From The Weekly Standard:

“Amazingly, while fewer Americans are working than at the end of 2008, 3.6 million Americans have been awarded SSDI benefits over the same period. The growing number of people on disability and other federal benefits, combined with weak economic growth, raises serious concerns about the sustainability of the American economy,” Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, says in a statement in response to these new numbers

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Serious questions, indeed!

RELATED: Cato@Liberty notes another disturbing development:

The economist Greg Mankiw reports some disturbing news. In 2009, a majority of households in the United States received more in government transfers than they paid in taxes. The middle quintile have recently changed from being a net contributor to government (they paid more in taxes than they received in transfers) to a net recipient. Perhaps the recent recession caused that change, but as Mankiw notes, the deep recession of 1982 did not have the same effect on the middle quintile.