Well I heard something on the US newsradio station that I listen to in the car that should piss off my Seppo cousins, about how the state governments are apparently defrauding the federal government.
Apparently, unemployment welfare payments are a state responsibility, whereas disability payments are a federal responsibility, so the individual states (all of them) are putting many of their unemployed welfare recipients on a permanent disability pension, so they don't have to pay them welfare payments.
The states use a company which is just a call centre to "determine" if a welfare recipient is a disability candidate, and the call centre will just call the welfare recipient, ask him or her a couple of questions over the phone, and apply on the welfare recipients behalf, for a federal government funded disability pension.
The currents stats are that 100% of the welfare recipients that have been processed by this company have been converted from state funded welfare to federal funded disability pensions.
The states are happy because they're off their books, the welfare recipients are happy because they get more money on a disability than they do on unemployment benefits, and the call centre is happy, because they get paid for every welfare recipient that they successfully convert to a disability.
Even though they're probably pissed off with the states, the federal government is probably happy that this "initiative" is keeping the unemployment numbers down. (There are currently 14 million disability pensioners in the US, up by 6 million from 2008)
Now apart from the fact that state governments are committing fraud on a grand scale and the federal government is letting it happen, it would really piss me off, if I was a genuine disability pensioner.............. Cheers, Terry.
