It doesn’t surprise me to pick up the newspaper and once again find an article about welfare reform on the front page. Welfare reform has been in the news for years yet with all the efforts put forth to lessen the roll of welfare recipients, the amount of those in need of assistance continues to climb.

While I agree that further steps should be taken to help people secure a position of self-sufficiency in their lives there are other areas of government assistance that need reviewed and reformed besides welfare. One of those areas lies in the dispensation of SSI. Although great consideration is given to welfare benefits as a target for abuse that same consideration seems to be completely overlooked in regards to Supplemental Security Income. The same potential for abuse exists with SSI and may be even greater.

Although welfare benefits can certainly help a low-income family, it is certainly a far cry from being enough to live on. Supplemental Security Income is not really a significant monetary increase but when considering what one person receives from SSI compared to the welfare benefits a family receives the difference can seem substantial especially where a family is concerned.

Although there must be set guidelines that mark the standard in the determination of eligibility for Supplemental Security Income benefits it would be interesting to know how those guidelines apply to the individual. I’ve known several people to apply for these benefits, some found eligible, others ineligible but in all the cases there seemed to be no set standard of determining factors.

My problem with the determination of eligibility for SSI benefits leads me to wonder how one person that is crippled in all four limbs can be found ineligible while another with the disease of alcoholism is found eligible. I live in an area where there are three bars per street and let me tell you that those bars are booming on the first of every month. Instead of helping these people to overcome an addiction, the addiction is being fed.

As stated previously, welfare reform has been in the forefront of debatable issues for years but there are other issues such as the dispensation of SSI benefits that need to be re-evaluated as well. To focus only on welfare reform is to see only a small portion of the overall picture. This approach can be likened to amputating a finger to cure a disease of the hand. The structure of all such programs needs a good hard evaluation and perhaps a complete reform from the bottom up since the foundation on which they were developed has been unstable right from the start.

Written by Darlene Zagata