Richard Shelby

It would be irresponsible to ignore the concerns about the CLASS program's long-term sustainability in its current form.

Isn't that what we want to do, where people are able and want to work again?

The Social Security has been a good program, but to say we can't improve it, is nonsense.

Without fear of losing everything at once.

Approximately 15,611,000 people received Social Security Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance.

Is it more efficient than it used to be?

Congress needs to carefully examine programs to ensure that we are sustaining those that are effective and cutting those that are not.

That's very critical, though to someone that's been out of the workforce.

That's what I was saying.

Absolutely. What recommendations, specifically, would you make to the Social Security Administration to attain its goal of improving service to the public?

Wouldn't this funding have been better spent on integrity work, such as, disability and Supplemental Security Income reviews?

Eight-hundred thousand cases.

Has the Social Security Administration performed a cost-benefit analysis to examine the cost of hearing a case versus approving a case initially?

I've known cases where people who have filed for disability claims and have been denied... and then they die before the appeal process.

And how many--number-wise, what--how many cases are denied, then appealed nationwide, roughly, per year?

I think is a dangerous mismanagement of Federal funds.

The $350 million Recovery Act funding we used in fiscal year 2010 to handle claims was not included in our continuing resolution level.

The number of workers per retiree has fallen from 42 to 1 in 1940 to about 3 to 1 today.

Simply put, there is no way to control our debt without getting serious about entitlement reform.

Let's assume it's just 10 million--that's a lot of people.

We've been told that, after being rejected by the Social Security Administration for a disability claimant person, two-thirds of the claimants win their appeal.

A lot of people all over America realize that this stimulus package, this money was--once it ran out, it was gone.

If the appeal process throws back two-thirds of the cases, there's something wrong.

Social Security is now at the tipping point, the first step of a long, slow march to insolvency if we don't do something about it.

The increase will accelerate the exhaustion of the SSDI reserves by 2018, and was recently described by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as 'not financially sustainable.'