BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | AB 1584|
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THIRD READING
Bill No: AB 1584
Author: Brown (D), et al.
Amended: 8/15/16 in Senate
Vote: 27
SENATE HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE: 5-0, 6/28/16
AYES: McGuire, Berryhill, Hancock, Liu, Nguyen
SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: 7-0, 8/11/16
AYES: Lara, Bates, Beall, Hill, McGuire, Mendoza, Nielsen
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 76-0, 6/2/16 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT: Public social services: SSI/SSP
SOURCE: Author
DIGEST: This bill reinstates the annual California Necessities
Index (CNI) cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for the
Supplemental Security Income/State Supplementary Payment
(SSI/SSP) Program effective January 1 of each year after the
2017 calendar year.
ANALYSIS:
Existing law:
1)Establishes, in federal law, the national SSI program, which
provides supplemental security income to individuals who have
attained age 65 or are blind or disabled. (SSI SEC. 1601. (42
U.S.C. 1381 et. seq.))
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2)Establishes, in California law, the SSP which supplements
federal SSI payments in order to provide persons who are aged,
blind or disabled with assistance and services that help them
meet basic needs and maintain or increase independence. (WIC
12000 et seq.)
3)Provides that eligibility requirements for state SSP match
federal SSI criteria, and requires a minimum level of SSP
benefits be provided in order to maintain federal Medicaid
funding, as specified. (WIC 12000 et seq.)
4)Defines the CNI to be the weighted average of changes for
food, clothing, fuel, utilities, rent, and transportation for
low-income consumers, and specifies the methods that the
computation of annual adjustments to the CNI shall be made.
(WIC 12201)
5)Requires annual adjustments, based on the CNI, to SSI/SSP
payment schedules to reflect increases or decreases in the
cost of living, but further stipulates that such adjustments
shall not be made, unless otherwise required by statute, for
the 2011 calendar year and each calendar year thereafter.
(WIC 12201)
This bill establishes a sunset date of 2017 for the prohibition
against annual adjustments to SSI/SSP payments reflecting
increases or decreases in the cost of living, unless otherwise
required by statute.
Background
According to the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), an individual must
earn at least $981 per month to make ends meet, and avoid
"poverty." In 2013, the US Census Bureau issued a report that
indicated that nearly 25% of California's 38 million residents
(8.9 million) were living in poverty. Using a slightly different
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methodology, the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC)
issued The California Poverty Measure: A New Look at the Social
Safety Net which placed the statewide poverty rate at 22
percent. The same PPIC report indicated that 19 percent of
adults over 65 years of age were living in poverty. According to
PPIC, some of the highest poverty rates were in the San
Francisco Bay Area and coastal communities. At 27 percent, Los
Angeles County had the highest poverty rate in the state,
followed by Napa County with 25.5 percent.
In a March 2015 Joint Hearing of the Assembly Committee on Aging
and Long Term Care and the Assembly Committee on Human Services
titled Who Can Afford to Get Old? Senior Poverty in the Golden
State, many aged individuals and individuals with disabilities
testified about the financial hardship they and people they know
were facing due, in part, to the low SSI/SSP grant amount. In
addition to pointing out how the SSI/SSP grant amount has not
kept up with inflation, witnesses testified that aged
individuals and individuals with disabilities had to make
difficult decisions about which expenses they were going to pay
each month because their SSI/SSP grant amounts weren't high
enough to meet basic needs. For example, a presentation by the
California Budget & Policy Center revealed that the Fair Market
Rent for a studio apartment exceeded the maximum SSI/SSP grant
level for an individual in 15 California counties.
SSI/SSP
The SSI/SSP program provides a monthly cash benefit to qualified
individuals and couples in order to help them pay for basic
living expenses, such as food, clothing and shelter. In order
to be eligible for SSI/SSP, a person must be at least 65 years
old, blind or disabled (including disabled children) and meet
certain income and resource requirements. A qualified SSI
recipient is automatically qualified for SSP. SSI is a
federally funded benefit. The SSP benefit is funded with the
state's General Fund and California sets its own SSP rates.
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The estimated SSI/SSP caseload for Fiscal Year (FY) 2016-17 is
1.31 million cases, which is comprised of 28 percent aged
persons, 1 percent blind persons and 71 percent persons with
disabilities. More than 81 percent of SSI/SSP cases are
individual cases - the remaining cases are couples.
SSI/SSP maximum payment for individuals was as high as $907 in
January 2009 (before the recession) and decreased to $830.40 in
June 2011. The state's SSP contribution was at its lowest level
in June 2011 at $156.40 and has not been increased since then.
The current SSI/SSP maximum grant levels are $889.40 per month
for an individual and $1,496 per month for couples, which places
individuals at 90 percent of poverty and couples at 112 percent
of the poverty level based on federal guidelines.
SSI/SSP COLAs. The federal Social Security Administration
provides an annual COLA to the SSI which is based on the
Consumer Price Index. While the federal government has
regularly increased its SSI contribution since 2011, the state
has frozen or decreased its SSP contribution in recent years.
Specifically, the state-funded COLAs for SSP were suspended
periodically throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s and
spending reductions were routinely enacted during the Great
Recession.
