Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #ssiat50
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It’s been 50 years since the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program was signed into law. So how’s SSI doing, 50 years on? #SSIat50 🧵1/
Upon passage in 1972, policymakers said SSI was “designed to provide a positive assurance that the Nation's aged, blind, and disabled people would no longer have to subsist on below-poverty-level incomes.” 2/ ssa.gov/history/pdf/Do…
Well . . . today, roughly half of SSI beneficiaries *do* live in poverty. 3/ cbpp.org/research/socia…
THREAD: As we mark the 50th anniversary of #SSI, it’s time to reckon with the fact that SSI’s woefully outdated eligibility rules—from a $2,000 asset limit to marriage penalties and more—have become a new form of large-scale institutionalization without walls. #SSIat50🧵
Oct. 30 marks 50 years since Supplemental Security Income, or #SSI was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1972.
Congress’s intent in establishing the program was to ensure that disabled and older adults “would no longer have to subsist on below-poverty incomes.” 2/x
Congress’s intent in establishing the program was to ensure that disabled and older adults “would no longer have to subsist on below-poverty incomes.” 2/x
Today, SSI provides critical income support to nearly 8M people with disabilities and older adults, including 1M disabled children.
Modest as benefits are, I saw early on as a legal aid lawyer how transformative the monthly income support from SSI can be in a person’s life. 3/x
Modest as benefits are, I saw early on as a legal aid lawyer how transformative the monthly income support from SSI can be in a person’s life. 3/x
