August 3, 2008

Getting disability payments can be a fight to the death
SUMMARY: Portland's Social Security office has some of the nation's longest delays
for benefits, and in the years-long waits some die before seeing a dime

The series - Delayed to Death

Patricia Heimerl landed her first job in high school, bought a house at 22, and worked the last eight years of a long office career at Intel. She paid her bills, built a retirement account and, like most Americans, watched as Social Security took its cut from every paycheck.

Part of those deductions went to an insurance fund that pays benefits to people who become too sick or injured to work. Heimerl couldn't imagine that would ever mean her.

Then it did.

Doctors diagnosed her with fibromyalgia, which causes chronic muscle pain. Heimerl couldn't hold a job.

In January, the Social Security Administration decided that the 55-year-old McMinnville resident was disabled and approved her for benefits.

Here's what it cost her: six years.

Six years fighting Social Security's delays. Six years dealing with lawyers and paperwork. Six years burning through savings and selling her house to survive.

"It's something we've all paid into. So it should be there, if you are in need of it," she says. Instead, "the system you have to work with is a nightmare."

Fifty-two years ago this week, President Eisenhower signed a law creating the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which was intended to help people survive after infirmities drive them from the work force. But that well-intentioned plan has become a national quagmire for people like Heimerl, who suffer needlessly during interminable waits for a check.

More than 762,000 Americans sit in an unprecedented backlog of disability claims. Delays have hit all-time highs --the result of shoestring budgets, bureaucratic incompetence and poorly executed reforms.

The crest of baby boomers has reached prime age for disabilities and now slams Social Security offices. About 2.5 million Americans a year file disability claims, including many with little or no work history seeking Supplemental Security Income. Social Security must examine each one to ensure only the deserving get benefits.

One step of the process alone --getting an appeals ruling after a claim is denied --now takes an average of 512 days across the nation. The waiting times, which declined in the 1990s, have nearly doubled in this decade.

As the agency's top official, Commissioner Michael J. Astrue, told The Oregonian, "It's been going seriously in the wrong direction."

In Portland, where the local Social Security hearings office posts some of the nation's longest delays, the average appeal drags on 669 days.

Meanwhile, people like Heimerl are left in ruins. Many die waiting.

"They want to make it as complicated as possible so that we give up or die trying," says Linda Fullerton, a 52-year-old disability activist from Rochester, N.Y., whose Web page collects what she calls horror stories from the Social Security backlog.

Social Security officials, who decline to discuss individual cases, say they work at a furious pace to reduce the waiting times and will lessen the backlog. Astrue acknowledges it will take years to bring the system under control. Meanwhile, reforms have stumbled because Congress hasn't spent enough money to curb the delays.

"It's not what most people foresee for themselves," says Sylvester J. Schieber, chairman of the Social Security Advisory Board, an oversight agency.

"You're caught in a time warp, still in the middle of an appeal, tearing your hair out, your conditions worsening and you're staring death in the face. This is the epitome of helplessness."

If you think this will never happen to you, you're not alone.

No one in this story thought it would happen to them, either.

 

A slide into poverty

In 1991, Robert Harris was fit enough to dive into a chilly and surging Fanno Creek to rescue a stranger who had driven his car into the water. Emergency officials said Harris saved the man's life.

Harris now looks like a question mark when he walks. Social Security acknowledges his degenerative disc disease has impaired him, but officials say Harris, 48, can still do some work and is not eligible to collect benefits.

His case has followed every twist in the system for six years --through layers of appeals --and now is in federal court. He may never see a dime.

About 65 percent of people who first apply for Social Security disability are turned down, and most of those who ask to have their cases reconsidered are denied again.

Along the way, 1.1 million claimants give up each year. The majority who fight on --about 500,000 --eventually win their claims.

But to do so, they have to request an appeals hearing before one of Social Security's administrative law judges, who have the power to award benefits. This sends applicants into a complicated, often crushing world of lawyers and medical experts.

And it's here that the long waits really begin.

Those who enter the appeals process often bring claims for pain, mental health problems or injuries that aren't easily diagnosed or proved. But those complexities don't explain all the delays --most files sit in the backlog just waiting to be reviewed.

Harris spent his life savings of $3,000 and lived in his van at an Interstate 5 rest area for more than two years. He married in 2006 and now lives in a Salem trailer park. Harris and his wife, also unemployed, survive in part on the goodwill of friends and family, as they await word from Social Security.

