The Other Welfare: Supplemental Security Income and U.S. Social Policy

Conclusion

231 The creators of Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a triumvirate of Nixon administration officials, Social Security Administration (SSA) employees, and Congressional staff members, envisioned a program that would bring the dignity of the Social Security approach to elderly and disabled people who lived in poverty. The new program had a means test, and it obtained its funding from general revenues, not a payroll tax specially designated for its use. In these regards , it remained a welfare program. Unlike other welfare programs, however, it offered a uniform benefit, payable across the country, at federal expense. Furthermore, the federal government would pay that benefit itself, rather than entrusting the states to be its agent. As such, the program represented an unprecedented federal takeover of previously state-run welfare programs. Furthermore , a recipient did not have to undergo the sort of intensive interaction with caseworkers that characterized other welfare programs. Instead, a person who qualified for the program received a gold-colored check from the federal treasury every month. Like all social programs, SSI reflected the conventional wisdom of the era of its creation. Policymakers, frustrated by the results achieved by President Johnson ’s War on Poverty, doubted the efficacy of social services and hoped to avoid the racial disputes that characterized the social policy of the times. President Nixon, in particular, saw social services as instruments of the Democratic Party. Cash grants might better serve his political purposes. The creators of SSI took as a given that their new program should cover the people in the adult categories. Although they concentrated their attention on the Conclusion 232 CONCLUSION elderly, the program ended up serving primarily people with disabilities and secondarily the elderly. If SSI had limited its focus to the elderly, it might have developed into a well-received program for the deserving poor that decreased in importance over time as the level of Social Security benefits rose. The adult categories , however, came bundled with the blind, a relatively minor concern, and people with disabilities, a much more important group. Having the SSA run SSI meant that the new program would inherit institutional structures from existing programs and in particular the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program. The states, not the federal government, ran the disability determination offices. Once again, history influenced the course of public policy in ways that few people even recognized A system of disability determination that was the product of a long chain of historical events grew to include new responsibilities under SSI. The state disability determination offices dated back to Congressional debates over a disability bill in 1952. A short-term compromise to the political problems of that year became a permanent solution. The terms of the 1952 agreement and the 1956 law that followed it became the basis for the definition of disability in SSI and for the bureaucratic structure used to decide if someone met that definition. In other words, SSI reflected the conventional wisdom of 1972 but also the accumulated wisdom of previous eras. Aid to the blind and aid to the elderly came from the 1935 Social Security Act. Aid to the disabled originated in the 1950 Social Security amendments. The disability determination system started in political deliberations that took place in 1952, 1954, and 1956. All figured in the history of SSI. In the decade between 1975 and 1985, the history of SSI merged with the history of SSDI. Generous SSDI benefits paid during a period of high unemployment encouraged people to apply for disability benefits and discouraged labor force participation. The response to this problem took the form of 1980 legislation that reduced the level of disability benefits for some applicants and attempted to create work incentives in both SSI and SSDI. The Reagan administration’s implementation of these 1980 amendments produced a firestorm of protest that deserving people were being cut from the rolls. Congress reacted by passing new legislation in 1984 that made it easier for people already on the disability rolls to remain there. Although policymakers concentrated on SSDI throughout these episodes, their actions affected the disability category in SSI. It became easier for people with mental impairments to qualify for SSI, for example. The dispute over childhood benefits came in the more permissive post-1984 atmosphere. Since childhood benefits were unique to SSI, they did not enjoy the same political protection as benefits for disabled adults on SSDI...