Whenever I see multibillionaires paying tribute to themselves by launching into outer space (more or less), I think about those who live on SSI.
SSI stands for Supplemental Security Income. It’s a program through which people who are disabled or older than age sixty-five receive a monthly check from the federal government. The program is administered by the Social Security Administration, but SSI payments come from general funds of the U.S. Treasury and not Social Security coffers.
To be and remain eligible for SSI, an individual can’t have more than $2,000 in assets, and a couple can’t have more than $3,000.
Receiving SSI isn’t nearly as much fun as it sounds. The maximum monthly SSI payment is $794 for an individual. The average payment is $585. If two people receiving SSI get married, the most they can collect is $1,191. That’s $397 less than the maximum for two individuals, which means that these thoroughly broke people are financially penalized for having the audacity to get married.
To be and remain eligible for SSI, an individual can’t have more than $2,000 in assets, and a couple can’t have more than $3,000.
While the multibillionaires have nothing better to do with their disposable income than play fantasy astronaut, down here among us lowly earthlings there are about eight million people living off of SSI who wish they had enough disposable income to buy an extra pound of ground beef.
Somebody ought to do something about this outrage, eh? Well, Representative Raul Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, is trying, and he’s been trying for a long time. Earlier this year, he and other members of Congress sponsored the SSI Restoration Act of 2021. This legislation would raise the SSI maximum payment to the federal poverty level, which is $1,073 a month. It would also raise the asset limit to $10,000 for individuals and $20,000 for couples and eliminate the marriage penalty.
Moreover, the bill would raise the amount of money SSI recipients can earn each month without having their payments reduced or curtailed, and it would eliminate the prohibition against recipients accepting “in-kind” support from others. Currently, if someone getting SSI checks is given something like free rent or food, the value of that gift can be deducted from their payment.
It’s disgraceful that this legislation had to be introduced at all. Grijalva has put forward a version of the SSI Restoration Act in every new Congress since 2013. And, each time, the bill has gone nowhere.
Last year, when Joe Biden was merely a candidate for President, he released a comprehensive disability platform that included a call for reforming SSI along the lines of the latest Restoration Act. After Biden took office, Grijalva and other members of Congress sent him a letter urging him to include these reforms in his American Families Plan.
The letter was also signed by eighteen Democratic Senators, including Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, who has introduced a Senate version of the SSI Restoration Act.
There’s a lot of big negotiating going on right now about important stuff like infrastructure and budgets. So maybe the time seems right for the loooooooong overdue SSI update to finally happen, too.
But I’m not holding my breath. Democrats were in charge of the House in the last Congress with an even greater majority, but it didn’t matter. Grijalva’s legislation still stalled. Democratic leadership has shown no appetite for making life easier and more fair for people who need SSI.
Wouldn’t it be nice if reforming SSI were as easy as hurdling a multi-billionaire into space?