"I'll never be able to work again, no matter what they decide," says Harris, a former window glazier. "I want to work. And I've been made to feel like a cheat and a beggar."

When people take their claims to U.S. District Court, as Harris has, federal judges about half the time send the cases back to Social Security for further review or order that benefits be paid.

That's what happened to Laurie Wells. Her case went to a federal judge --twice --before Social Security in June ruled she had been too disabled to work since July 2001. She struggled through the system nearly seven years.

"They just kind of stand there and watch you suffer," she says. "They treat you like a criminal."

Wells traveled the world during a 14-year career in the U.S. Air Force and Oregon Army National Guard. Tall, lean and energetic, she climbed to the rank of sergeant, earned a small-arms expert rifle ribbon, and served at bases in the U.S., Korea and the United Kingdom.

Over the last 15 years, doctors have diagnosed her with scoliosis, degenerative disc disease, fibromyalgia, depression, migraines, reactive airway disease, asthma, osteoarthritis, affective disorder, anxiety disorder and hypothyroidism.

"Pain," Wells says, "shows up in my dreams."

A 51-year-old single mom who lives in the Portland suburbs, Wells will get back benefits and a monthly check as long as she's disabled. It's not clear how much she'll draw. What is clear to Wells is that some of her back benefits will vanish before she sees a penny.

She knows Social Security won't pay the first five months of disability benefits --a time known as a "waiting period." Wells also knows she'll have to pay back a portion of her state welfare money. And she knows her lawyer will get 25 percent of her back benefits --a ceiling established by federal law. Lawyers can also charge for expenses, which in her case will be about $1,000.

"Hopefully, I'll have something left over," she says.

The delays drove her into poverty. Wells says she gets a monthly welfare check of $511 and food stamps worth $235. She pays $59 a month for a two-bedroom unit in a subsidized apartment, within walking distance of the clinic that treats her.

Wells says she hasn't been able to explain to her 13-year-old son how she proudly served her country for 14 years and now can't afford to drive a car. She said she tells him, "When I finally get my money, we can live like normal people."

"I don't think he understands why it's such a struggle."

Work works against you

More than 7 million Americans now collect benefits from Social Security's disability insurance program, drawing an average monthly check of $1,004, according to a recent sampling by the agency.

To qualify for benefits, you must prove your medical problems prevent you from any "substantial gainful activity" (defined as an average income of $940 a month) and must show your disability has or will keep you out of work for 12 months or more.

"People expect that after they have worked all their lives and paid into the system, their disability benefits will be there when they apply," says Linda Ziskin, a Lake Oswego attorney who handles disability appeals in federal court. "Instead they find that they may be expected to go back to a job they held 15 years ago or take a job that they have never done before."

Everyone interviewed for this story said they sought disability payments reluctantly and would prefer to work.

In many cases, people seeking benefits want to work. But when they try, it can work against them.

 

Randal Darby's customers loved him. At his Portland coffee shop, Hollywood Espresso, he welcomed people who never felt at home at Starbucks, high school kids shunned by peers, and others just looking for a haven. "Hollywood Espresso," went his motto, "Where You're the Star."

Darby had been forced to give up on his first love, teaching, because of his Type 1 diabetes, which became disabling when he grew disoriented. He told others he thought his condition cost him jobs working with children.

To keep working, he opened his shop in 1993 and built a loyal clientele. As his diabetes grew worse, his hands and feet often went numb. He dropped cups and dishes and couldn't feel when hot surfaces burned his skin. Customers sometimes found him in a near-coma.

In 2002, Darby filed for disability benefits. He sold his coffee shop toward the end of 2003. But the next year, a Social Security judge said Darby's business proved he had "substantial gainful activity." In reality, Darby saw a profit of only $1,150 in 2003.

The coffee shop had been Darby's only lifeline to the world, says Mark Falby, his companion of 25 years. "He would say, 'They want people to give up. They want you so downtrodden you can't do anything.' "

Darby died April 28, 2006, of complications from his diabetes. He was 48.

Social Security last year granted his disability claims, acknowledging he had been unable to work for the last two years and 10 months of his life.

"He was dead," Falby says. "His disability killed him. They couldn't refute it that last time."

