Punchbowl News has obtained a list of options prepared by Republicans for a major budget reconciliation bill this year. There's nothing in it for Title II of the Social Security Act but plenty for Title XVI -- SSI. Here they are:
- ... Under current law, SSA is not required to verify financial accounts of SSI applicants and recipients who allege ownership of resources valued at less than $400. A recent SSA-OIG report concluded that this practice led to incorrect resource determinations, resulting in 198,960 recipients receiving $718 million in SSI payments for which they were not eligible. This policy option would lower the $400 resource-level tolerance to $0 and require SSA to validate the financial accounts of all SSI applicants and recipients, strengthening program integrity and reducing improper payments. ...
- Children under 18 may qualify for SSI if they are disabled and their household has limited income and resources. This policy option would condition SSI benefits for qualified children under the age of 18 on school attendance. ...
- SSI, unlike other welfare programs, does not pay benefits on a sliding scale. Recognizing household economies of scale, this reform (based on a CBO budget option) converts SSI payments to a sliding scale. The sliding scale formula would be (as per the CBO budget option and proposed by the 1995 National Commission on Childhood Disability): SSI federal payment rate multiplied by the number of child recipients in the family and raised to the power of 0. ...
- Deny SSI to Those with Felony Arrest Warrants -- In addition to being an important program integrity measure, this policy option would help restore the original intent of PRWORA to discontinue SSI benefits for individuals who are ‘‘the subject of an arrest warrant’’ compared to the previous language of ‘‘fleeing to avoid’’ arrest. It would also have the added benefit of helping law enforcement find criminals who have been evading the law. ...
11 comments:
I don't see anything upsetting about these proposals except a larger workload for SSA. What am i missing?
Oh dear. These policies would result in many eligible folks losing benefits. SSI payment rate is approx 75% of poverty. Cruelty is precisely the point> Hurt the poor to fund handouts to the rich.
Nothing. It’s spot on.
Really, Republicans do not think it’s OK for an individual to have $400 in their checking or savings account??? Lowering the resource level to 0 makes no sense. Recipients would not be able to maintain a checking account. How are they supposed to pay bills?
Plus, much more staff needed to implement and maintain. Thousand of cessation appeals. The change would end up costing the government much more than they would save.
It would actually make more sense to raise the resource level a bit to keep the cost of running the program down.
That is not what it said. Scroll up and reread.
The school attendance provision is worthless in many states because of home school rules that don’t require any verification they are receiving instruction.
Even with automation, resource checking takes time and effort and while not as bad as when the only way to do it was by mail, it's sucking resources away. At one time, using the same sliding scale logic that is proposed here for households, was a proposal that people living in group homes have their benefits similarly limited. With memories of Regan's welfare queen hysterics, the main result of this is worsening things for such folks.
So, these are people who don't meet the resource limits, but claim less than $400, and that amount isn't verified.
@11:03
I wouldn't say "upsetting," but the added workload costs needs to result in cost reductions exceeding it, which seems unlikely. SSA may not be required to verify financial accounts of SSI applicants/recipients alleging ownership of resources valued at less than $400, but I've never heard of them not. And as to the $718 million of allegedly inappropriate benefits, the OIG reviewed 140 cases (only 30 of which were claimants, 110 were recipients) and found errors in 27 of them, amounting to $130,130 in error on average. Extrapolating that to the entire country, they assert that adds up to $718 million. Also, the OIG did their study for Fiscal Year 2022 (1/1/21-1/1/22) and I expect a ton of the errors were due to the stimulus. Assuming the errors were relevant (i.e. underreporting significant enough to suspend benefits), I doubt that error rate would be present outside the study period due to the unique nature of the stimulus.
Many children on SSI are too sick to attend school on a regular basis. As an SSI CR, I talked to many parents who didn't realize their school district was responsible for providing home school services, and the schools were making no effort to provide it.
Return SSI style programs back to the states before the federal overreach of the 70s made it national program that doesnt work coast to coast
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