Use This Form For Children That Are Claiming Ssi Benefits: Fill & Download for Free

Social Security disability is an "entitlement" program, meaning the recipients are technically entitled to receive these benefits having paid in premiums. No, it is not "welfare" in the pejorative way that term is used today, while it does a moderate amount of looking after the well-being (fare thee well, as a root phrase of the word welfare) of recipients. SSI is Supplemental Security Income. According to the Social Security Administration:"The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program pays benefits to disabled adults and children who have limited income and resources.SSI benefits also are payable to people 65 and older without disabilities who meet the financial limits.People who have worked long enough may also be able to receive Social Security disability or retirement benefits as well as SSI."SSDI is a disability-based program. Again, from the Social Security Administration:"Social Security Disability Insurance pays benefits to you and certain members of your family if you are "insured," meaning that you worked long enough and paid Social Security taxes."SSI is needs-based, meaning if you don't have a pot to piss in you get a token amount of income that won't typically be enough to make a monthly rent payment, let alone anything else. It is so small it defies logic. No one can live on five hundred dollars a month long-term, yet this is the expectation due to overblown partisan claims of "abuse" and "fraud" and "cheating". What most do not understand when making such claims is that there are disabilities that are hidden, that cannot be seen by the casual observer, and need not be public knowledge to the inquiring mind that wants to know due to patient confidentiality. If you really want to know, become intimately familiar with a few recipients. Their lives are hell. Only in part by being called "leeches" on society, which is reminiscent of AH and his euthanasia program for "unproductive" members of society.

Stop penalizing the poor for getting married. Right now, a married couple gets less in benefits and food stamps than that family would get when separated. Other benefits, like SSI, can't be claimed by anyone married. This can make marriage a bad, even untenable, financial choice for the poor. Meanwhile, a two-parent home affords better outcomes for children, reducing crime rates, improving grades, and generally letting us produce productive members of society. Up-front aid costs would be higher if we took away all the penalties stopping low-income people from getting married, but the long-term benefits would be phenomenal, allowing us to reduce the number of people on food stamps dramatically in as little as one generation.Implement universal healthcare to encourage full time job availability. Employers currently use part-time employees to fill most low-end positions specifically to avoid the added cost of providing benefits. The biggest financial burden of offering benefits is employee healthcare, which could cost more than wages for low level employees. Universal healthcare removes this burden from employers, removing the biggest disincentive to offering full-time work. This will increase unemployment while decreasing underemployment dramatically; the net result will be more people who are able to support themselves, leading to lower overall consumption of food stamps.Expand the housing voucher program. Housing projects that group the poor into low-income neighborhoods lead to centers of crime and decay. Housing vouchers allow the poor to occupy buildings in a wide range of areas, ensuring good housing standards and allowing the poor to live and raise their children in safer, wealthier neighborhoods with access to safe parks and higher quality schools. That allows for better social and academic outcomes for impoverished children, ultimately leading to lower crime rates, and a larger population of self-sustaining individuals. That means less people on food stamps.