The benefits went to Darby's mother, Esther, who waited and waited for the money. She went to the local Social Security office from time to time to ask about the delay. And she recalls asking them, "Are you waiting for me to die, too, so you don't have to pay the rest of it?"

She says a final benefits check for $5,817 arrived in her bank account last month.

"An unjust system"

Darby kept working through his disability because he could. Salvador Santa Cruz worked because had no choice.

Santa Cruz worked up to 12 hours a day, taking only Sunday afternoons off with his family. The $8.25 an hour he earned at Cascade Dairy in Parkdale barely supported him, his wife --childhood love Eufrasia --and their four children.

Eufrasia Santa Cruz says her husband felt lucky to work. He had moved from Mexico, gained U.S. citizenship in 1998, and honored the opportunity the United States gave him. "He saw work as important," his wife says.

Despite his hard work, Santa Cruz usually could rally at day's end to play with his kids. One day in June 2004, he complained of exhaustion --what his wife called "a different kind of tired."

He soon had coughing fits that didn't stop. Doctors eventually found he suffered from a rare and aggressive form of lung fibrosis. His physician said Santa Cruz could no longer work, even though he tried to until May 2005.

He filed for disability two months later, and Social Security rejected his claim. Fourteen years earlier, Santa Cruz had worked building pipelines. The agency told him he was healthy enough to do it again.

"As you retain the ability to perform the type of work you have previously done," one denial letter said, "your claim cannot be allowed."

Eufrasia Santa Cruz says her usually gentle husband wanted to rip the denial letters to shreds.

"He would say they took the money for Social Security out of his paycheck without a word, but when he needed it, there is no help," she says. "They make you fight for it."

The family survived on welfare and food stamps, often using one credit card to pay the bill of another. Friends and family helped, and his employers generously allowed the family to keep living in a house owned by the dairy.

In February, 21/2 years after his claim had been denied, a Social Security judge concluded Santa Cruz was indeed too sick to work. The judge ordered the agency to pay him benefits that came to $8,358 after attorney fees.

By then, Salvador Santa Cruz was dead --killed by respiratory failure on March 3, 2006, at 35. The money went to his family.

"We don't understand it at all," Eufrasia Santa Cruz says, her children sitting quietly on the sofa. "It's an unjust system."

 

Delayed to death

Problems with muscles, joints and bones are among the top diagnoses of people who receive benefits. But the No. 1 reason is mental health problems. More than a quarter of all beneficiaries suffer mental disorders, according to Social Security.

Many people say they didn't have mental health problems --until they started fighting Social Security. Several interviewed by The Oregonian spoke of feeling so desperate they wanted to die.

Sharyn Hames worked as a temp and administrative assistant in Idaho, but many people knew her best as a spirited cocktail waitress, working shifts on the side to make ends meet. She had to give up all of her work when pain from fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis overwhelmed her, and she filed for disability in November 2003.

Social Security rejected her application, and she waited two years and one month for a hearing. After she and her husband moved to Oregon, an agency judge rejected her claim, saying her fibromyalgia didn't stop her from working six hours in an eight-hour workday.

"Even if she could," says her husband, Rodney Hames, "she never knew day to day if she would be well enough to work. They didn't take that into account." Unable to keep a regular schedule, Hames couldn't find steady work.

She had a history of depression and anxiety, and her despondency grew as her list of medications hit 16. Rodney Hames' job provided good health benefits, but his wife's prescriptions and doctors' visits still averaged $600 a month --about what she expected to draw in benefits, her husband says.

"She loved to work and loved being independent," says her sister, Stephanie Silva. "She would sometimes say she wished she were dead so she wouldn't have to deal with all the bull any longer." Other times, Sharyn would tell her husband someone should take her out to the back pasture and shoot her --but then would assure him she was just joking.

On Thursday, July 5, 2007, she returned to their Newberg home after treatment for arthritis at Oregon Health & Science University, depressed because doctors had given her a poor prognosis.

"She constantly worried she was a burden on me," Rodney Hames says. "I told her not to worry, that I loved her and just wanted her to get better."

The next day, Rodney Hames kissed his wife goodbye and went to work. Sharyn took a 9mm Ruger from the nightstand, put the handgun to her head and pulled the trigger.

Her death was ruled a suicide. Sharyn, 43, didn't leave a note.

