STAR Point Transcript - Social Security Administration PASS Program
Guest: James Czechowicz
Host: Earle Harrison
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EH: On October 1st, 2003, a gentleman by the name of Jim Czechowicz from the Social Security Administration visited the STAR office to speak to us about the PASS program, a program designed to incent beneficiaries of Social Security Disability and Supplemental Security Income as they transition into the workforce. With Mr. Czechowicz's permission, we did record that presentation, and that is essentially the substance of today's installment of STAR Point.
JC: My name is Jim Czechowicz. I'm -- I work for Social Security Administration. My job title is PASS Specialist. PASS stands for Plan for Achieving Self Support, and the PASS is one of many rules that Social Security has that relate to the treatment of earnings for persons with disabilities who receive Social Security Disability or who receive SSI, Supplemental Security Income.
Now, in order to understand what the PASS rule does, it's important to understand how the two Social Security cash disability programs that we have work together and relate to one another. Often when I do speeches, people will put their hand up an hour or two into the presentation and ask, "Could you explain what the difference is again between Social Security and SSD?" And so I -- I don't mean to insult you if this sounds a little basic, but I do like to make sure that there's a pretty good understanding of what the two benefit programs are, because, to understand what PASS, or Plan for Achieving Self support, it's necessary to understand these two programs.
When I use a PowerPoint slide show, I have a slide that has two concentric circles on it that overlap. I think they were called Venn diagrams if I remember back to high school algebra, and the two circles basically represent the two cash benefit programs for people with disabilities. On the left-hand side, or the orange circle, is a representation of RSDI or SSDI or SSD. All those names refer to Social Security Disability. The R stands for retirement, the S stands for survivor. But, basically, that's -- so Title 2 of the Social Security Act, that was enacted back in 1935 under Franklin Roosevelt, SSD, Social Security Disability, which is part of the family of Social Security retirement and survivor programs.
The health insurance component connected with the Social Security circle is called Medicare, and for people with disabilities it's the same Medicare as Medicare is for people age 65 or older who get Social Security retirement benefits.
And then on the right-hand side in a blue circle I have represented SSI, or Supplemental Security Income, which is a monthly needs-based cash assistance program for people with disabilities. SSI can also be paid to people aged 65 or older based on age as well as persons who are legally blind.
Now, there are people who get both Social Security and SSI, and that's why these two circles overlap. There's kind of a middle ground, and I'll talk about how somebody gets both in a second. But the main difference between Social Security and SSI is that for SSD or RSD or any of those family of Social Security benefits, a person needs to have worked and paid FICA taxes. In general, somebody -- in order to get a Social Security payment, someone needs to work and have paid in at least 10 years. If everybody in the room here is paying into Social Security, FICA taxes are coming out of your paycheck and you've been working for 10 years, you can look forward to a Social Security benefit at age 62, assuming that they get it tweaked in with legislation.
The least amount of work credit that someone would need in order to get, say, a disability benefit through Social Security would be six credits, or a year and a half of work credit. Now, we used to call these things quarters of coverage because of the way a person earned them. Now we call them credits, because the way a person earns Social Security credits is by working in a calendar year and earning $890 this year. That amount in order to get a credit will go up every year. It's gone up every year. This year it's $890.
So once a person has earned 890 times 4, or 35 hundred and something, $60, then that person would have their four work credits for this calendar year, and they would be two-thirds of the way to having six of them, which they would need to get a Social Security Disability check. Once a younger person had their six credits, then the amount of the disability benefit would depend on how long the person worked and how much FICA tax they contributed. But, basically, Social Security Disability benefit amounts range anywhere from about a hundred dollars a month to 17 or 18 hundred dollars a month, again depending on how long someone's worked and paid in.
