Support Government Benefits Reform!

Did you know that marriage is not equal under the law in the United States?

This is because most disabled people cannot get married without losing vital benefits like Social Security Income (SSI) and Medicaid, as the asset limit is a mere $2,000 for singles and $3,000 for couples. The salary limits vary slightly by state, but they are equivalent to a starting salary.   These limits apply whether or not your spouse receives services. Additionally, retirement accounts currently count as assets, which makes it impossible for people with disabilities to save up for retirement. The good news is that there is proposed legislation to fix this! The SSI restoration act and the SSI savings, penalty elimination act are two of those pieces of legislation! The SSI restoration act would eliminate the marriage penalty, raise the salary and asset limit to qualify for services, and exempt retirement accounts from being counted as assets. The SSI savings penalty elimination act would also raise the salary and asset limit.Watch the video below and watch Patrice: The Movie on Hulu   to learn more and take action by writing your representatives by clicking here 

Watch the Wheel With It Podcast episode with Ted Passon and Kyla Harris, the director and producer of Patrice: The Movie below!

I tried to lay my cards explicitly on the table in one of the later chapters of the book: I am a conservative, one who doubts that the 1960s approach to welfare has made it easier for our country’s poor children to achieve their dreams. But those of us on the Right are deluding ourselves if we fail to acknowledge that it did accomplish something else: it prevented a lot of suffering, and made it possible for people like Mamaw to access food and medicine when they were too poor, too old, or too sick to buy it themselves. This ain’t nothing. To me, the fundamental question of our domestic politics over the next generation is how to continue to protect our society’s less fortunate while simultaneously enabling advancement and mobility for everyone. We can easily create a welfare state that accepts the fact of a permanent American underclass, one where family dysfunction, childhood trauma, cultural segregation, and hopelessness coexist with some basic measure of subsistence. Or we can do something considerably more difficult: reject the notion of a permanent American underclass.

- Vice President JD Vance in his book,  Hillbilly Elegy