Sponsors (30)
The bill expands and modernizes SSI—raising exclusions and benefits, extending coverage to territories, and clarifying rules to protect many low‑income and disabled Americans—while increasing federal costs and imposing substantial administrative, predictability, privacy, and equity trade-offs that could create transition burdens and affect some recipients negatively.
Residents of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa: gain access to SSI cash benefits, providing regular federal payments that reduce poverty and improve living standards in the territories.
SSI recipients (low-income individuals and people with disabilities): SSI payment amounts will be tied to the HHS poverty guideline beginning 2027, which can raise benefits and eliminate the marriage penalty by setting couple benefits at twice the single-person guideline.
SSI beneficiaries (people with disabilities, low-income individuals, seniors): resource limits and exclusions increase (higher resource caps, higher general and earned income exclusions) and those thresholds are indexed (CPI–E), letting recipients keep more savings and income and protecting purchasing power over time.
Taxpayers and federal budget: Expanding eligibility and increasing SSI resources, exclusions, and benefit indexing will raise federal outlays and could increase deficits or require offsets.
Beneficiaries, SSA staff, and state agencies: The bill requires numerous system updates, coordination between agencies, staff training, and new processes, creating substantial short-term administrative burdens, transition costs, and risk of processing delays or errors.
Certain applicants and couples: Aligning Title XVI marital treatment with Title II and other enumerated-counting clarifications could retroactively change effective dates or count new items as income, causing some people to lose benefits or see reductions.
Based on analysis of 13 sections of legislative text.
Rewrites many SSI rules: raises and indexes dollar limits and benefits after 2026, expands SSI to four U.S. territories, updates marital and income/resource counting rules, excludes tribal welfare payments, and removes dedicated accounts.
Introduced March 5, 2026 by Adelita S. Grijalva · Last progress March 5, 2026
Makes broad changes to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) rules: updates how and when benefits are paid, raises and indexes key dollar amounts and benefit calculations after 2026, extends resource-exclusion windows, aligns marital status rules with Social Security Title II, and expands SSI eligibility to Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. It also adds explicit exclusions for tribal general welfare payments, excludes qualified retirement and deferred-compensation plans from SSI resource counts, revises rules on sponsor support and certain state tax refunds, requires SSA to share transfer information with State Medicaid agencies, and eliminates a dedicated-account mechanism. Most changes take effect about one year (plus up to one month) after enactment, with key dollar and benefit rule changes phased in for calendar years after 2026. The bill restructures many statutory lists and cross-references in the SSI provisions, which will change eligibility, counting of income/resources, and benefit formulas for many low-income older adults, people with disabilities, Native beneficiaries, and residents of the four covered U.S. territories.