I've been with Social Security for about 25 years, and it's very rare that you will find two people who are on disability who get the same amount of Social Security Disability, very, very rare. Because, in addition to how much the person has paid in, what determines the amount of a Social Security Disability is the date we establish the disability and the age at which we establish the disability. So a lot of things go into that formula, and that's Social Security. Again, the earnings requirement is kind of the key theme in all of Social Security programs, as opposed to SSI, which is also based on disability. And, by the way, the disability definition for both programs is the same.
For SSI, Social Security is looking at whether a person has a disability and then how much a person has in the way of income and assets on a monthly basis. And it's, you know, a federal needs-based assistance program not unlike M-Fit or AFDC or some other needs-based assistance. Although, it does have the disability requirement. Those are the two programs, Social Security Disability and SSI.
Now, Social Security has a website, socialsecurity.gov, at which all of our printed material is contained in Web format. I've passed out today some -- a book called the Red Book, which is really about a 60-page book that is a summary of all these different rules about the treatment of earnings for people with disabilities, but all this information can be had at ssa.gov, or Social Security dot G-O-V. If you open up any phone book in America and look in the government section, furthermore, there is a toll-free Social Security number, which is 1-800-772-1213. And, like I said, that's in every phone book in America, I think. So it is possible to get ahold of Social Security and it is possible to reference the things that I'm talking about today in a printed or even in an alternative format at Social Security's website.
Okay. So back to -- we're coming to the thing called PASS, and we've explained what, you know, the basic differences are between Social Security and SSI. Let me just speak a moment to the definition of disability under Social Security. It's a physical or mental impairment that is expected to last at least 12 months or end in death, that prevents an adult from earning at a level called substantial gainful activity, or SGA, and that is basically defined in terms of monthly earnings again. Furthermore, the SGA amount, just like how much money it takes to have a Social Security credit, is going to go up every year. It's tied to the Consumer Price Index. This year it so happens that Social Security defines "substantial gainful activity" as work worth $800 a month. Last year I think it was $780 a month, and next year it will maybe be $810 or $820 a month, the point being that if a person with a disability, no matter how severe, would go into a Social Security office and ask to apply for disability benefits but say that they are in fact continuing to work and earning over the SGA amount on a monthly basis, no disability claim would be taken. So that would be -- if you think of it as a flow chart, the presence of SGA level earnings by the person with the disability at over SGA would disqualify them immediately from benefits, regardless of what the impairment is.
But let's say a person with a disability isn't earning over the $800 and they wanted to apply for benefits. They could either go to their local Social Security office or call our 800 number and start the process. It would involve lots of forms and the signing of medical release forms and so forth. It takes about three to four months to process a disability claim from the Social Security Administration.
Social Security has these two monthly disability programs for people with disabilities, SSD and SSI. Oh, one way to tell the difference is that SSI checks come on the 1st, and always have. Social Security Disability checks come on the 3rd of the month, or the second, third or fourth Wednesday. So, often, you know, people won't even know maybe what they're getting and you can ask, "Well, what day of the week does the check come?" or, "Do you remember kind of when the check comes?"
"No, I don't, it just goes in the bank every month. I don't really know when it comes," but there's one way to tell the difference.
Now, Social Security, like I said, has about a 65-page book of rules called the Red Book that describes how the earnings of somebody who's on one of our programs are treated when they are -- or I should say how the benefits are treated when the person goes back to work. The reason why there are so many pages to these rules is because Social Security Disability and SSI each kind of has their own set of rules for this. And so if you are a person who gets both Social Security and SSI and you go back to work, there's basically -- you put into play two separate sets of rules, you know, related to the benefits and the earnings, and even -- those can even antagonize one another occasionally.
I won't talk too much about the Social Security rules except to say that, basically, if a person goes on Social Security Disability, they get a thing called a trial work period and an extended period of eligibility, which basically means a person who, once they're on benefits, has up to four years to go back to work and all they risk at most is a month's benefit for any month their earnings are over $800, or the SGA. So, again, to just repeat that, because of trial work period and extended period of eligibility, in theory, the most a person with a disability is risking is one month's benefit for any month their earnings are over the 800 a month. That is to say, if a person, say, three and a half years into their return to work had to stop working because of their disability or because they just got sick of working, it wouldn't make any difference. They would go back to Social Security and simply say, "Could you turn my benefits back on, please?" I'm assuming they haven't medically recovered. And so those are -- the particulars of those rules are all discussed in the Red Book. And there's even more rules. There's extension of Medicare. There's a provision called expedited reinstatement, which can actually take this kind of protection out up to five years if it's the same impairment, and so on and so forth, and that's all Social Security Disability rules.
