Keeping Americans with disabilities from poverty must remain a priority

One of the most misunderstood and ignored anti-poverty programs in the United States, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), was designed specifically to help people with disabilities. This community continues to face disproportionately high poverty rates due to ableism and other structural barriers to employment and economic security. SSI provides people with disabilities monthly cash income to help pay for basic living expenses, but the 50-year-old program needs updating.

Before the creation of SSI, people with disparities were often reliant on their families and state governments to provide financial support. Without agency and financial independence, many people with disabilities were forced to depend on their parents or family members until they passed away or were locked away in institutions. And while there are over 1.6 million people with disabilities still locked in institutions, many others have been able to live independently in their communities with the use of SSI and Medicaid. 

Yet, many congressional Republicans continue to look for ways to dismantle the program even after hearing from constituents about how the program helped them.

SSI helps people like me. When I graduated high school in 2003, I was lucky enough to qualify for Supplemental Security Income based on my disability, Osteogenesis Imperfecta. The program gave me a financial foundation from which I was able to obtain an education and eventually become fully employed. It took me almost a year after graduating with my master’s program at UNC-Chapel Hill, one of the top social work schools in the country, to obtain full-time employment. I don’t know what I would have done without SSI and Medicaid to help me, as employer after employer decided they didn’t want to take a chance on me.

By December 2009 — more than six months after I had graduated — I had applied to over 100 jobs and finally accepted a counselor position at the North Carolina Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. Without the opportunity afforded to me through SSI and Medicaid, my parents and I would have been swimming in debt, and I would have been unable to afford postsecondary education. The program allowed me to become a tax-paying member of society, contributing back to the funds that helped me get where I am today. 

Despite countless success stories like mine, many congressional Republicans are now threatening to dismantle SSI, along with its older sibling program, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). SSDI requires a specific amount of work history before someone is eligible to receive benefits, while SSI requires no work history. They argue that these programs cost too much and have little oversight — but that could not be further from the truth. 

My brother, for example, has significant disabilities, including Osteogenesis Imperfecta and autism .He relied on SSI and Medicaid after graduating high school, which allowed him to move out of my parents’ house and live in his community with a personal assistant. He was eventually able to obtain part-time supervised employment with a job coach and earned enough work credits to become eligible for SSDI. His disability symptoms often cycle, making it difficult for him to work full time. SSI and SSDI give him the flexibility to work when he is able and receive benefits to cover the times when he is unable to work. 

Rather than attempting to cut SSI, Congress should instead be focused on improving the program. SSI has been essential to many people with disabilities,yet it has withered on the vine as Congress continues to ignore it by failing to provide significant adjustments to maximum pay, asset limits and earned income limits. It has undergone few improvements since its inception in 1972, meaning people with disabilities are currently receiving below-poverty payments and are not allowed savings exceeding $2,000 due to arcane asset limits that trap people in poverty. In fact, today’s maximum benefit of $841 per month would not cover the median rent in any state in the country. The Social Security Administration is currently bogged down with administrative work as the office continues to see a drop in staffing, resulting in excessive wait times for people applying for the benefit program. This is simply unacceptable at a time when the number of people with disabilities in America grew by 1.2 million increase last year alone due to the effects of long COVID and long-standing underinvestment in public health infrastructure. 

It is essential that Congress restore SSI to its original intent and promise of ensuring “the Nation’s aged, blind, and disabled people would no longer have to subsist on below-poverty-level incomes.” Particularly with the midterm elections mere weeks away, it is imperative that candidates and elected officials better support the disability community and recognize it as the growing voting bloc that it is. More than 1-in-4 people are disabled in the United States today, and a recent Data for Progress poll showed that only 3-in-10 people with disabilities felt that leaders in Washington, D.C., cared about them. It is time for lawmakers to support legislation that will revitalize SSI and raise asset and earned income limits. Only by doing so will they allow disabled people more independence and reduce administrative burdens that continue to put these benefits out of reach for millions of Americans who need them most. 

Mia Ives-Rublee is the director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress.