Mandatory Spending
Function 650 - Social Security
Require Social Security Disability Insurance Applicants to Have Worked More in Recent Years
CBO periodically issues a compendium of policy options (called Options for Reducing the Deficit) covering a broad range of issues, as well as separate reports that include options for changing federal tax and spending policies in particular areas. This option appears in one of those publications. The options are derived from many sources and reflect a range of possibilities. For each option, CBO presents an estimate of its effects on the budget but makes no recommendations. Inclusion or exclusion of any particular option does not imply an endorsement or rejection by CBO.
| Billions of Dollars | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | 2027 | 2028 | 2029 | 2030 | 2021– 2025 |
2021– 2030 |
| Change in Outlays | 0 | -0.7 | -1.8 | -3.0 | -4.3 | -5.4 | -6.4 | -7.4 | -8.3 | -9.3 | -9.8 | -46.6 |
This option would take effect in January 2022.
Estimates include effects on Social Security only and not on other federal programs that could be affected, such as Supplemental Security Income, Medicare, Medicaid, and subsidies for coverage obtained through marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act.
To be eligible for benefits under Social Security Disability Insurance, most disabled workers must have worked 5 of the past 10 years. Specifically, workers over age 30 must have earned at least 20 quarters of coverage in the past 10 years. (In this option, the 10-year time frame is referred to as the look-back period.)
This option would increase the share of recent years that disabled workers must have worked while shortening the look-back period. It would require disabled workers older than 30 to have earned 16 quarters of coverage in the past 6 years—usually equivalent to working 4 of the past 6 years. That change in policy would apply to new applicants seeking benefits and would not affect blind applicants, who are exempt from the recency-of-work requirement. Disabled workers already receiving disability benefits would not be affected.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that under current law, the Disability Insurance trust fund would be exhausted in fiscal year 2026, and the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund would be exhausted in calendar year 2031. Under section 257 of the Deficit Control Act, in its projections CBO must assume that scheduled Social Security benefits would be paid even after the program’s trust funds were exhausted. However, the government’s legal authority to pay benefits would then be limited to the amount received in dedicated tax revenues, which would be insufficient to pay scheduled benefits in full. After trust-fund exhaustion, therefore, for the people who would lose eligibility under this option, the reduction in payable benefits would be smaller than the reduction in scheduled benefits.