SSI's rules are actually quite a bit simpler. Related to earnings, if a person gets just SSI and they go back to work, they can basically earn up to $85 a month -- that's $85 a month -- and that amount of earnings or less will have no effect on their SSI check. Okay? If a person gets both Social Security and SSI, the amount is $65. So that's basically the rules related to treatment of benefits and earnings.
All right. Now, ever since 1974 under President Nixon, when SSI came under the control of the Social Security Administration, there's been a rule called PASS, Plan for Achieving Self Support. And please note that I said PASS is part of SSI, SSI being a federal needs-based assistance program for people with disabilities. The SSI payment amount is set out every year by Congress at a federal benefit rate. This year the federal benefit rate for someone who's disabled getting SSI is $552 a month. That's $552 a month. If a person has a disability and no other income that we count in a month, they would get 552, plus many states have supplements. And, by the way, that $552, I agree, has, probably, nothing to do with the cost of living, nothing to do with what it costs to rent an apartment, nothing to do with what it costs to live or maybe too much of anything else, but that's just sort of the amount they threw out there.
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EH: You're listening to STAR Point, a project of the Minnesota STAR Program. STAR stands for a System of Technology to Achieve Results. We're listening to Jim Czechowicz from the Social Security Administration as he spoke to the STAR staff at our weekly staff meeting about the PASS program. If you are just joining us via our automated stream and you would like to hear this program in its entirety, you will find it at the on-demand section of the STAR Point page. This program was recorded October 1, 2003.
JC: If a person with a disability who gets the 552 SSI were to go to work and make over $85, then for every $2 of earnings over the 85 paid in a month, they would lose one SSI benefit dollar. For example, if a person getting SSI made $185, they would lose 50 benefit dollars. So what their income would consist of would be the take-home pay on $185 plus an SSI check of 552 minus 50, or 502.
And it's a linear equation, and so basically what that means is that when you get to about $1,200 of earnings, you would cause your monthly SSI check to zero out. It's a completely flat and linear situation. Every two bucks you make, you'll lose one benefit dollar. If people listening to this take nothing else away from this, please take note of this: In Minnesota and Wisconsin and in many other places, sometimes people will say, "I would work more and earn more money, but I'm afraid of losing my Medical Assistance or Medicaid or Title 19," however you want to call it. I'm here to tell you that if a person who gets SSI and works and keeps working and causes their monthly SSI check to go to zero, they aren't going to lose their Medicaid. It would be very -- unusual, almost, in Minnesota for a person to lose Medical Assistance simply and only because of more earnings. Okay? And so I want to stress that, because I think it would be key that a person not work that extra shift or maybe take that raise or those additional hours simply out of fear of losing Medical Assistance.
And the reason why they likely would not lose Medical Assistance is the provision in Social Security SSI law called 1619(b), and also because of the presence in Minnesota of a Medical Assistance purchase plan called MAEPD, Medical Assistance for Employed Persons with Disabilities. If you'd like more information about 1619(b), you can call Social Security. If you're in Minnesota or Wisconsin, you could even call me. Just suffice it to say, I would hope that a person who's working and getting SSI and needs Medicaid is never deterred from working more for fear of losing Medical Assistance.
But let's go back to our example; somebody on SSI goes to work and starts losing their SSI benefits in relation to the wages. If that person says to Social Security, "There is a job that I feel I could do, but I need some training or I need some schooling or I need some assistive technology or I need a piece of equipment in order to do the job and earn more money, but I can't afford those items," this rule called PASS might be able to help. And the way that PASS works is that it basically says that for every dollar of countable earnings that the person has in a month that they spend on products or services that they need for a long-term job goal, we do not count them against the SSI check.
