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-22- H. Rept. 277, 85th Cong., 1st sess. (1957), p.2.

(2) Disability insurance benefits were reduced where the bene-ficiary was receiving a disability benefit under another Federal program. The 1957 amendments exempted from this provision veterans' com-pensation received on account of service-connected disabilities. According to the Committee on Ways and Means --

the purpose of veterans' compensation is such as to justify disregard of that compensation in the determination of rights to disability insurance benefits under the social security program?

Social Security Amendments of 1958

The 1958 amendments broadened the protection of the disability program and removed certain provisions which had proved unnecessary and, in some situations, had caused inequities. The following modifications were made:

(1) Provision was made for the payment of monthly benefits to de-pendents of disability insurance beneficiaries.

(2) The amendments repealed the provision (known as the offset) which required the reduction of disability benefits where the beneficiary was receiving a workmen's compensation payment or a disability benefit from another Federal program. The Committee on Ways and Means ex-pressed the view that the "danger that duplication of disability benefits might produce undesirable results is not of sufficient importance to justify reduction of social security disability benefits." -24-

-24} H. Rept. 2288, 85th Cong., 2d sess. (1958), p. 13.

(3) Applications for disability "benefits were made retroactive for as much as 12 months to prevent the loss of benefits where a beneficiary fails to file a timely application. -25- For a similar reason, the deadline date for full retroactivity in the case of a disability "freeze" was extended from July 1, 1958, to July 1, 1961,-applications for the freeze filed on or after July 1, 1961, were made retroactive for not more than 18 months.

-25- Ibid., pp. 13 and 14.

(4) The insured status requirements for the disability "freeze" and disability insurance benefits were modified and made identical. The modi-fication was the elimination of a recency-of-work test -- i.e., the requirement of currently insured status for disability benefits and of "6 quarters of coverage out of 13 quarters" for the disability "freeze". The test was made identical by adding the requirement of a fully insured status for the "freeze." (In the 1956 amendments, "fully insured status" was included as a re-quirement for disability insurance benefits.)

The Committee on Ways and Means felt that the elimination of this recency-of-work test would be particularly helpful to persons with progressive illnesses. In many such cases, a person who is forced to stop working as a result of his impairment would lose his insured status before the impairment became sufficiently severe to meet the statutory definition of disability. The committee also felt that the fully insured status requirement was necessary for the disa-bility "freeze" in order to avoid the anomalous situations that might arise after June 1961 with respect to workers who could qualify for a disability freeze and not be eligible for any disability or old-age benefits. -26-

-26- Ibid., pp. 14 and 15.

Social Security Amendments of 1960 (Public Law 86-778)

These amendments removed the minimum age requirement of 50 years for the purpose of disability benefits for insured workers. The report of the Sub-committee on the Administration of Social Security Laws of the Committee on Ways and Means, which was issued in 1960, stated:

During the course of the hearings the question of the desirability of removing the age requirement, and the administrative ramification, which such a change would entail, came up time after time (e.g. hear-ings, pp. 70, 83-839, 858, 9 18, 922-924, 964, 975).

The evidence before the subcommittee was:

1. There is no administrative or other justification for continua-tion of this purely arbitrary distinction.

2. The distinction can be eliminated without an increase of the tax or impairment of the soundness of the trust fund, according to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. -27-

-27- Preliminary Report of Committee on Ways and Means, Mar. 11, 1960, p. 46.

There were also a number of recommendations from a GAO study on the disability program which found great support in the subcommittee hearing and were incorporated into the 1960 legislation. Included among these were:

1. A trial work period in order to encourage attempts by disabled workers to return to the labor market. Under this provision a disabled person, provided his disability has not medically improved, may return to work for up to 9 months, not necessarily consecutively, and still receive benefits. If at the end of this g-month -sic- trial work period the worker is found to be able to engage in sub-stantial gainful activity, his benefits are terminated in 3 months. Thus, a dis-able worker may experiment with his vocational skills up to a year without los-ing his eligibility for benefits. No trial work period, however, was provided within 5 years following the termination of a period of disability.