Elderly Poor, Blind, Disabled Protest Lack of Benefits Raise

Realizing for the first time this week that their federal benefits would remain static next year, many of California’s aged poor, blind and disabled began registering protests Thursday.

While recipients in other states will be receiving a 5.4% cost-of-living increase Jan. 1, the approximately 774,872 Californians entitled to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments will instead see the increase pocketed by the state.

The reason is this: The aged, blind and disabled who are also poor receive special benefits from the Social Security Administration in varying amounts depending on their income, assets and living arrangements. In California, those benefits are supplemented by similar payments from the state. But this year, because of budget constraints, the state decided to lower its payments by an amount that corresponds exactly with the federal increase.

So, for example, a poor couple over 65 living in their own home will receive the same monthly $1,167 payment next year that they receive this year. But the source of the money will be slightly different. This year the federal government will pay them $579 and the state $588. Next year the federal government will kick in $610 but the state only $557.

Similarly, a single person over 65 who is poor and lives alone will find no change in the $630 benefit check after Jan. 1. Although the federal portion will rise from $386 to $407 after Jan. 1., the state portion will drop from $244 to $223.

“That’s the Christmas present from California government this year to the poor who are aged, disabled and blind,” complained Kevin Aslanian, executive director of the Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations. “It’s the most disgusting thing that has happened in the last 20 years.”

Aslanian said it was the second financial blow this year to be absorbed by the same group. The first came in July when recipients were denied the usual annual state cost-of-living increase because of budget shortages, he said.

“At the primary insistence of (Gov.) George Deukmejian, the poor aged, blind and disabled, some of whom are children, are bearing the lion’s share of the cost of balancing the budget while the new governor and the Legislature are getting a raise,” Aslanian said.

Last week, a voter-approved salary commission implemented substantial pay raises for statewide elected officials and all members of the Legislature. The governor’s annual salary was boosted from $102,000 to $120,000 and legislators’ from $40,816 to $52,500.

Kathleen Norris, public affairs manager for the California Department of Health and Human Services, said even though state benefits were cut this year, California still provides higher benefits to the poor aged, blind and disabled than most other states because it has granted so many cost-of-living increases in previous years.

“Because of budget constraints lawmakers were compelled to save dollars in many areas and this was just one of the areas we felt that it would be more equitable (to make cuts),” she said. “It’s never easy to reduce benefits when people expect them to go up. It was just a cost saving.”

Scott Rose, public affairs officer for the federal Social Security Administration, said some states, like Arizona, do not supplement the federal payments at all and still others never offer cost-of-living increases.

He said he had received several calls from recipients about their loss of the cost-of-living increase “but as soon as we explained what happened they realized their argument was with state government not the federal government.”

In Los Angeles County, 256,042 people, including 8,332 children, receive the benefits.