Sharyn's claim had languished nearly four years. Her attorney sent Sharyn's death certificate to Social Security. Less than five weeks later, the agency approved her claim --but only if her widower would cut a deal and give up a year's worth of her benefits.

Rodney Hames thought it was an insult to his wife, but he finally agreed. He says he received $10,500, after paying attorney fees.

"I was just so lost, feeling so much guilt," he says. "I couldn't fight them anymore."August 4, 2008

 

Social Security backlog grows from lack of cash
SUMMARY: Congress has repeatedly shorted the agency's funding requests, and
we all pay the price through disability delays and bungled payments

Social Security backlog

grows from lack of cash

Some moves

to improve

have backfired

BRYAN DENSON

and BRENT WALTH

Anyone who stands in line for Social Security disability benefits learns certain truths. The system is slow. It's wasteful. And it's often cruel.

Those who have tried to fix the system's immense backlog of claims know why: Congress and the White House have tried to run the agency on the cheap, starving a bureaucracy that must process 2.5 million disability applications a year.

Hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers whose disabilities have pushed them out of the labor force wait in line for years before getting benefits --if they live that long.

And in the Portland area, where Social Security runs one of the nation's slowest hearings offices, they'll wait even longer.

"It's hard to escape the conclusion that a system that's supposed to help people who are hurting works instead to wear them down and outlast them," says Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who has worked to fix problems in the local office.

"Not everyone can fight back, and many can't survive this system."

Social Security's disability claims backlog, which nearly doubled in the past decade, now stands at unprecedented levels as millions of baby boomers pour into the agency for benefits.

They face an agency whose staffing levels are below those seen during the Nixon administration 34 years ago, a bureaucracy so behind that its computer system was designed before man set foot on the moon.

Five years ago, then-Social Security Commissioner Jo Anne B. Barnhart earned a place in the agency's lore when she hauled a 25-foot chart into a congressional hearing. The chart, unfurled by aides like the train of a wedding dress, showed each step someone would take to get benefits if they were forced to go the distance --a 1,153-day odyssey.

"You could have heard a pin drop in the room," Barnhart says now. "They were shocked."

Miscues plague agency

Social Security made big strides in the late 1990s to fix the backlog. But it ballooned on Barnhart's watch, as Congress consistently failed to meet her agency's budget requests. In fact, according to federal budget records, Congress appropriated $5 billion less to Social Security during the past 10 years than its commissioners asked for.

And it shows.

More than half the people who phoned Social Security for any reason in 2006 got busy signals, according to one government survey. And last year, another study found, the agency made 400,000 Americans wait at least two hours before serving them at its 1,300 field offices.

Agency officials say they can't afford to adequately police the 11.8 million Americans now receiving benefits through its disability insurance program or Supplemental Security Income. It's a wasted chance to save taxpayers billions that go to people no longer disabled.

Also, according to a Social Security audit, the agency mistakenly overpaid more than $4 billion in disability payments in 2006, causing additional heartaches.

Just ask Shirley Ferguson. The 57-year-old North Portlander worked 30 years as a waitress and bartender before the agony of back and knee injuries --then mysterious chest pains that send her to the floor gasping --left her unable to work.

Last year, a Social Security judge awarded Ferguson a "partially favorable" decision of 10 months in back benefits, roughly $5,000. The government sent her a check for $12,733. Ferguson and her husband, broke, spent the money on living expenses. Now she's fighting for ongoing disability benefits while the government hounds her for the extra money it mistakenly sent.

"When you've been stuck in this horrible system," says Kimberly Tucker, Ferguson's lawyer, "you accumulate a tremendous amount of debt just trying to live."

Social Security, meanwhile, has repeatedly miscalculated how much Ferguson owes, says Tucker, and now bills her client $192 a month.

"I don't know how I'll ever get the money to pay them back," Ferguson says. "There's no way I can work."

Fixes haven't worked

Social Security has spent much of the last decade trying to streamline the way it evaluates and winnows cases.

But the plans have scarcely made a dent and sometimes made matters worse, according to a December report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog agency.

"Unfortunately," the GAO report says, the agency "has a history of implementing initiatives to improve claims processing that have been poorly executed and therefore compounded its problems."

