As we speak’s financial realities—greater well being care and housing prices, disappearing pensions, insufficient Social Safety advantages, and the lingering results of the Nice Recession—imply extra folks, together with older adults, are struggling to pay for housing, meals, medication, and different requirements. As seniors fall additional behind, they’re getting older into poverty and homelessness. As we speak in America roughly 7 million seniors live in poverty.
To handle poverty amongst seniors and folks with disabilities, Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) launched the Supplemental Safety Revenue Restoration Act within the Home together with 34 cosponsors. The Act will restore the unique intent of this system by updating outdated guidelines and modernizing various monetary eligibility guidelines.
What Is SSI?
Supplemental Safety Revenue (SSI) is a supplemental program to the Social Safety system that gives modest monetary help for people who find themselves unable to work sufficient to satisfy their primary wants. A 70-year-old lady who by no means married and labored solely in casual low-paying jobs all through her life, or a youthful grownup with a incapacity that retains them from incomes a dwelling are each examples of people that may qualify for SSI.
How A lot Cash Do Individuals on SSI Should Stay On?
The total month-to-month federal profit in 2025 is $967 for a person and $1,450 for a pair, nicely beneath the federal poverty degree. The truth is, the person profit degree is simply 74% of the federal poverty degree, falling far wanting the quantity of revenue help that seniors and folks with disabilities want to satisfy their primary wants. Those that do obtain revenue from different sources see it deducted from their SSI advantages. Along with the strict revenue eligibility limits, SSI recipients will need to have property beneath $2,000 to qualify for this system.
The present program guidelines successfully require recipients to dwell beneath the poverty line, resulting in homelessness, starvation, and sickness amongst older adults and individuals with disabilities. Additional, this system’s guidelines and necessities are so strict that it retains out most of the folks it was created to assist. It’s time to replace the SSI program to raised serve our nation’s lowest-income seniors and folks with disabilities.
Why Does the SSI Program Want Updating?
Many of the SSI eligibility guidelines haven’t been up to date for the reason that program was signed into regulation by President Nixon over 50 years in the past. For instance, the quantity of revenue a beneficiary is allowed to obtain from different sources (reminiscent of a pension) with out having their advantages diminished is $20. The price of dwelling right now is greater than 5.5 instances what it was in 1972, which means $20 right now is equal in buying energy to about $3 in 1972 {dollars}. As well as, the asset restrict for this system–$2,000–has not been up to date since 1989.
How Will the Supplemental Safety Revenue Restoration Act Assist Low-Revenue Seniors and Individuals With Disabilities?
Underneath the Act, a number of wanted updates to this system’s eligibility guidelines can be made.
- The SSI profit charge can be elevated to at the least 100% of the Federal Poverty Stage, adjusted yearly, in order that nobody receiving SSI can be left to dwell beneath the poverty line.
- {Couples} will obtain their full SSI profit, totaling twice the person charge, fairly than a diminished marriage penalty charge.
- Low-income seniors and folks with disabilities who can’t work sufficient to satisfy all their primary wants will be capable to save as much as $10,000 and {couples} will be capable to save as much as $20,000 for emergencies reminiscent of automotive repairs, new roofs, and different sudden bills, with out shedding advantages.
- People will be capable to obtain as much as $149 month-to-month from different sources, reminiscent of Social Safety advantages or pension funds, and not using a corresponding loss in advantages.
- People who’re in a position to work will be capable to earn as much as $486 a month with out being penalized.
- People who dwell in households with others, together with members of the family, will now not be penalized with decrease advantages by way of the in-kind help and upkeep provision.
- People who switch property (even small quantities of cash to a member of the family) will now not undergo harsh penalties.
- Installment cost necessities can be eradicated and the time to spend down sources can be prolonged in order that SSI recipients who’ve been ready for months or years to acquire their advantages can obtain the total overdue quantity.
- Retirement accounts can be excluded from countable sources to permit folks with disabilities to construct up their financial savings for retirement and use these sources to pay for bills in later life.
- State and native earned revenue tax credit, tribal advantages, and baby tax credit can be excluded from revenue calculations in the identical method as normal tax funds.
These modest however wanted fixes will present a lot wanted aid to the folks this program was designed to assist.
Justice in Getting older agrees that it’s time to take motion and enhance this crucial program now.
