Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to introduce valuable, bipartisan legislation that would codify the current policy of the Social Security Administration, SSA, to protect access to the Supplemental Security Income, SSI, program for those who prepay burial and funeral expenses. When individuals are fiscally responsible, and plan ahead for their end-of-life costs, it makes no sense to penalize them. Under the current policy, if funds or life insurance are set aside, irrevocably-- so the individual cannot take them back even if he or she wants to-- then those resources do not count against the individual when determining whether or not they are eligible for SSI. This is a good policy, and I applaud the SSA for maintaining it. Regrettably, this has not always been the case. When Congress passed anti-fraud legislation in 2000, the next year SSA misinterpreted provisions in the new law because it did not specifically carve out the exclusion for burial trusts. Therefore, SSA had the power to end the exclusion--and in fact, it did. SSA later realized its mistake and restored the exclusion. However, in the meantime, this hiccup created a wave of chaos for responsible seniors who were wrongly denied access to SSI. This bill will codify the exclusion, so this or future administrations will not even have the possibility of making that mistake again. In doing so, we will not only provide clarity to the administrative agencies, but will also give certainty to SSI enrollees and applicants.…”