Congress refuses to lift strict ban on savings plans for Americans receiving disability benefits: report

21 December 2022

Lawmakers are still refusing to make revisions to an age-old policy that places restrictions on the amount of money disabled Americans can have in their savings accounts without having their benefits reduced.

According to HuffPost, the welfare rule is a component included in the government funding bill that is scheduled to pass through Congress later this week.

A legislative initiative to lift the asset limit was introduced by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio). Under their proposed piece of legislation, the asset limit would be raised to $10,000 for individual Americans and $20,000 for couples.

However, the measure has been nixed from the Congressional end-of-year spending plan. Since this was the last chance for the initiative to be written into law, the age-old policy will likely stay in place for quite some time.

Per the news outlet, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) condemned the proposed bill arguing that it "lacked broad bipartisan support, partly because lawmakers viewed it as opening a can of worms."

“It didn’t get into this deal because Social Security issues were not in this bill,” Crapo told the news outlet.

The push to pass the bill comes as millions of Americans are set to reach a maximum allowance on benefits. "Roughly 8 million Americans receive SSI benefits, which will max out at $914 per month next year," the outlet reports. "(It’s a separate program from Social Security Disability Insurance, which requires a work history and has higher monthly payments.)"

The decision has led to backlash for lawmakers. On Tuesday, December 20, Kathleen Romig —director of social security and disability policy at the liberal think tank known as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities— took to Twitter to slam the lack of support for the proposed piece of legislation.

“The omission of SSI asset limits is particularly unfortunate since the bill expands egregious tax breaks for those near or in retirement, like letting wealthy people wait until 75 before they are even required to touch their tax-favored ‘retirement’ account,” Romig tweeted.

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