Maybe you’re young, and you think this doesn’t affect you. But, it will affect your parents, or your grandparents.   And, remember, if Republicans kill these programs, the dollars you pay in -- that are/have been withheld from your paycheck -- you will never get back.

Currently if you're disabled in the United States you cannot save over $2000. Having $2001 would put your disability benefits at risk. Also many disabled people have been unable to get married because if they get married their spouse's income will count against them. There is currently a bill in the senate that will increase that facing limit to $10,000 as well as grant marriage equality to disabled people.

A lot of my favorite disability advocates have been sharing this, but she's the only one that's explained both of the benefits of this bill. Petition to support the bill linked underneath the video.

Ya know, I can understand that some people who are disabled want to keep working. They don't want to apply for SSI or SSDI. And that's fine. More power to them.

What bothers me though is when they say things like "I don't want to live off the system" in a very derogatory manner.

Some of us can't work. And SSI and SSDI don't really give us enough to live on. So we need food stamps. Some of us rely on subsidized housing. We struggle to get through each month. And we don't need people being derogatory to us because of our disabilities. We don't need people acting like we're "less than" because of our disabilities. And we especially don't need this coming from other disabled people.

I refuse to call government assistance programs “welfare” or “benefits”.

I’ve been on government assistance programs my whole life. I have never lived above the poverty line.

It’s a system that doesn’t care about my wellbeing, they care about doing the bare minimum to keep people alive enough to function and work, and if you’re disabled and cannot work, they give significantly less of a fuck.

And benefits?? What benefits?

Food stamps that run out within two weeks because I am budgeting with 8$ a day with literally dozens of dietary restrictions? Or do you mean the housing voucher that I have to never even have a gift card, penny to my name, Sams club membership, phone bill, literally anything that could be “income” in order to qualify? That same housing voucher system that if I mess up even once with I not only lose all government aid for at least 5 years, it’s also mandatory PRISON time for 1 year?? “Oh but they would never do that, right?” Nope! I have several friends who are now felons for minor lease violations and unhoused as a result! Oh maybe you mean the state health insurance that doesn’t cover most treatments, specialists, and testing I need and if I tried to make a gofundme to cover, I would lose aforementioned housing? Oh and we can’t forget all the money I get for being disabled, which is exactly 0$. I’m still fighting for SSI and have been for 6 years! That’s over 6 years with absolutely zero income. ZERO. And guess what, whenever I *do* get on SSI, I will lose my housing voucher. And I won’t be able to afford my current apartment because even in subsidized low income housing it’s too expensive for the maximum SSI “benefit” amount. And on SSI you can’t have savings over 2000$. Oh and they do make housing for people who are low income where you pay 30% of your income but I can’t even be on the waitlist since I don’t have any income. And on top of all this, I can never get married because I’ll lose all of the programs.

I could keep going. That’s not even half of the programs I’m a part of.

• None of them give me cash in hand. Even for vouchers I have to provide receipts for everything.

• Food stamps just straight up won’t even cover ineligible items. Which includes hot foods.

• I genuinely don’t believe that there’s a way to “game the system” and why would you? You would gain literally nothing.

• It’s designed to keep people poor. Once you make over a certain amount, you lose all or almost all benefits. There’s no way to slowly transition out of the programs, if you’re someone who’s able to. It’s all in or all out.

• All of these barriers are made significantly worse while unhoused/homeless. I’ve been homeless for over half of my life and there’s so many fucked up rules. If I missed one night staying in the shelter, I lost my housing voucher because I no longer was “verified as homeless” even if I was sleeping outside still.

USA 1990

"The Vanishing City," Clyde Caldwell cover art for TSR's AD&D Adventure Book #15 by Allen Varney, 1988. That book was an adaptation of Varney's 1987 D&D Mystara module M4: Five Coins for a Kingdom. The same art was reused in 1989 for the AD&D Forgotten Realms computer game Hillsfar by SSI.

There’s a post with over 25,000 notes that is an extremely excited reaction to a bill that’s being introduced, the SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act, that would increase the asset limit for recipients of SSI from the $2,000 that it has been for the last 39 years to $10,000 with automatic increases keyed to inflation.

This is of course a good thing. Disabled people shouldn’t have to sell every asset other than their home and car before they can get assistance, and should be permitted to save money for future needs or emergencies without penalty.

Here’s my problem: in the press release for this bill itself, it acknowledges that the average SSI recipient gets only $585 per month and the majority have no additional income. And there’s no reason why anyone on SSI would have additional income, besides being disabled, every dollar of income over $65 that a recipient earns is met with a 50¢ decrease from their next month’s SSI payment, so if someone earns $400 a month, they lose $167.50 of SSI benefit.

So riddle me this: how in the hell is anybody supposed to procure assets or savings of $10, let alone $10,000, when they are receiving an income so low it is only 48% of the federal poverty threshold? (That’s based on the average monthly payment, the maximum benefit is still below the poverty level.)

I will be excited when this group of senators, with all of their great concern for disabled people reliant on SSI, are ready to introduce a bill that raises the minimum benefit to at least 125% (and ideally 150%) of the federal poverty level, with automatic increases keyed to inflation, and larger benefits for people who have children who don’t qualify for non-time limited benefits of their own.

Raising the asset limit while maintaining punitively low benefits is like a host promising a lovely dessert after dinner is finished, then only serving a couple of one bite hors d’oeuvres and pretending like their guests are too stuffed for the sweets.

The fact of the matter is that if someone told you and everyone in your neighborhood "if you all pay $5 into this program every month, we will have money if any of you needs it, and you can have $200 a month if you meet this list of requirements" and then years go by and only you and one other person in the neighborhood ever qualify for it and get it and the person collecting ppls money gets to use the rest for whatever they want, and then one month you sell a painting for $200 and the person collecting money goes "actually, I think I only want to pay you $100, because it looks like you're doing fine for yourself" they have not rescinded their generosity, they have taken $100 from you. They have used your good fortune and hard work to pay themselves with money you're entitled to

Anyway, that's what it's like to be on SSI and have the government cut your benefits for earning money, and ppl just refuse to see it this way because they hate disabled and poor ppl and see whatever they get as "charity" that can be revoked instead of recognizing this practice as wage theft and financial abuse and seeing SSI as a safety net that every one of us already pays for to protect ourselves

The Dark Queen of Krynn

©️ MicroMagic, Inc. 1992

Image sourced from mobygames.com

soo

hows a disabled person supposed to make money around here? hmm?

the US government: you don't

My partner and I can't get legally married or else he'll lose his SSI. . . The USA is a hellscape and I kind of just need to shout that into the void for a minute.

I've had more than one anarchist I associate with be surprised to learn I'm actually not an anarchist. But like. I'm a huge proponent of the Welfare State, and you kind of need a state for that

Have something you want to tell your Senators? If you can't safely protest in person, here are some other options:

Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.

Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resist.bot/

USA 1997

the fact it's possible to be too disabled to qualify for SSDI is so incredibly fucked up.