You have $1,800 in your checking account. But on the last day of the month, a $300 birthday check from your daughter clears, bumping your account to $2,100 as a new month begins. And for that reason alone, you are not eligible for SSI this month.
It’s an incomprehensibly low amount, and the culprit is familiar: Congress last raised the limit in 1984, with the increase to $2,000 taking full effect in 1989. The amount that recipients are paid undergoes an annual cost-of-living adjustment—to be announced on Wednesday—but the limit has remained unchanged, even as there is growing bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for legislation to raise it.
SSI was created by law in 1972—the legislation was passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress and signed by President Richard Nixon—to ensure that elderly, blind, or disabled Americans with little income would not fall into destitution. The program took effect in 1974. It is the floor beneath people who have almost nothing, separate from the retirement benefit workers earn through Social Security. In January 2026, 7.24 million people received an SSI payment. The 2026 maximum is $994 a month for an individual; the average payment in January was $711.
In a 2023 study funded by SSA, a researcher interviewed 17 working-age SSI recipients in California. One, a 25-year-old identified as Joy, said: “I do want to know if there are ways to store money without getting cut off of SSI … I don’t know how to even ask that question to an SSI worker sometimes, because I just feel like they’re going to start getting skeptical of what I’m doing with my money.”
The original individual limit was $1,500. Indexed to inflation, it would have been $9,929 in 2023. A bill in the House, introduced by Democrat Danny Davis of Illinois with Republican Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, would raise the limit to $10,000 for an individual and $20,000 for a couple, indexed to inflation. Its Senate companion was introduced by Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Both bills have many Republican and Democratic cosponsors, and have the support of AARP and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—along with more than 200 organizations. But neither chamber has held a hearing or markup on the respective bills.
Only one office offered a reason: Arturo Gutierrez, a spokesperson for Cortez Masto, said “Republican leadership during the 119th Congress has been more interested in pursuing Trump’s billionaire tax giveaway than passing legislation that would help everyday Americans.” That covers the last two years. It does not cover the four years before that, when Democrats ran the Senate.
Kirsten Gillibrand, the top Democrat on the Senate Aging Committee, said she is “hopeful that we can get it passed by the end of the year.” A Gillibrand aide said the likelier route runs through the Finance Committee via a bipartisan package. Senator Cassidy, the bill’s lead Republican, and Representative Davis, its House sponsor, both leave Congress in January.
What the bill lacks is a constituency anyone in Washington fears. SSI recipients are poor by definition, and old or disabled besides. They do not fund campaigns. Congress can acknowledge the problem, praise a bipartisan solution, and still pay almost no political price for doing nothing.
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