SSI benefits aren’t Social Security
Social Security and You: SSI benefits aren’t Social Security
- Jan 20, 2017 Updated Jan 20, 2017
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Q: You’ve written in past columns that the SSI program is not a Social Security benefit. But my sister is getting SSI. And when she gets letters about her payments, they come from the Social Security office. So how can you say SSI has nothing to do with Social Security?
A: To answer your question, let me give you a little history lesson. Back before 1973, each state, and sometimes even each county, had its own welfare program for low-income elderly and disabled people. Because there were literally hundreds of such programs around the country, there were wildly different eligibility factors and payment levels. It was not uncommon for an indigent senior citizen in one place to be denied welfare benefits, while just over the county or state line, someone who was better off financially was able to qualify for monthly checks from his or her local welfare office.
Congress thought this was unfair. So in 1973, it decided to nationalize the welfare programs for poor folks over age 65 and for people with disabilities who were down on their luck. There would be one set of eligibility rules that would apply to everyone no matter where they lived. There would also be one standard federal payment level — although they did include provisions that would allow states to add a few bucks to the federal payment if the state wanted to be a little more generous.
Then Congress had to figure out who would run the new federal welfare program. They decided the Social Security Administration was ideally suited for the task. SSA already had a network of field offices around the country. And there was more than a little bit of overlap in the beneficiary pool for both programs. (In other words, Congress figured that a lot of the poorer folks getting Social Security benefits might qualify for some extra help from the new program.)
Congress also had to figure out what to call the new federal welfare program. And they came up with the name “Supplemental Security Income.” On the one hand, it was a good name, because the program did just what its moniker implied: it “supplemented” someone’s “income” up to various levels in order to provide them with some form of financial “security.”
But on the other hand, it was a poor choice for a name because everyone assumed, especially given the fact that the Social Security Administration ran the program, that it was just a new kind of Social Security benefit.
After all, Supplemental Security Income, managed by the Social Security Administration, sure does sound like some kind of supplemental Social Security benefit.
So here we are, almost a half-century later, and people are still confused. If my emails are any indication, I will bet that at least three-fourths of the people in this country think that SSI is a Social Security benefit.
So let me repeat for maybe the one-thousandth time in this column: Supplemental Security Income is a federal welfare program that just happens to be managed by the Social Security Administration. It is NOT a Social Security benefit and it is NOT funded by Social Security taxes. The money to pay the benefits comes out of the government’s general funds. And SSA is even reimbursed from the general funds for the administrative time it takes to run the SSI program.
And to reiterate this point, SSI stands for Supplemental Security Income. It does NOT stand for Social Security Income. Every single day, I get emails from readers who tell me, “I am getting SSI,” when they really mean they are getting Social Security.
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