The man who heads Social Security, Commissioner Michael J. Astrue, says he's optimistic about a computer program now in place that sifts through claims, identifies clearly disabled applicants and moves them into a pool for quick approval. He's also pushing another fast-track measure that will --as it rolls out this fall --speed cases for people suffering any of 25 rare diseases or conditions.

Astrue has a special interest in the new plan. When his father, a stockbroker, was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer in 1985, he waited in line at the Somerville, Mass., Social Security office for his dad, filling out paperwork to get him disability payments and the additional benefit of early Medicare. His dad got the cash benefits in about four or five months, Astrue recalls.

But the elder Astrue died in 1986 --before he could outlive Medicare's mandatory 24-month wait for benefits.

"It was a searing experience for me," Astrue says.

Hearings backlog

Across the nation, it takes an average of about five months for someone to navigate the first phase of the screening process.

About 500,000 Americans a year fight on after they initially hear "no" from the agency. Most appeal their denials to Social Security's administrative law judges, who have the power to order the agency to grant benefits.

And that's where the real delays begin.

 

The agency recently counted 762,335 people stuck in the agency's hearings backlog, where it takes a national average of 512 days to get a judge's ruling. The process takes 669 days in Portland's Social Security hearings office.

Astrue ordered the agency to clear 65,000 claims that had languished in the system for 1,000 days or longer, later describing this as a "moral imperative."

Social Security's inspector general reported in February that backlogs would increase further if some of its judges didn't work faster and that the agency might consider setting production targets. The average judge handles 485 cases a year, and the report suggested 500 to 550 would be a good goal.

As it turns out, 11 of 13 judges now working cases in Oregon would miss that mark, according to the report.

Judges in Portland's hearing office carry an average of 689 cases apiece, nearly twice the recommended number of pending cases, says Frank A. Cristaudo, Social Security's chief administrative law judge.

Some of the agency's judges say they move cases as fast as they get them and that delays often occur in processing the appeals heading to their desks. Judges say they need independence, even in the face of Social Security's urgency to clear cases, so that only deserving people get benefits.

"There is a lot of pressure on judges and managers to reduce the growth of the backlog," says Ron Bernoski, president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges. "It is much easier and quicker to pay a case than to deny it."

Congress took a stab last year at reducing the backlog by allocating $148 million more to Social Security than the president's proposed 2008 budget. The agency says it's spending the money to hire 189 new judges, including one in Portland, and hopes to have up to 1,200 hearing cases by year's end.

Astrue says the extra judges --up from about 1,000 last year --will eventually bring the backlog down. He's optimistic that fast-tracking initial claims, clearing old cases and improving electronic file management will speed up the process.

The commissioner says he hopes the average claim that reaches the agency's judges can be completed --from claim to decision --in about 15 months by the time his term expires.

In 2013.

A need for speed

One way to prevent delays is to secure benefits before claims get lost in the hearings backlog.

A Portland nonprofit, Central City Concern, recently created a team of five specialists just to prepare disability applications for some of the metro area's most vulnerable citizens. The charity's Benefits and Entitlements Specialist Team, a frenetic outfit, occupies a windowless downtown office called the "bullpen."

Team members, backed by $361,000 in grants this year, have worked since March helping physically impaired or mentally ill people --many left homeless by their conditions --submit thorough claims. They work the phones like detectives to hunt down evidence, including medical records and doctors' summaries and photos.

Mellani Calvin, the team's manager, modeled the effort after a successful national program. So far, says Calvin, the Portland team has filed 20 claims and won nine approvals in an average of 25 days. One applicant got benefits in a record seven days, she says.

The delay in getting disability benefits ranks consistently among the top constituent complaints to Blumenauer and other members of Congress.

Blumenauer says lawmakers might have fixed this problem long ago if Social Security's delays affected people with more clout.

"You would be seeing the media doing more, business leaders calling for change, real political outrage and you would get some real pressure on the administration," he says.

"What we have here, though, are largely invisible victims with not much of a voice."

Bryan Denson: 503-294-7614; bryandenson@news.oregonian.com

Brent Walth: 503-294-5072; brentwalth@news.oregonian.com

 

August 3, 2008

Sick and homeless, man gets SSI benefits days before dying
Bobby Rutherford was a casualty of Social Security's other disability program.
The native Oklahoman, homeless and mentally ill, was one of the roughly 1 million people who apply each year for Social Security's Supplemental Security Income. Those benefits, known as SSI, provide 5.4 million aged, blind or otherwise disabled adults an average of $493 a month.

