SSI is in acute need of updating and expansion. Its resource limits and income disregards are outdated. The program’s benefits are too low to meet Congress’s stated goal of assuring “that the Nation’s aged, blind, and disabled people…no longer have to subsist on below-poverty-level incomes.”
In addition, SSI is in extreme need of simplification and streamlining. Its complicated, burdensome and overly exacting rules make it expensive to administer.
SSI accounts for just five percent of the benefits paid by SSA; Social Security accounts for the other 95 percent. There are approximately eight times more Social Security beneficiaries than there are SSI recipients. Nevertheless, SSA spends almost as much to administer SSI as it does to administer Social Security. In fiscal year 2021, the agency sought authority from Congress to spend $6 billion to administer Social Security and $4.8 billion to administer SSI. The Statement describes several changes Congress could make to simplify and expand the SSI program.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 gives Board members the opportunity, individually or jointly, to include their views on the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program in SSA’s annual report to the President and Congress. The Board or one of its members has submitted a statement every year since 1998, except for 2024 due to the lack of a quorum.
The 2020 statement, “The Pressing Need to Update, Expand, and Simplify SSI” was written by and represents the views of Board member Nancy Altman. It is included in SSA’s 2020 Annual Report on the SSI Program.