Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we have a program that is designed to deal with a serious problem in this country; namely, that of drug and alcohol addiction. There are two programs under the Social Security Administration's jurisdiction. One is the Supplemental Security Income Program, which is designed to assist the very poorest poor that we have in this country, and the second is the Social Security Disability Insurance Program. Under these programs, those individuals who are in fact disabled by virtue of an addiction to either drugs or alcohol are required to do two things. They are required to seek treatment. That is one of the conditions that we impose in order to assure the taxpayers that the money is going for the purpose of which it was intended. Second, in order to ensure the safeguarding of taxpayer dollars, the SSI Program requires that the benefits are paid to a responsible third party. Obviously, the person who is addicted is not a responsible individual, and we require payments to go to a representative payee.”