Beneficiaries of that program --separate from the Social Security Disability Insurance program that American workers pay into paycheck by paycheck --come from a swelling underclass of citizens too disabled to start or keep a job.

Money of any kind would have greatly helped Rutherford, who had lifelong trouble holding a job. In 1970, when he was 22, the Marine Corps discharged him after diagnosing him with a "character and behavior disorder." Later diagnoses included schizoaffective disorder, hepatitis C, depression, anxiety and alcoholism.

Rutherford lost jobs as a laborer and construction flagger because of his delusions and heavy drinking, says longtime girlfriend Debbie Williams. He was sick and penniless by the time he moved into the Klamath Falls Gospel Mission.

He applied for disability benefits in January 2005, but Social Security denied his claims time and again. Then, in October 2006, one of the agency's administrative law judges ruled that Rutherford had been disabled since June 2004.

Rutherford had been sober for more than a year. But hepatitis savaged his liver. He was pale and losing weight. Still, he was thrilled when his first SSI check reached the mission Dec. 18, 2006, says Beverly Leigh, a homeless advocate who befriended him.

He hoped the $545.50 check --and the $13,248.88 in unpaid benefits heading his way --would move him into an apartment of his own and help him get treatment for his hepatitis, Leigh says.

But four days after his check arrived, a friend found Rutherford dead in his Gospel Mission bed. He was 58.

Social Security officials identified no next of kin to whom to award his benefits. The agency kept his money.

SHIRLEY FERGUSON takes a slew of drugs to combat chronic pain, including what she describes as daily chest pains so severe they sometimes leave her gasping on the floor. Social Security gave her additional discomfort. The federal agency awarded Ferguson 10
FREDRICK D. JOE/SHIRLEY FERGUSON takes a slew of drugs to combat chronic pain, including what she describes as daily chest pains so severe they sometimes leave her gasping on the floor. Social Security gave her additional discomfort. The federal agency awarded Ferguson 10 months in disability benefits, then paid her too much; now it wants the money back.
FREDRICK D. JOE/CENTRAL CITY CONCERN, a Portland nonprofit, employs a team of workers to help physically and mentally ill people --many of them homeless --file thorough applications for Social Security disability payments. "Get it right the first time," is the team's motto, says program manager Mellani Calvin (papers in hand). "Keep it out of the backlog."

FREDRICK D. JOE/SHIRLEY FERGUSON, a 57-year-old North Portlander, continues to fight for more disability benefits. "If she could go to work," says husband Ron Ferguson, "she'd be working. She liked working --it was important to her."

 

10173.2. He isn't really disabled

by EvilKWeevil, 8/14/08 18:44 ET
Re: question carskill by ore2008, 8/14/08

He just defrauded the Social Security administration into giving him SSDI payments. Probably through the SSDI fraud mill at Multnomah county's Cascadia mental health services. Cascadia has been defrauding the feds for a decade by diagnosing everyone who they can find with depression so they could get federal medical services payments for them.

The Oregonian's liberal puff piece whining about how long it takes Oregon SSDI applicants to get approved totally overlooked that huge local scam machine, the reason why the feds under president Bush have been tightening up their scrutiny of Oregon SSDI applicants.

Ironose-Jolly-Smelly-gamesink-Donald-Abner is another one of them. Resistol and Mr Webster too. All of them are perfectly able to work. They just managed to scam Social Security into giving them the newest form of welfare. Years ago, the welfare system quit giving men welfare payments. So they just migrated over to the SSDI and SSI system to get lifetime welfare support

17600.2. EXACTLY!!!

by Shah, 8/9/08 8:23 ET
Re: Old Geezers... by MaxBuzz, 8/9/08

Any time I log on I see the same old names here whining about how the government spends this or that number of tens of billions on the welfare state or the defense industry or whatever. Each of those guys lives a life of eternal ease sucking their money out of the Social Security Medicare and federal SS disability system. So their idea seems to be spend it on ME and nobody else!

America could right its huge debt numbers into the black in a few years simply by cutting these hypocritical parasites off from THEIR handouts. Funny how this same group of aged daily on line whiners sees nothing wrong with living off the hard work of younger families while they play on line all day.

HYPOCRITES!