[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 12 (Friday, January 20, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E141]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                             END SSI ABUSE

                                 ______


                          HON. ROBERT MENENDEZ

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, January 20, 1995
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing a bill to end an 
outrageous abuse of a program designed to aid our most vulnerable 
citizens: the aged, blind, and disabled. Reports by the General 
Accounting Office and the Inspector General of the Department of Health 
and Human Services tell us that some families teach their children to 
feign mental illness or retardation so that the parents can collect SSI 
checks once the children are diagnosed as being unable to function in 
an age-appropriate manner. Parents are not required to spend these 
checks to assist their disabled children.
  These parents abuse the SSI program's flexibility in the case of a 
child whose condition does not match one on the published list of 
medical impairments considered severe enough to preclude any gainful 
activity.
  Yesterday's Washington Post reports bipartisan concern about these 
abuses by parents who can increase their welfare checks from $6,204 to 
$11,652 for a single parent with two children, when one child is 
enrolled in SSI. The Republican plan is to take a meat ax to all SSI 
checks for disabled children. This is not reform, but a mindless attack 
on families already under severe stress caring for seriously ill 
children. We must not solve this problem by eliminating the modest 
support we pay to parents who are poor because they stay at the bedside 
of a dying child.
  The bill I am introducing today would preserve SSI benefits for 
disabled children, but in the case of children who become eligible as a 
result of the alternative process so many are now abusing, the benefits 
would come in the form of vouchers for services needed by the child in 
connection with the disability. I urge my colleagues to join with me in 
enacting a humane way of eliminating abuse of the SSI program by 
unscrupulous parents.




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