White House Rebuts Report About Social Security Disability Changes

A White House spokesperson said there’s no plan to remove age as a factor to determine an individual’s capacity to work.

In this photo illustration, a Social Security card sits alongside checks from the U.S. Treasury in Washington on Oct. 14, 2021. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The White House on Tuesday rebutted reports that the Trump administration is preparing a plan that would make it more difficult for older people to qualify for Social Security disability payments.

The Washington Post on Monday, citing people it said were familiar with the plans, said the administration is weighing a proposal that would remove age as a factor to determine an individual’s capacity to work.

When asked about the claim, a White House spokesperson said that there are no such plans as described in the newspaper’s article.

“President [Donald] Trump will always protect and defend Social Security for American citizens. The only policy change to Social Security is President Trump’s working families tax cut legislation that eliminated taxation of Social Security for almost all beneficiaries—which every single Democrat voted against,” spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement to The Epoch Times on Tuesday.

He was referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed in Congress earlier this year, which implemented a tax cut for individuals aged 65 and older who can claim an additional annual $6,000 deduction for the years 2025 to 2028.

Solvency of Social Security

Social Security’s trustees board has said that both Social Security and Medicare funds will be drained earlier than previously projected. Social Security is projected to be depleted by 2034, a year earlier than the trustees’ projection, according to its report.

Meanwhile, the Medicare trustees’ report released earlier this year also said that the program’s Hospital Insurance trust fund is projected to be depleted by 2033, or three years earlier than the previous projection.

After those reports were released, top administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, said that Congress should take action to support the programs’ long-term health.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a centrist think tank, warned in August that if the trust fund goes insolvent, “benefits will be cut automatically by 24 percent across the board if nothing is done to prevent it” because under federal law, Social Security “cannot pay out more in benefits than it has collected in revenue.”

The Epoch Times contacted the Social Security Administration on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the agency told news outlets, in response to the Washington Post report, that it is considering “proposing policy updates to occupational data sources and optimizing their use to serve our customers and preserve the trust funds.”

“Once the proposal is fully developed, we will share it publicly and request public comment through the standard rulemaking process,” the spokesperson added.

A mid-September report from the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank, stated that anticipated regulations to the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs could “reduce eligibility for new applicants to the SSDI program by as much as 20 percent overall, and up to 30 percent among older workers.”

“A 10 percent reduction in SSDI eligibility could result in 500,000 people losing access over 10 years, including 80,000 widows and children. An additional 250,000 beneficiaries could lose eligibility for part of the period,” according to the group.