Lawmakers to introduce bill strengthening federal anti-poverty program: It's 'a critical lifeline,' Warren says

A bipartisan group of Washington, D.C., lawmakers plans to reintroduce a bill on Thursday that would update a federal anti-poverty program that millions of Americans rely on to provide for their basic needs.

Supplemental Security Income is a federal program that provides monthly benefits to adults and children who are blind, disabled or age 65 and older who have limited income and financial resources. Approximately 7.4 million Americans receive SSI benefits.

The forthcoming bill, called the Supplemental Security Income Restoration Act, would expand and strengthen SSI benefits at a time when everyday costs are increasing, bill sponsor Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said in a statement.

Of the bill’s 30 House and Senate supporters, most are Democrats — including Warren and Reps. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. They are joined by Republican Rep. James Moylan of Guam, and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

“SSI is a critical lifeline for millions of Americans — but the program is five decades out-of-date, leaving people behind and even punishing them for trying to save up,” Warren said.

SSI was created in 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed it into law. It was implemented to help keep individuals out of poverty. Yet because the program has not been meaningfully updated since the 1970s, poverty rates among SSI beneficiaries are more than double the national poverty rate, according to new research from the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank, student network and nonprofit partner to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

Many individuals on SSI experience deep poverty, with children, racial minorities and residents of the South most vulnerable, according to the Roosevelt Institute’s research.

In 2026, the maximum monthly SSI payments are $994 for individual beneficiaries and $1,491 for eligible married couples, according to the Social Security Administration. That amounts to almost $12,000 per year for individuals and $18,000 per year for couples, according to the agency.

Many individuals who are on the program have severe mental, physical and cognitive disabilities that limit their ability to work, said Stephen Nuñez, director of stratification economics at the Roosevelt Institute.

“It’s not like these are people who are in some way abusing the system,” Nuñez said. “They’re just living a bare bones, threadbare existence because basically people forgot about them.”

SSI recipients are currently limited to $20 per month in non-employment income, such as Social Security benefits or a pension — an amount that hasn’t been adjusted since 1974. If income is higher, the Social Security Administration may reduce benefits or restrict eligibility.

That threshold would be updated to $158 per month under the new bill, according to the text CNBC reviewed.

Another provision proposes adjusting another threshold, the earned income exclusion, that currently makes it so an SSI recipient’s first $65 in earnings does not count as income — which was meant as a work incentive when it was set at that level in 1972.

The new bill would update that level to $512 per month.

Italso calls for updating resource limits for beneficiaries —currentlyset at $2,000 per individual and $3,000 per eligible couple — that apply to certain assets like cash, bank accounts and investments. Those thresholds would be raised to $10,000 per individual and $20,000 per eligible couple, which the proposal says would better enable beneficiaries to save for emergencies.

All the new thresholds would be indexed to inflation and adjusted annually.

The benefit rate would also be raised to 100% of the federal poverty level. A marriage penalty would also be eliminated, as the proposal calls for setting the benefit rate for couples at twice the individual rate. Currently, married couples who receive SSI receive 25% less than they would if they were not married.

The proposal would also eliminate other penalties for in-kind support, such as food or shelter provided by friends or family.

Notably, the bill would also make SSI benefits available to eligible residents of U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa.

“Modernizing this program and extending it to Guam and the other territories is about economic fairness and ensuring that every American community receives the basic security SSI was meant to provide,” Moylan said in a statement.

Another bipartisan proposal from 2025, the SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act, calls for adjusting the asset limits for beneficiaries up to $10,000. The Congressional Budget Office has not come up with an estimate for the cost of the latest version of that bill.

Two former Social Security Administration executives — Andrew Biggs, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and Jason Fichtner, executive director of the LIMRA Retirement Income Institute, a research initiative within insurance trade association LIMRA — called SSI reform “far more cost-effective than fighting poverty through Social Security,” in a February op-ed published in The Hill.

Expanding SSI would help lift Americans ages 65 and over out of poverty, and thereby help clear the way for lawmakers to have a “rational debate over retirement policy,” particularly Social Security reform, wrote Biggs and Fichtner.