So let me give an example. So remember when I used the example of somebody on SSI when they weren't working or they were earning under 85, their SSI check was 552. They go to work, they start making $185. We take 50 SSI dollars away. Their SSI check drops to 502. Well, let's say that same person enrolls at Metro State or Century College and they get Pell Grants and they get the books and tuition paid for, but they need $50 a month for a bus pass, that they don't have. If all those facts remain the same and they took that $50 of earnings -- remember, I said they were making 185. We were counting 50 of it against their SSI. If they took at least 50 of the earnings and bought bus passes with it in the context of going to school, in the bigger context of a long-term job, we would not count that against the SSI. So that's PASS.
If you followed the arithmetic there, again, just to say it in a different way, PASS is a way for somebody who gets SSI to purchase the products or services that they might need to become more self- sufficient in the long run and not lose their SSI, not be subject to the normal SSI counting rules. My job title is Plan for Achieving Self Support Specialist, so what I do for consumers throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin is assist them with the implementation and the participation in this PASS rule, and that is done initially on a 12-page yellow application called a Form SSA 545, or Application for PASS. So, basically, if one were interested in participating in PASS, either from the SSA website or by calling me, one could -- or by going into any Social Security office for that matter, one could obtain this Form SSA 545 PASS application. And even though it says -- it's 12 pages and it appears a little bit daunting, but what I would tell people is, don't be too put off by it because, like many Social Security forms, it's an attempt to be a one-size-fits-all form, and it has a lot of general questions and maybe a lot of inapplicable questions to one person's particular job goal pursuit.
But, anyway, that's how it would get instigated is through this Form SSA 545, or PASS application, and a person would articulate on that form what their job goal was and what products and services they need to pursue that job goal and what countable income -- that is to say, what income that they have that is otherwise lowering their SSI check, what part of that they're going to devote to the purchase of these products and services over what period of time.
Let's say that you had a person on SSI who went to work and didn't tell us, and let's say that for about a year or so they were working and they were in school and they were purchasing a bus pass for $50 a month and they were using the bus to get to school, and then we find out about it, or they come in and they report it after a year. We are allowed at that point, upon discovering that they have sort of executed their own PASS, sort of a de facto PASS but without having done the form, we are allowed to whip out one of those forms and say, "Oh. Now, you realize you should have reported this, and you realize that these earnings could have caused your SSI to have been overpaid. I mean, you know, there's money you really shouldn't have been due. However, we see that what you have done is, in effect, pursued a job goal, and we are now allowed to invoke this rule called PASS and thereby retroactively shelter all these earnings that would have otherwise caused your SSI to go down, caused you to be overpaid. We can now sort of invoke PASS after the fact.
I think we should stress that a PASS is not the same thing as, say, a grant from a foundation, you know, based on a great essay or something like that. It -- it -- it's actually much simpler than that. It's just saying that if Social Security were going to count these earnings or this SSD, actually -- I used earnings in my example, but what's even more common is when you have a person who gets SSD and SSI, or maybe you have a person who gets just SSD and no SSI but they desire to set aside all their SSD, say, to pay for the products and services for a long-term job goal, we can raise their SSI or perhaps even entitle the person to SSI. Okay?
But it's all about just getting an SSI check or getting a bigger SSI check. So if you want to think of it this way: The most money anyone could ever access through participating in PASS is the federal SSI benefit rate of 552 a month, or 6,000 a year, basically. And while that might sound like a lot of money, sometimes people will present with job goals for which what they need actually costs more than $6,000 a year. The way the concept of PASS works is that the person is spending their countable income on the job goal item and living on the 552 SSI. Okay. In other words, the SSI becomes their rent, food, clothing and shelter money. The money that was -- say the SSD that had been used for that purpose before all gets siphoned off, if you will, or allocated to PASS items. So you could have a person purchasing a PASS item that cost $600 a month or $700 a month of SSD as long as they could show they could live on 552 of SSI.
