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

Notes

243 PREFACE 1. See Edward Berkowitz, Disabled Policy: America’s Programs for the Handicapped (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Mr. Social Security: The Life of Wilbur J. Cohen (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995); Robert Ball and the Politics of Social Security (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003); America’s Welfare State: From Roosevelt to Reagan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); President’s Commission for a National Agenda, A National Agenda for the Eighties (New York: New American Library, 1981). 2. Fortunately, the history office of the Social Security Administration has housed the Congressional documents related to Social Security and SSI in one convenient place, and much of the archival material is available to researchers through the Social Security history website, http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history. 3. But welfare rights nonetheless figures as an important topic. See Felicia Kornbluh, The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). INTRODUCTION 1. The 2004 Green Book, Background Material and Data on the Programs within the Jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives (Washington , DC: Government Printing Office, 2004), p. 3-2. 2. Congressional Record, Senate, September 29, 1972, p. S16303. 3. “Welfare Program for Aged, Blind, and Disabled Overpaid $403-Million in First 18 Months,” New York Times, August 16, 1975, p. 26. 4. Social Security Administration, “SSI Annual Statistical Supplement, 2010,” Washington, DC, 2011, Tables 2 and 3, pp. 16, 18. 5. Joanne L. Goodwin, Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform: Pensions in Chicago , 1911–1929 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare 1890–1935 (New York: Free Press, 1998); Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). 6. Carole Haber and Brian Gratton, Old Age and the Search for Security (Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1994). 7. Abraham Epstein, Insecurity: A Challenge to America, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Agathon Press, 1968), pp. 534–35. 8. Edwin E. Witte, The Development of the Social Security Act (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963), pp. 190–92. 9. Statement of Robert B. Irwin, Executive Director of the American Foundation for the Blind, Senate Finance Committee, Hearings on the Economic Security Act, 1935, p. 726. 10. Statement of S. Merwin Sinclair, President of Executives of State Commissions and State Agencies for the Blind and Pennsylvania Council for the Blind, Senate Finance Committee, Hearings on the Economic Security Act, 1935, p. 778. 11. Senator Pat Harrison, Congressional Record, Senate, June 14, 1935, p. 9267. 12. Ibid., p. 9269. Notes 244 NOTES TO PAGES 4–10 13. Witte, The Development of the Social Security Act; Arthur J. Altmeyer, The Formative Years of Social Security (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968). 14. For a short overview of the legislative history of Social Security, see Edward D. Berkowitz, “The Historical Development of Social Security in the United States,” in Social Security in the 21st Century, ed. Eric R. Kingson and James H. Schulz (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 22–38. 15. Vincent Burke and Vee Burke, Nixon’s Good Deed: Welfare Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974); Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Politics of a Guaranteed Income (New York: Random House, 1973); Molly C. Michelmore, Tax and Spend: The Welfare State, Tax Politics, and the Limits of American Liberalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Brian Steensland, The Failed Revolution: America’s Struggle over a Guaranteed Income (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). 16. Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled, p. 5. 17. Marisa Chappell, The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty, and Politics in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), pp. 93, 107. 18. Initially this resource limit was set at $1,500, and it was not raised until 1985. The present limit of $2,000 has not been increased since 1989. 19. A change in the law in 2000 permits persons who have attained their Full Retirement Age as defined by Social Security to receive a retirement benefit without having to meet any retirement test. The retirement test still applies, however, to anyone who selects early retirement. 20. Kimberly J. Morgan and Andrea Louise Morgan, The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets, and Governance of Social Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Steven Rathgeb Smith and Michael Lipsky, Nonprofits for Hire: The Welfare State in the Age of...