Powerful outside groups have backed the idea, including AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers (UAW), AARP and the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities. The proposed changes are enormously popular with the general public, even among Republicans, just as the stimulus checks and the Child Tax Credit are. Still, support for increasing monthly SSI benefits is growing. Lawmakers might be able to come up with a bipartisan agreement to reform SSI, she says, but “not just something that’s going to provide a blanket increase in the level of benefits.” (Greszler and the Heritage Foundation argue there would be less need for SSI if Social Security retirement benefits were privatized and focused more on lower-income earners.) “I don’t think it’s appealing in the context of throwing it in a reconciliation package that’s completely partisan,” says Rachel Greszler, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Their plan would bring the SSI benefit up to the poverty line, increase the asset limits to $10,000 for an individual and $20,000 for a couple, update the income rules and eliminate the marriage penalty and rules that penalize people for “in-kind” support.īut SSI reforms are unlikely to be included in a bipartisan package because of cost concerns, and conservatives have criticized the Democrats’ plan to push many of their big changes through the budget reconciliation process without any Republican support. Jamaal Bowman led a letter with 18 Senators and 33 members of the House urging Biden to prioritize the issue. In April, Brown and freshman Democratic Rep. Democrats in Congress hope to hold the President to that promise. In the spring of 2020, Biden vowed to expand SSI benefits as part of his presidential campaign’s disability policy platform. “A moment like this pandemic potentially presents as an opportunity for a paradigm shift.” A chance for reform “Decades of Congressional neglect mean that SSI-a critical program that should be protecting people from poverty-now instead traps disabled people and seniors in deep and enduring poverty when it’s supposed to be giving them a lifeline out of it,” says Rebecca Vallas, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation who has worked with Congressional Democrats on their plan to overhaul the program. Their checks can also be reduced if they receive “in-kind support,” such as getting a bag of groceries from a friend or staying in a family member’s home for free. After those cutoffs, their benefits go down for every dollar over those thresholds. SSI participants cannot make more than $65 in earned income and $20 in unearned income each month, which is the same amount the program allowed when it began nearly 50 years ago. This disqualifies anyone with rainy day savings or even a small retirement fund. People who receive SSI must have assets of less than $2,000 for an individual or $3,000 for a couple-numbers that have not been updated since 1989. But as the cost of living has grown dramatically since the 1970s, SSI’s rules have not kept pace with inflation, so people who meet the asset and income limits for the program have lost purchasing power over time. SSI is meant to serve only the poorest Americans. That means a retired couple in their 80s, or a younger disabled couple, could be financially better off getting divorced than staying married. Instead, you share a benefit of $14,293.61, just 50% more than if you were single. If you receive SSI and you’re married to another SSI beneficiary, you don’t each get the full benefit. That’s less than 75% of the federal poverty line. The maximum SSI benefit individuals receive in 2021 is $794 per month, or $9,530.12 per year. When Congress passed the program into law in 1972, it said SSI should ensure the nation’s “aged, blind, and disabled people would no longer have to subsist on below-poverty-level incomes.” But its benefits have not kept up with modern standards of living.
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