Sponsors (22)
Introduced March 5, 2026 by Elizabeth Warren · Last progress March 5, 2026
This bill increases SSI access and benefit protections for many low-income Americans (including territorial residents, seniors, and people with disabilities) and simplifies several rules, at the expense of higher federal spending, potential eligibility losses for some groups (notably certain immigrants and marital-status-affected cases), and short-term administrative and privacy trade-offs.
Low-income residents of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa (U.S. territories) will become eligible for SSI cash assistance previously unavailable to them, receiving steadier benefits and administrative tailoring to local conditions.
Existing SSI recipients—especially seniors and people with disabilities—will see higher benefit thresholds, automatic annual indexing to an elderly-focused inflation measure (CPI–E), linkage to the HHS poverty guideline, and a larger earned-income exclusion, preserving purchasing power and encouraging work.
Multiple resource and income exclusions (temporary assistance exclusions, retirement/deferred-compensation account exclusions, tribal general welfare exclusion, protections for certain transferred/dedicated-account funds, and clarified in-kind treatment) will let many low-income applicants and recipients keep more assets without losing SSI eligibility.
Taxpayers and the federal budget will face increased costs because expanding SSI eligibility, raising thresholds, indexing benefits, and widening resource exclusions all increase federal outlays.
Some applicants and recipients—notably certain immigrants, people whose marital status treatment changes, and those whose counted resources increase under aligned rules—could lose benefits or see reductions due to extended sponsor lookbacks, marital-treatment changes, or removal/renumbering of prior protections.
Implementing many statutory changes will create transitional administrative burdens, require SSA system updates and new guidance, and could produce processing errors, appeals, or delayed payments during rollout.
Based on analysis of 26 sections of legislative text.
Rewrites many SSI rules: raises exclusions and resources, indexes amounts after 2026 to CPI–E or poverty guidelines, extends SSI to four U.S. territories, and updates eligibility and counting rules.
Makes broad changes to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) rules, including higher income and resource limits, new automatic inflation adjustments, and a new way to set benefit rates after 2026. It also extends SSI eligibility to Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa and updates many eligibility and counting rules (marital status treatment, retirement-plan exclusions, treatment of Indian general welfare benefits, and sponsor attribution for immigrants). Adds new administrative duties for the Social Security Administration (notification, information collection, and sharing with State Medicaid agencies), removes a small-payment installment exception, adjusts how certain in-kind support and State tax-credit refunds are treated, and delays enactment of these changes until the first calendar month starting after one year from enactment.