Additionally, in the past, the state has not passed through
federal COLAs to grant recipients in past years. This meant the
state reduced its SSP portion of the grant by an amount
equivalent to the federal COLA provided, which generated state
savings but also caused the total SSI/SSP grant to remain at the
same level despite the federal COLA.
AB 1603 (Assembly Committee on Budget, Chapter 25, Statues of
2016), which enacts the human services budget for FY 2016-17,
includes a one-time increase to the SSP (calculated at 2.76
percent of CNI) beginning January 1, 2017. This will give
individuals an increase of $4.32 and couples an increase of
$10.94 per month. As of January 1, 2017, SSI/SSP payments for
an individual will be $893.72, couples will receive $1,107.14.
With this increase, SSI/SSP benefit level still will not be
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restored to its highest level of $907 for individuals and $1,579
for couples, which was in place in January 2009.
"Automatic" COLAs for SSP recipients were repealed in 2011 by
statute. Prior to 2011, budget language frequently suspended
the automatic COLA. No state-funded COLA was authorized between
FY 2004-05 and January 1, 2017. After 2011, when the law
required statute to provide a COLA, the default was that no COLA
would be provided. This bill proposes to reinstate the
automatic COLA effective 2017.
Cash Aid Program for Immigrants. The Cash Aid Program for
Immigrants (CAPI) provides benefits to aged, blind, and disabled
legal immigrants. The CAPI benefits are equivalent to SSI/SSP
program benefits, less $10 per individual and $20 per couple.
The grant levels are statutorily tied to the SSI/SSP grant
levels so the grant increases for individuals would have an
equivalent effect for the CAPI grants. Approximately 12,400
recipients will receive the increased grant amounts in 2017 and
about 13,200 recipients will receive the increased grant amounts
in 2018.
Related/Prior Legislation
AB 474 (Brown, 2015) would have, beginning with FY 2015-16,
required the state maximum SSP grant to be annually adjusted
such that the maximum SSI/SSP combined payment would have
equaled 112 percent of the federal poverty level. The bill did
not pass out of the Assembly Budget Committee.
FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: Yes Fiscal
Com.:YesLocal: No
According to the Senate Appropriations Committee:
Estimated costs to the Department of Social Services of $75
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million to $100 million for fiscal year 2017-18 and ongoing
costs of $150 million to $200 million per year to apply a COLA
to the SSI/SSP grant. These estimates assume the COLA would
raise the grant by a CNI of 3.62%.
SUPPORT: (Verified8/12/16)
AARP
Alameda County Board of Supervisors
Alameda County Developmental Disabilities Council
American Civil Liberties Union of California
Arc and United Cerebral Palsy California Collaboration
California Association of Public Authorities for IHSS
California Catholic Conference
California Immigrant Policy Center
California PACE Association
Californians for SSI
City and County of San Francisco
County of Alameda
County Welfare Directors Association of California
Disability Rights California
East Bay Legislative Coalition
Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California
Master of Social Work Program at CSU, San Bernardino
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Multi-faith Action Coalition
National Association of Social Workers
Office of the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman
San Diego Regional Center
Santa Clara Board of Supervisors
Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors
Solano County Board of Supervisors
Retired Public Employees Association
San Francisco Commission on Aging Advisory Council
UDW/AFSCME Local 3930
OPPOSITION: (Verified8/12/16)
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California Department of Finance
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT: The author states that SSI/SSP
recipients, by definition, are unable to work due to disability,
and are thus unable to close the financial gap they face each
month leaving them disabled and destitute. The author of this
bill seeks to eventually align the income of individuals who are
unable to work with the actual costs of their needs.
ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION: The Department of Finance "opposes
this bill because it creates significant new ongoing General
Fund costs in the SSI/SSP program, thereby placing tremendous
pressure on the state's budget which remains precariously
balanced after paying for existing obligations."
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 76-0, 6/2/16
AYES: Achadjian, Alejo, Travis Allen, Arambula, Atkins, Baker,
Bloom, Bonilla, Bonta, Brough, Brown, Burke, Calderon, Campos,
Chang, Chau, Chávez, Chiu, Cooley, Cooper, Dababneh, Dahle,
Daly, Dodd, Eggman, Gallagher, Cristina Garcia, Eduardo
Garcia, Gatto, Gipson, Gomez, Gonzalez, Gordon, Gray, Grove,
Hadley, Harper, Roger Hernández, Holden, Irwin, Jones,
Jones-Sawyer, Kim, Lackey, Levine, Linder, Lopez, Low,
Maienschein, Mathis, Mayes, McCarty, Medina, Melendez, Mullin,
Nazarian, Obernolte, O'Donnell, Olsen, Patterson, Quirk,
Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez, Salas, Santiago, Steinorth, Mark
Stone, Thurmond, Ting, Wagner, Waldron, Weber, Wilk, Williams,
Wood, Rendon
NO VOTE RECORDED: Bigelow, Chu, Frazier, Beth Gaines
Prepared by:Taryn Smith / HUMAN S. / (916) 651-1524
8/15/16 20:33:19
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