I probably have really confused everybody. They have taken away the statutory time limit. There used to be an arbitrary statutory time limit of three or four years. What it comes back to now is whether Social Security is convinced that the person is making satisfactory progress toward their job goal. If I could use an example of somebody with a disability who wanted to participate in PASS to become an attorney, and let's say that they were in the second year of college, as long as there was satisfactory progress and that they were spending the money as they said and that the money related to this job goal of becoming an attorney, you could have that PASS running for that length of time, you know, which would be more than three years probably.
Just as an aside, I've actually had one person who was at Mayo, Rochester Mayo Clinic Medical School, attending medical school on a PASS. Unfortunately, I wish I could, you know, say that the person finished and is now a practicing physician. They -- they weren't able to, but the point being, you know, they could have gone along as long as the person could have stuck it out in school.
The outcome of a PASS requires the reduction or the elimination of dependence on benefits. With SSI, a person can reduce their dependence on SSI by simply earning more money. So if you have an SSI person who's currently working and earning $185 a month present and say that they if they could get a bus pass, they could immediately work and make $285 a month, okay, that would, in theory, satisfy the reduction of dependence notion and that could be an approvable PASS situation.
Contrast that with someone who, say, is currently getting about, say, more than the federal benefit rate in SSDI, that is to say, they aren't getting any SSI, they're getting just SSD of, say, 600 a month -- and I hope everyone understands that once a person's countable income for SSI goes over $572, which is the federal benefit rates plus a $20 general disregard, they aren't eligible for SSI. To illustrate how a PASS could work, if a person got $625 a month of SSD, in order for them to participate in PASS, what they are basically saying to Social Security is that, "I intend to -- upon attainment of my job goal, I intend to return to work at earnings above -- at or above the SGA amount of $800." Now, you might say, "Okay. Well, that sounds very plausible. That sounds very -- you know, very doable." Where it can get, you know, sort of questionable, I guess, to put it mildly, is if you have a person on SSD, say to the tune of $1500 a month, not only is it questionable, because how would a person living on $1500 a month live on 552 during the PASS, but why would a person getting $1500 a month SSD necessarily want to cause the loss of that by earning only $800?
Again, we would look at everything on a case-by-case basis. I'm not going to make pronouncements that, you know, that person can't have a PASS, but it would -- it would bear a lot of, you know, scrutiny, I guess. And we do a lot of follow-up and case management. For example, if someone is in a PASS to become an attorney, say, obviously every semester we're going to need a report card, you know, to show that a person's making satisfactory progress, a class schedule for the next term, and then receipts for all the things that the person purportedly used the PASS to acquire. So we've got kind of an ongoing relationship with our PASS participants.
If you would like more information about Plan for Achieving Self Support, or PASS, and you live in Wisconsin or Minnesota, you can call me at 1-800-551-9796, Extension 3074, or you could call my colleague, Cy Horgan at Extension -- same phone number, Extension 3009. That number again 1-800-551-9796, Extension 3074 or 3009. You could also reach me at my work website. It's kind of a long one, but it's my name, which is James, J-A-M-E-S, dot C, dot, my last name, Czechowicz, which is spelled C as in cat, Z as in zebra, E-C-H-O-W-I-C, as in cat, Z as in zebra, at S, as in Sam, S as in Sam, A as in apple, dot G-O-V (laughing.) And if anybody got that, you're a better person than I am. It's james.c.czechowicz@ssa.gov. Maybe just call (laughing).
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You've been listening to a broadcast of STAR Point, a production of the MN STAR Program, a System of Technology to Achieve Results. If you would like to provide feedback, be a guest on our show, or if you'd like to find out more about the STAR Program, please visit our Web site at www.admin.state.mn.us/assistivetechnology. My name is Earle Harrison. Thank you for listening.