No need to speculate. We have 50 experiments in democracy in the 50 states of the union. Over the past 10 years these states faced the stress test of the Great Recession and the performance of state governments is measurable. As a nation, we collect an enormous amount of data. If one looks at the data using standard statistical tools, it is clear that liberal states perform better in almost every category of governance. Here are the conclusions that I have reached in examining the period from 2008 to 2016:Fiscal Governance – The crown jewel of conservative governance is the promise of responsible fiscal management, characterized by balanced budgets, low taxes, and low debt. In practice, all states but one are legally bound to balance their budgets. Upon examination, we find that conservative states do, in fact, lower taxes, but end up using other sources of revenue including a larger share from the federal government to make up the difference. There is negligible difference in the total money spent per capita across the political spectrum. Likewise, while conservative states have lower long term debt, there is only a slight difference in the balance sheet comparing assets vs. liabilities. As a result, there is little difference in credit ratings across the political spectrum with strong confidence demonstrated in the bond market. Overall, our states, both liberal and conservative are fiscally sound.Health of State Economies – The Great Recession caused economic trauma across the political spectrum, inflicting pain that went well beyond the housing market. While we are still recovering in some sectors, the overall health of the economy as measured by per capita productivity (Gross Domestic Product and Personal Consumption Expenditures) is markedly lower in conservative states and recovering more slowly. An important issue is raised, however, in asking the question of whether the economic benefits of the recovery are shared by the working class and here we find little partisan difference at the state level.Jobs and Unemployment – Where are the promised jobs? Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Great Recession was the damage done to the workforce and the minimal effort demonstrated by conservative governments to ease the pain. Unemployment compensation programs in conservative states lagged seriously behind in both participation and compensation paid. The result was a discouraged workforce and a significant loss of workers. We have a smaller workforce now than we did at the beginning of the Great Recession despite overall population growth. Further, the jobs that are available are either not full time jobs or pay considerably less in conservative states. This is nowhere more evident than in the statistics of median salaries for men which have stagnated since 1973. Overall, conservative governance has not delivered the promised quality jobs and median household income, as a measure of prosperity, has seen little improvement in conservative states.The economy is like a very complex machine. If maintained and cared for, it will continue to produce, but if neglected it will fail. The remaining conclusions deal with how well state and local governments care for the most important parts of that very complex machine that is our economy. Specifically, how does government care for the people who make everything work?Education – Investment in K-12 and higher public education consumes a major part of state and local government budgets, but both suffered serious cuts during the Great Recession despite an increase in student enrollment. State budgets and employment figures for education show that conservative states continued to lag behind, however. Examining the results of testing at the K-12 level, students also lagged behind, especially in the critical skills of math and reading. There was overall improvement in science over the period with little partisan difference shown in 2015.The state public university system paints a slightly different picture. Serving the majority of higher education students in the United States, these institutions offer significant advantages to students who are state residents. On average, tuition and fees were nearly half that of more liberal states in 2008, and while costs were shifted to the students during the Great Recession, tuition and fees, especially in 4 year colleges, continued to be significantly lower in conservative states in 2015.Overall, state residents completing high school and college is lower in conservative states, however. The difference becomes more pronounced at higher levels. Based on results, it cannot be said that conservative states are doing a good job of preparing their residents to be productive members of the workforce.Health Care – The most significant event in health care during the Great Recession was the passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. This was also the most politically controversial with conservatives in strong opposition, a division that continues today. This is nowhere more evident than in the rejection of the Medicaid expansion by conservative states. Optional state supplemental health programs show a parallel lack of enthusiasm in conservative states. While conservative states employ more health workers and have more public hospitals, the percentage of the population without any form of health insurance is higher in conservative states and is growing worse. The results as measured by death rates, overall and for the most serious diseases, are higher for conservative states despite improvements across the nation. The results for children are especially alarming. Insurance coverage for children is lower and getting worse in conservative states and child access to medical and dental care is correspondingly low. As a result, the two primary measures of infant health, mortality rate and low birth weight, are worse for conservative states. Even more alarming, the long term impact of childhood health is apparent in substantially reduced life expectancy in conservative states.Setting aside the political argument of whether health care is a right or a privilege, from a purely economic point of view poor health is paid for in one way or another. It is hard to imagine that poor health in conservative states is not a factor in the productivity of the workforce.Highways and Public Roads – Constituting a little over 5% of state and local budgets, highways and public roads are the most visible of our public infrastructure. Low salaries allow conservative states to employ slightly more workers, but the results are not encouraging. Highway fatalities are significantly higher in conservative states indicating an unresolved problem in public safety.Law Enforcement and Crime – Nearly 13% of state and local public employees are engaged in the three aspects of law enforcement: police, judicial, and corrections. Like most state and local activities, these three also suffered budget cuts as a result of the Great Recession and staffing was reduced. Corrections is the only category that seemed immune to the cuts and continued to employ more workers in conservative states. The emphasis on “law and order” in arrests, convictions and incarceration in conservative states does not seem to be paying off, however. While overall crime rates declined across the country, nearly every category of crime tracked by the FBI continued to be higher in conservative states. This suggests that there is something wrong in how we are addressing law enforcement and public unrest seems to reinforce that. There has to be a reason that crime rates are higher in conservative states.Emergency Response – Fire departments including emergency medical response are a small, but vital part of state and local governments. Like law enforcement, they also suffered budgetary cuts as a result of the Great Recession, but these cuts were more severe. Fortunately, there is a strong tradition of volunteer participation in providing this essential service. Overall, the results are not encouraging. Despite improved technology, fire related death rates are higher in conservative states with little improvement shown over the period. Likewise, emergency medical response has not been able to reduce deaths due to injury in any significant way, especially in conservative states. This raises the question of why there would be a partisan difference in the effectiveness of fire departments.Safety Nets – If the quality of our civilization is measured in how well we care for those less fortunate, we are falling short, especially in conservative states and especially in the trauma produced by the Great Recession. The great hope of welfare reform legislation in 1996 essentially failed in the objective of moving people on welfare into productive jobs. There were no jobs for them to move into. As a result, families were left without assistance at a time when they needed it most. Conservative states did little to help with only one third or less of the outlay of more liberal states. In terms of basic assistance, the figures are even worse with no state-level augmentation of programs at all in many conservative states.In the case of the disabled, the picture is even bleaker with almost total reliance on federal programs, primarily under the financially troubled SSI and SSD programs administered under the Social Security Administration. State efforts have been small, both in budget and staffing, especially in conservative states. In the final analysis, there does not appear to be much compassionate conservatism at work in the country and especially not in conservative states. Have conservative austerity policies relating to welfare reduced poverty? Sadly, the answer is no and poverty has gotten worse, especially in conservative states.Retirement Security – The most serious fiscal problem facing us over the next couple of decades is the financial security of our retired seniors. Not only is there an increase in the number of seniors due to the retirement of the baby boomers, but they are living longer, their living expenses (especially medical) are increasing, there is a smaller percentage of workers to help support them, and their financial security is abysmal. After decades of encouraging people to buy their own home as an investment that they can be assured will be there if they need it, the Great Recession has taken that last reserve from many and left them with just Social Security. While retirement security is more of a national problem than a state problem, conservative states are doing less to alleviate the problem, especially in less favorable mortgage exclusion laws. Lower incomes before retirement and lower accumulated equity in homes also contributes to the problem in conservative states.The Bottom Line -- It is difficult to avoid a conclusion based on measurable data that conservative governance as practiced in America suffers from a fundamental flaw. In nearly every metric examined, conservative governments have not performed as well as more liberal governments. Even in issues of fiscal governance, conservative governments have emphasized low taxes and low debt, but have not produced healthy economies, either before the Great Recession or in the recovery. For issues of social services, budgets have been cut most severely in conservative states, but this has not produced the desired economic benefit. On the contrary, liberal states have produced economies that are more vigorous and have demonstrated higher productivity.If conservative claims that the private sector meets the needs of the citizenry in the absence of government programs, their argument is brought into question by the measures of results that are detailed in this report. Clearly, the private sector has not picked up the slack in conservative states for the metrics of jobs, education, health care, transportation, law enforcement, emergency response, poverty and retirement security. In the final analysis, conservative governments at the state level have failed to give their constituents jobs, security, and healthy, productive lives.——Thanks and a tip of the hat to Jeffrey Bradford for the edit.