The US has very little in the form of safety nets for people who are struggling. One of the few things is the Supplemental Security Income program that “provides monthly payments to people with disabilities and older adults who have little or no income or resources.” Like most government social programs in the US, it does not cover the actual needs but at least it provides something.

Many of the people on SSI cannot live on their own because of mental or physical disabilities so it makes sense if they can find family members or other people with whom they can stay. This not only provides some emotional relief it actually relieves the burden on the state to fully cover the costs. But now ProPublica reports that the Trump administration is seeking to reduce the benefits paid to such people simply because they have families to help share the burden of care.

Even a glance at Shy’tyra Burton’s life reveals her need for the sort of federal government assistance that helps disabled Americans stay in their homes. Born two months prematurely into a poor family in Philadelphia, unable to breathe or swallow without tubes and largely confined to medical facilities until age 4, Burton was diagnosed with a litany of developmental and intellectual disabilities that left her with an IQ below 70.

She persevered and graduated from a high school special education program, then attempted community college. But she struggled to grasp basic tasks and information. She couldn’t get hired, including at McDonald’s. After multiple medical and psychological evaluations and a hearing before a judge, the federal government approved her for the Supplemental Security Income program, which provides a basic income to those with severe disabilities and to indigent older people.

For Burton, now 22, the $994 monthly benefit is lifesaving but not enough to completely support herself on her own. So, like many SSI recipients, she has continued to live with her father, who makes around $2,000 a month as a Philadelphia sanitation worker.

Now, President Donald Trump’s administration is poised to penalize people like Burton simply for living in the same home as their families, according to four federal officials, internal emails and a federal regulatory listing. The administration is working on a rule change that would deduct the value of a disabled adult’s bedroom from their SSI allotment, even if the family members they live with are poor enough to qualify for food stamps. This would mean slashing the benefits of some of the most low-income SSI recipients by up to a third — about $330 a month in Burton’s case — or ending their support altogether.

The effort to cut SSI for families who also rely on food stamps, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, was initiated by top White House and Department of Government Efficiency officials last year, multiple Social Security officials said. It marks a second attempt by the Trump administration to quietly but dramatically downsize disability benefit programs overseen by the Social Security Administration, despite those programs’ strict eligibility standards and minimal instances of fraud.
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The likely SSI cut will affect not just younger adults with disabilities such as Down syndrome and severe autism who are still living at home with their low-income parents, but also older people with health or financial problems who have had to move in with their adult children on tight budgets. All told, as many as 400,000 poor and disabled people and indigent older people across the United States could have their support cut or eliminated, according to a ProPublica analysis of actuarial figures from the Social Security Administration.

The careful examination of the meagre benefits paid to desperate people with real needs is in striking contrast to the way the government showers the wealthy and corporation with largesse with scant oversight.

Month after month, staffers have to pore over microscopic changes to SSI beneficiaries’ living arrangements and family members’ incomes and assets.
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Safety net programs like SSI don’t have to be so complicated and thus expensive, LaCanfora and others at the agency said. But they often are that way because of all the effort spent triple-checking that the poor are actually poor.

The goal of saving costs and increasing efficiency is only invoked when dealing with programs that actually help people. While nickel-and-diming poor and disabled people out of the little benefits they receive, the Trump administration wants $1.5 trillion for the military, a whopping 42% increase from the previous year, which you can be sure will have a large portion wasted, stolen, or used for extravagances with little or no oversight, and also spends vast amounts of money on aid to Israel that enables them to pursue their genocide in Gaza and their destruction of Lebanon.

Let’s be clear. The cruelty on display in cutting SSI benefits is not an accident. It is the point. These people simply hate the poor, especially if the poor are people of color, seeing them as parasites who live off the hard-won earnings of white people and I think that they really like seeing them suffer. I suspect that it makes many white MAGA supporters feel superior, even if they too are adversely affected.

Sickening.