Here's the witness list for today's Senate Finance Committee hearing at 2:45 on Policy Options for Improving SSI:
- Elizabeth Curda , Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security, United States Government Accountability Office
- Stephen G. Evangelista, Deputy Commissioner for Retirement and Disability Policy, Social Security Administration
- Mia Ives-Rublee, Director, Disability Justice Initiative, Center for American Progress
- Kathleen
Romig, Senior Policy Analyst, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
5 comments:
Kathleen Romig is amazing
I especially liked when the one representative asked if the $65.00 limit on earnings not counted is too low, what should the cap be set at?
Cue the crickets!!!
If it were easy to fix, it would have been done long ago. Let’s be honest…the only thing stopping SSI from being brought up to 2021 standards is…MONEY!
The only way to expand the benefits is to spend more tax payers dollars. In addition, ask anyone at random what SSI is and I guarantee the average person doesn’t know it even exists. Before I worked at SSA, I had never heard of it.
So, in summary, if you ask the average American if they would support it, most would say it sounds like a good idea until you explain how it’s paid for.
The average worker banging out 40 or more hours per week doesn’t have a savings so explaining how someone on welfare is allowed to save us tough sell, whether it has merit or not.
9:06, it was a Senator, not a Representative.
And it wasn't crickets from Kathleen Romig, who gave two possible ideas for the earned income exclusion:
a) inflation-adjust it like the SSI Restoration Act would do
b) consider incorporating a trial work period like SSDI and/or an increased and expanded Student Earned Income Exclusion
So by having a trial work period for SSI would just increase the likely hood of it being miss applied. I thought the hearing was about how to make the program easier to administer, not more difficult.
It seems to me the only real answer is to to remove the man’s feasting from the program. After all, that’s the “punishment” they all kept referring to. If it’s just a universal disability income with a set limit and no means testing then everyone wins right?
The program would practically run itself at that point. The only need for updates would be medical CDR’s when appropriate but the non-medical factors would be out the window.
The only question left would be, what is the national limit that should be set for monthly SSI. $798 is clearly too low. A quick google search says the average Disability benefit is about $1,236.00 per month. So, the average SSI recipient of they get $798 receives about 65% of what someone who payed in gets.
Maybe they should be equal?
9:06 here - I was referring to the question as asked to Mia Ives-Rublee. My apologies on calling the Senator a representative.
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