Medicare is not just for people on SSA retirement benefits. It is also granted to people with disabilities on SSDI. I strongly believe you start with the most compelling case and use the easiest means available to start reform.

With the average SSDI benefit at about $1,500 a month, this is the starting point. People on SSDI can receive their benefits overseas. Medicare should work there too but it does not.

A cash benefit of $100 per month sent to the same bank account that pays the SSDI recipient would be very helpful. A $100 cash benefit for health should be granted for each SSDI Child Benefit recipient as well, regardless of Medicare enrollment. A cash benefit can be added to a current cash benefit with very little administrative fuss.

Someone on SSDI is incapable of SGA (Substantial Gainful Activity), so that group should be preferred for the first reforms. It is not as urgent to provide benefits to people who have a much stronger financial background.

Disabled people have the harshest financial situation in society. And the percentage of people disabled increases as you start adding intersectionality like race and gender. Disability added to anything makes life harder, employment less likely, wages lower. Disability First should be bipartisan.

Even Republican presidents have a history of signing disability rights legislation.

• SSDI was created with the signature of President Eisenhower in 1957. He asked the nation to expand SSA benefits.
• The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was signed by President Nixon.
• The ADA of 1990 was signed by President Bush Sr.
• The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 to overturn U.S. Supreme Court decisions limiting the ADA was signed by President Bush Jr.
• Under President Trump, being on SSDI made student loan forgiveness nearly automatic. Trump’s tax reforms also removed having to pay taxes on that forgiveness. This helped so many disabled people who tried to better themselves with schooling but disability got in the way of a career. We often focus on how he wants to reform student loan forgiveness, but President Trump already expanded it for people with serious disabilities.

Like me. I had over $53,000 forgiven under Trump’s reforms with no tax on it because I was disabled in public service and my law career was crushed.

President Trump is waiting for his disability moments and Democrats should put forward small bites that are bipartisan toward disability justice that Trump can support. He is president until 2029. We all need to remember that.

A small $100 per month cash benefit to help the health of those on Ike’s SSDI would be nice. It would also be nice if Trump directed the DOJ to pay every single one of the 410,000 Camp LeJeune claimants and plaintiffs exactly what they ask.

Camp LeJeune justice would make the U.S. Treasury create currency in the trillions of dollars and inject it where injury from the federal government itself has been the harshest. Congress does not have to pass anything for that kind of stimulus. The Judgment Fund has no cap.