THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 2, 1995 TAG: 9412310016
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
On the street they're called ``crazy checks,'' payments of around $400 a month intended to help poor fam-i-lies cover the special expenses of caring for disabled children. Most recipients do exactly that. But enough don't that the new GOP congressional majority is right to debate better ways to serve the children who are the program's intended beneficiaries.
Debate on the topic will be the first held in the 20 years of the program's existence. The extension of Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, to children came in the 1970s when some Nixon administration officials and a handful of congressional aides slipped that provision into a 697-page bill.
A Supreme Court decision four years ago mandated broader eligibility requirements. In that four years, the number of children receiving the checks has risen from 296,000 to 800,000, and the cost from $1.2 billion to $4.5 billion.
Abuse of the program has also soared. At least 750,000 requests to enroll children for ``age-inappropriate behavior'' have been denied in the past four years; still, the number or children receiving SSI for behavioral problems has quad-ru-pled. Some parents don't use the money for the child's benefit. Some, in fact, have refused to treat their children because the checks will cease if the kids get well.
Key to stopping abuses is changing the attitude of the SSI bureaucracy. According to critics who've worked in the system, checking whether a child is actually disabled, or how the money is spent, or whether a child's disabilities stem from parental abuse or neglect is considered unseemly.
Vouchers, or some other way of approving expenditures, would help cut abuses common to cash payments. Tight-er eligibility requirements, particularly regarding behavioral problems, would help too. Such reforms already have support from members of Congress who aren't in the Gingrich group: Rep. Gerald Kleczka, for one. He is a liberal Democrat from Milwaukee and a longtime proponent of both SSI and SSI reform who led the move for a three-year limit on limit SSI payments to adult substance abusers.
He and the GOP majority are on the right track - not because Americans don't want to help disabled children but because they do want to. Allowing families in the program who don't belong drains funds from families who do belong. It also drains support for social programs, whose efficacy and efficiency are always suspect. A program that hardly tries to keep parents from scamming the government, mislabeling their kids and setting an example of abuse and deceit has got to be better run. by CNB