DOGE Must Crack Down on the Social Security Disability ATM

Imagine, if you will, a judge who never says no. Not once. Not ever. Imagine a courtroom where the outcome is predetermined, the evidence irrelevant, and the hearing perfunctory or entirely absent. This is not a scene from a dystopian novel about justice undone but rather a faithful portrait of how disability claims are routinely handled by the Social Security Administration's (SSA) administrative law judges (ALJs).

These ALJs are not jurists in the traditional sense. They are executive branch employees, shielded by federal unions, and ensconced in a bureaucratic cocoon that rewards speed over scrutiny, volume over veracity. While most Americans imagine judges as stern arbiters of fact and law, the reality inside the SSA is closer to clerical automation, where some ALJs approve disability claims at rates approaching 100 percent. The cost to the American taxpayer? Hundreds of billions of dollars.

A rational government must distinguish between a compassionate safety net and a careless spigot. The Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program was created to aid those who, through no fault of their own, can no longer work. It was never intended as a universal basic income dispensed by bureaucratic fiat. Yet for years, the program has been distorted by a cadre of ALJs whose rubber-stamp approach has made a mockery of due process, science, and fiscal prudence.

The numbers are staggering. There are roughly 1,300 ALJs responsible for handling about 450,000 cases each year. Some of these judges approve disability claims more than 90 percent of the time. Indeed, over 40 percent of ALJs have allowance rates in excess of 75 percent. More than 20 percent top 85 percent. According to the SSA's own Office of the Inspector General (OIG), up to 60 percent of the award decisions made by ALJs are not supported by the evidence in the record. That is, they are legally indefensible.

Take ALJ Charles Bridges, a one-man entitlement machine who approved 95 percent of the cases he reviewed, awarding approximately $4.5 billion in lifetime benefits. An internal agency review found that in a majority of his cases, there was no evidentiary basis for his decision. Worse still, he routinely bypassed the essential due process mechanism of the hearing itself, rubber-stamping nearly 7,000 cases without bothering to convene a session. He ignored vocational experts, or consulted them only after he had announced his decision to approve benefits. One might call it judicial theatre, but even theatre has a script. This was pantomime.

Or consider ALJ Jennifer M. Horne, a regional chief judge in San Francisco, who approved every case she heard in a single year, notwithstanding the fact that each of those claimants had already been rejected twice by lower adjudicators. The presumption of error was not with the claimants but with the institution that would deny them. Horne operated not as a reviewer of facts but as a political actor, using her post to override subordinate findings in the name of what she may have viewed as social justice.

Then there is David Daugherty, an ALJ who functioned as if he were running a benefits dispensary. With a nearly 99 percent approval rate, he singlehandedly awarded over $2.5 billion in lifetime benefits before his retirement. A random audit revealed that he held only one hearing lasting more than five minutes. More than 4,000 of his awards were issued without hearings. His colleagues accused him of absenteeism, of staging sham proceedings, and of colluding with claimant representatives. Yet it took decades of complaints before anyone acted.

The Detroit-based ALJ Ronald Herman issued approvals in 95 percent of the 1,268 cases he reviewed. Harry Taylor, another ALJ, managed to approve 94 percent of his cases, amounting to approximately $2.5 billion in lifetime benefits. Taylor often contradicted his own medical experts, rendering findings of disability where none could be medically justified. He fell asleep on the job—literally. Colleagues observed him nodding off during hearings. It took four years of such behavior before disciplinary action was taken.

ALJ Jan Leventer, who heard cases in both Queens and Detroit, boasted a 94 percent approval rate across more than 2,000 cases. That is not adjudication. That is abdication.

The culture surrounding these ALJs is not one of detached impartiality, but of ideological activism masquerading as compassion. The Association of Administrative Law Judges (AALJ), the union representing these quasi-judges, is itself a major part of the problem. Its leadership ranks are filled with some of the most prolific approvers of disability claims. Sommattie Ramrup, the AALJ's president, approved 94 percent of cases in New York. Kimberly Schiro, its secretary, came in at 85 percent. JoErin O’Leary, the treasurer, overrode her staff to approve benefits three out of four times. That is not advocacy for fair process, but institutionalized capture of an entire adjudicatory function by those who view their role not as arbiters but as activists.

The system’s defenders often appeal to mercy. But mercy without rigor is just negligence in a robe. The rule of law demands more than good intentions. It requires evidence, standards, and accountability. The SSA’s disability system is supposed to function like a filter. Instead, it has become a hose turned full-blast, dousing the public treasury without regard to merit.

To be clear, the problem is not merely generous hearts but structural rot. The ALJs are protected by civil service rules and bolstered by a union that treats any attempt at oversight as an assault on judicial independence. Yet these judges are not members of the judicial branch at all. They are executive bureaucrats, paid by the taxpayer and entrusted with fiduciary duties they routinely betray.

Under President Trump’s second term, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, has been tasked with identifying and eliminating waste across federal agencies. If ever there was a target-rich environment, this is it. The administrative judiciary within the SSA is a sprawling entitlement pipeline operated by judges who openly view their role as wealth redistribution agents, particularly toward preferred racial or political constituencies. In private interviews and public statements, some ALJs have described their work as a way to steer federal dollars toward marginalized groups, regardless of whether the legal criteria for disability are met.

This is not governance. It is dereliction. It is wealth transfer by proxy, carried out under the color of law but in contempt of its standards. The damage is not just fiscal—though the billions lost annually would be scandal enough. The deeper wound is institutional. Every case that is granted without basis delegitimizes those that are. Every fraudulent award siphons resources from those who are truly disabled. Every rubber-stamped decision erodes trust in the promise that justice is blind.

This is why DOGE must act. The administrative judiciary must be brought under control. Random audits are not enough. There must be real consequences for judges who fail to follow the law, including removal for cause. The union that protects and enables such abuse must be scrutinized. Performance metrics must align with legal standards, not with bureaucratic throughput. Above all, the presumption must shift: it is not the burden of the agency to prove that a judge is biased, but of the judge to demonstrate that he or she is faithfully applying the law.

If we continue to allow ideology to govern adjudication, we will not have a social safety net. We will have a patronage system dressed in judicial robes. Compassion is a virtue, but when unmoored from reason and law, it is indistinguishable from corruption. That is what we face today. And that is why reform cannot wait.

The gavel must once again be an instrument of judgment, not a dispenser of entitlements. The American people deserve better than a judiciary that mistakes empathy for evidence and ideology for law. The SSA’s rogue ALJs must be reined in. DOGE must make it so.

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