The Senate Finance Committee Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy is holding a hearing at 2:45pm next Tuesday, September 21 with the expressed purpose of working towards establishing policy options that will improve Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
While that in itself is a great move they are also allowing individuals and organizations to submit comments and talk about their experience with SSI. There are a few basic rules on how you present the statement but you do also have up to 2 weeks after the hearing to get your thoughts together and submit that comment.
The kinds of topics that might be worth commenting on are such matters as the laughably low resource limit; the paltry full amount of SSI that anyone can receive; the complications with the application process; and this writer’s own bête noire, the fact that SSI is terminated after 12 months of suspension if a beneficiary is in a state hospital or jail.
It is to be hoped that by hearing personal accounts of the experience of living with and without SSI the committee will come to acknowledge the very real hardships that are endured every day, and may even set in motion plans to alleviate those issues.
You can send the committee an email to statementsfortherecord@finance.senate.gov
To see the details of the meeting and the requirements for submitting the statement you can go here: Hearing | Hearings | The United States Senate Committee on Finance