Addicts And Alcoholics

WASHINGTON -- Heightening the prospects that the government's burgeoning disability programs will be scaled back, President Clinton has proposed changes that would slow their growth and reduce the rolls by hundreds of thousands of people.The federal government could save up to $15 billion over five years under proposals Mr. Clinton has made and under Republican proposals that he is considered likely to accept.If adopted, the proposals would bring about the sharpest cuts in the history of the two disability programs run by the Woodlawn-based Social Security Administration.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate passed legislation yesterday to make the Social Security Administration independent, a move that advocates say would give the Woodlawn-based agency greater visibility and insulate it from political interference.The bill now goes to the House, which passed similar legislation by wide margins in 1986 and 1992. Those bills died in the Senate, but the ascension of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York to the chairmanship of the Finance Committee last year changed the political dynamics, paving the way for yesterday's action.

THESE are the Be-Sensitive-or-Else '90s and the language the candidates have used to discuss -- or avoid discussing -- the issues has been far more explicit than it needs to be.(Witness Ross Perot's "your people" foray before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People last week.)Here, then, in honor of the conventions, is a glossary of bias-, cruelty-, gender- and content-free speech the candidates can use to ensure that their future utterances are politically politically correct.

State lawmakers today looked for ways to curtail their own spending, and they plan to brainstorm tonight about various ways to solve the state's overall budget crisis.Gov. William Donald Schaefer asked the General Assembly to cut $2.1 million from its $19.5 million allowance to help balance the overall state budget, which faces a $450 million deficit."There's no question we will do it," House Speaker R. Clayton Mitchell Jr. said today.Legislators also hope to reach an agreement by Wednesday on an alternative to Schaefer's budget cuts, which call for firing 1,766 government workers and slashing certain welfare, law enforcement, Medicaid, higher education, rape-crisis and drug-treatment programs next month.

Hundreds of Maryland residents targeted to lose their disability and medical assistance payments have won a temporary reprieve in federal court in Baltimore, where lawyers for the poor and the government have settled a class action lawsuit.The settlement, reached late last week, requires the Social Security Administration to re-examine the cases of 842 Maryland residents that were scheduled to lose their benefits under a tough new federal law passed by Congress last year.The settlement is not expected to have an impact on cases pending outside the state.

In a city where an estimated 30,000 people shoot drugs, there is no shortage of fodder for a daylong conference on addiction. But to Dr. Joshua Mitchell, chairman of Saturday's forum, "The African American Perspective on Substance Abuse," one issue surpasses all others."

WASHINGTON -- The Senate passed legislation yesterday to make the Social Security Administration independent, a move that advocates say would give the Woodlawn-based agency greater visibility and insulate it from political interference.The bill now goes to the House, which passed similar legislation by wide margins in 1986 and 1992. Those bills died in the Senate, but the ascension of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York to the chairmanship of the Finance Committee last year changed the political dynamics, paving the way for yesterday's action.

Lania D'Agostino spends her days with dummies (profitable 0) ones)The toughest part of the job, Lania D'Agostino mentions matter of factly, is forming a face."

Year by year, the costs in billions of Social Security's disability programs have risen. Here is a time line of the events and decisions1969President Nixon asks Congress to show compassion for the poor, elderly and disabled by passing a new welfare plan. Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman records in his diary that Nixon doesn't really support his own proposal. Instead, it is a political ploy to win support from black leaders and senior citizens, while dividing the Democrat-controlled Congress.1972Congress kills Nixon's welfare plan for families, but passes crucial 16 pages that create a broad cash assistance program for the elderly and disabled poor who can't work.

WASHINGTON -- Looking to cut welfare spending by $43 billion over five years, a House panel approved yesterday a measure that would remove 338,000 drug addicts, alcoholics and children from a Social Security program for disabled poor people.Racing to beat a deadline in their "Contract with America" campaign manifesto, Republicans on the Ways and Means subcommittee on human resources brushed aside Democratic objections and rolled $13 billion in disability cuts into a bill that hands over to the states some 50 federal welfare programs.