Debt Limit Follies: Medically Frail, Yet “Able-Bodied”

July 9, 2025

Debt Limit Follies: Medically Frail, Yet “Able-Bodied”

(originally posted May 26, 2023)

Much of the current hand-wringing over the fake U.S. debt limit ¹ centers on whether middle-aged people over 50 should be forced into workfare to collect food aid, and further, whether everyone under 55 [now 65] should be put to work to collect Medicaid benefits in the 40 expansion states. This is occurring against a backdrop of states' welcome elimination of forced inmate labor, but conservative resistance to the cheap labor provided by legal immigration.

The GOP complaint, per Politico:

“Democrats right now are willing to default on the debt so they can continue making welfare payments for people that are refusing to work. And I’m talking about people that are without dependents, people that are able-bodied between 18 and 55,” [R-La Garret] Graves told reporters on Friday afternoon. Asked if Republicans were willing to drop work requirements, he added: “Hell no.” ²

Legally, “able-bodied” means everyone without a “disability determination based on Social Security Administration criteria.” Specifically, persons with the following disabilities are considered both “able-bodied” and “medically frail” and may or may not be exempt from forced labor:

-Disabling mental disorders, including serious mental illness; -Chronic substance use disorders; -Serious and complex medical conditions; -Physical, intellectual or developmental disabilities that significantly impair the ability to perform one or more activities of daily living ³

Keep that in mind when the millionaires who collect big tax credits scream about 54 [now 64] year-old grandmas getting free medical care without being forced to commute for hours each day on public transit to an unpaid job cleaning gutters at state office buildings ⁴ for “only 20 hours!” a week.