it seems
to me we've cast logic into the great void beyond.  It would be far better
to raise the earnings limit less (if at all) but reduce benefits gradually
after one has exceeded that limit.  (I understand that the National
Council on Disability has proposed something like this, something that
also tries to deal with the loss of medical benefits.  SSI already works
this way.)
> Several years ago, we convinced S.S.A. of the need for the
> elimination of the earnings test but their objection was that if
> they gave it to us they would have to give it to all the
> disabled.  We said that was not necessarily true; that other
> disabled groups would have to make their own cases if they wanted
> it.  
Apparently, others with disabilities are trying to make their cases.  I
suspect their cases are much like ours.  Congress's failure
to link everybody with seniors has nothing to do with the failure to make
a case.  Rather, the reason is the projected cost of doing it.  I
understand that concern about the cost of it was one reason our linkage
proposal died last year.  Another, I was told, was that members of
Congress noted that we blind folks already have better benefits than other
disability groups.
I stress that I think our biggest problem is the abrupt benefits cut-off
that come with reaching the earnings limit.  When I mentioned this at the
Massachusetts affiliate's convention last April, Allen Harris responded
that it really wouldn't be a great concern because not many blind people
would be earning more than thirty thousand a year.  Well, for a moment I
wondered what I was doing there.  We want equality with sighted folks and
say we're capable of it.  A fair number of sighted folks make more than
thirty grand.  If we're on the right track, than a similar percentage of
blind folks should at some point be making more than thirty grand.  If
not, maybe I should forget all that about equality.  I expected more
optimism than that!  Maybe life will prove that sad, but we're not the
folks who should be lowering the ceiling of expectations for the blind.
Well, our work on the linkage proposal is far along, and it iscertainly a
policy with broad support.  I hope, though, that we'll take a different
approach if it doesn't pass.  We should go for gradual benefits
redunctions, so their is always a work incentive and we're not gouging the
taxpayers.  Also, though we have no duty to fight other people's battles,
we should stop creating mythical differences between blind folks and
others with disabilities:  the real differences from group to group are
already there to deal with.
I realize, of course, that this may be a marginal perspective.  The only
hope of leaving the margins, however, is to persuade others that your
views have some sense.  I've tried to do that here.  Thank you for your
attention to these comments.
Al
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