Rob Wendt, NOSSCR President

Of all the interesting and meaningful experiences available to NOSSCR members, one of my all-time favorites has been the NOSSCR Policy Committee which I currently chair. The Policy committee considers detailed policy questions about legislation, regulation, agency policy, and operations – for the benefit of the full board of directors before it takes formal action.

The membership of this committee has always included active, thoughtful, and often outspoken NOSSCR members who revel in exploring and debating the wonky details of Social Security disability law and practice, which is the heart and soul of effective advocacy and fair decisions, as well as the key to financial success in our law practices.

This year has been a particularly active one for the Policy Committee, which meets almost every other week.  Much of the Committee’s time was spent evaluating changes in agency policy on vocational evidence after the withdrawal in early 2026 of SSA’s “MegaReg” proposal — a sweeping plan to overhaul the vocational rules used in disability determinations. The Committee issued a report to the board on this topic at the Baltimore national conference in April.  More recently, the Policy Committee has been evaluating all the bills pending in the current Congress, which will be ending soon. The Committee gave an interim report at the April board meeting on pending legislation to eliminate or alter the five-month waiting period.  We’ll have another report on that legislation and all other pending Social Security disability legislation at the October board meeting during the Salt Lake City national conference.

The policy issue I’d like to address in more detail today, is one that has been discussed by the Policy Committee more recently –  the solvency of the Social Security trust funds. In my view, the  solvency crisis is likely to be the most important and challenging policy issue facing NOSSCR over the next four to six years.

To be clear, restoration of trust fund solvency, ultimately will be driven by political forces and institutions much larger and more powerful than NOSSCR. Nevertheless, our role in this national debate will be an important contribution to the final outcome, particularly as it relates to disabled Americans and their families for generations to come.  I know this to be true, based on my own experience in a very similar political battle over the future of Social Security which I’d like to share with our members – President George W. Bush’s 2005 proposal to privatize Social Security.

If you read any of the histories of Social Security, the most prominent of which is Robert Ball and the Politics of Social Security by Edward D. Berkowitz (Robert Ball and the Politics of Social Security | University of Wisconsin Press ), you will quickly learn that the root of all political controversies over the Social Security insurance programs is a philosophical one – is it a wasteful  socialist welfare program contrary to American values of self-sufficiency and freedom from government control; or an important stabilizing force for the economy and a safeguard for vulnerable Americans threatened by periodic economic downturns, disability, old age, and death, which cannot be replicated by the private sector, and which is consistent with American moral beliefs, and necessary to long-term national security.

The philosophical divide over the nature and purposes of Social Security played a prominent role in the privatization movement that started over 30 years ago.  By the late 1990’s, conservative political theorists and think tanks, promoted the idea that Social Security was in “growing financial distress” and that the only fiscally sound solution was to privatize the retirement portion of the system.  (Privatizing Social Security: It’s High Time To Privatize | Brookings ; The Great Social Security Debate of 2000 | Cato Institute ).  Progressive political writers and think tanks responded. (Undermining Social Security with private accounts: Commission’s final proposals would lower living standards without fixing shortfall | Economic Policy Institute).

In my state, South Carolina, then-Congressman Mark Sanford became an early acolyte of the privatization movement and in 1997 held a series of town hall meetings to promote it.  A retired Social Security ALJ and I got together and decided to attend those meetings to present the arguments in opposition.  After our local newspaper printed Sanford’s opinion piece supporting privatization, I wrote this response.

During his first term, President George W. Bush took the initial step toward privatization by creating the Commission to Strengthen Social Security (CSSS), which recommended “individually controlled, voluntary personal retirement accounts.”  After his reelection in 2004 he formally announced his privatization plan, adopted from the CSSS report, in which 4% of taxable wages could be diverted from FICA, placed in voluntary individual accounts, and invested in a conservative mix of bonds and stock funds. The option would apply to workers under age 55 after a phase‑in period.

President Bush put the full court press on Congress to pass his plan, stating after his reelection: “I earned capital in the campaign — political capital — and now I intend to spend it.” Fortuitously, Senator Lindsey Graham, a little over two years into his first term, emerged as the leader in the Senate to gain passage of the President’s plan and to serve as a broker between the two parties.

Senator Graham was not only my law school classmate, I was one of his earliest supporters when he first successfully ran for a seat in the South Carolina General Assembly and I supported him early in his Congressional career as well, even though I was an active Democrat.  Senator Graham was also a trial lawyer, and while he kept it under the radar, he worked closely with the trial lawyer organizations.  I served on the SC Trial Lawyers Association board (now SCAJ) as the chair of the Social Security Section, and SCAJ was the most well-connected of the state trial lawyer associations to the national trial lawyers (now AAJ), a lobbying powerhouse in Congress.  An opportunity had presented itself.

Working with Nancy Shor, then NOSSCR executive director, and Linda Lipson, then AAJ public affairs director and now president, I wrote a position paper outlining the reasons why the Bush privatization proposal as presented, would hurt disabled Social Security beneficiaries.  We made arrangements for me to meet personally with Senator Graham at the AAJ winter convention in Palm Springs, California to which Senator Graham was invited for private meetings.

I met with Senator Graham after he had finished a round of golf – he was still clacking around in his golf cleats – and we caught up on our respective careers and then got down to business discussing the position paper, which he had read and had questions about.  The meeting went well, and not long afterward, there were reports in the news and from sources on Capitol Hill that some changes needed to be made in the plan respecting disability beneficiaries.

Ultimately, Congress never passed the privatization bill, which marked a major defeat for President Bush.  In no way did this one effort make the difference between passage or failure of the privatization plan.  The bill was doomed to fail in the face of much more powerful political forces arrayed against it, and the general sentiment of American voters.  At the same time, small efforts such as this, combined with similar efforts from other less powerful political and professional players were important because they had a cumulative effect on our desired outcome.

The defeat of the privatization movement did little to quell the activities of the anti-Social Security crowd. In 2011 and 2012, there was a series of newspaper articles around the country decrying the “inevitable” insolvency of Social Security and calling for reform.  As did many other NOSSCR members, I responded to these attacks in letters to the editor of my local newspaper.

Be assured that the philosophical battle over the future of Social Security is far from over. The same forces that have opposed Social Security from the beginning will be back at full strength as the solvency debate develops.  Don’t forget that just last year, Elon Musk argued on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast that Social Security is “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” There will be a lot more of this to come.

I hope that my experience and that of many other NOSSCR veterans of the privatization war and other political threats to Social Security, will be helpful and encouraging to NOSSCR and its members as we response to the latest debate over solvency.  It’s important for NOSSCR to have a strong Washington presence, something we’ve accomplished over the last several years and that we must maintain.  It’s also important to have a vigorous policy committee, working with our policy advisors on a regular basis to explore policy options for approval and implementation by the full board. 

Every NOSSCR member can be an influencer with our clients, fellow attorneys, family, and friends on these issues, and NOSSCR can be relied upon to provide talking points and supporting information.  Every NOSSCR member can write a letter to the editor to respond to negative opinions in their local press. And every NOSSCR member has a US Senator or House member they can visit in Washington in connection with NOSSCR Capitol Hill days, and better yet, whom they can support and get to know personally.

NOSSCR may be small compared to the many political actors in Washington who will play to win the influence game when the Social Security solvency debate gets going, but when the work we do is smart and strategic, and we do it together, there is a multiplier effect that is more powerful than our numbers alone.  Be ready for this battle – its coming, and it’ll be a big one.

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