Published October 9, 2025
Conservatives and deficit hawks have long sought out programs to cut in efforts to reduce our gargantuan deficits. Recent reports from the Washington Post show that reforming our dysfunctional and overgenerous disability insurance programs are great places to start.
Saying “disability insurance” conjures up visions of quadriplegics and stroke victims. Those and many other seriously injured people do get government benefits — and rightly so. No compassionate or politically aware person wants to deprive these genuinely needy people of a dime.
The trouble is that our disability programs pay tens of billions of dollars a year to people that no right-minded person would say is unable to work. They aren’t “disabled” in any rational meaning of the word, yet they still get checks each month from you and me via good old Uncle Sam.
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Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a globally recognized expert on American elections and policy as well as global populism.
