For seniors and people who are disabled or blind. Benefit levels were last updated in the 1980s. I call this meeting to order. Senator young, thank you, Ranking Member of the subcommittee, for working with us to schedule this hearing. I appreciate the professionalism and confidence of your staff and my Office Working with all of you is really helpful. Thank you to chairman whiting for being part of this, the efforts to protect and strengthen this critical part of our Social Security system. Todays hearing on supplemental security income, ssi, is long overdue. This is the first hearing in the finance committee since 1998, before i was in the senate, for sure. That would be almost a quarter of a century. Theres not been a hearing in congress specifically about increasing benefits and eligibility since the reagan administration. In fact, that 1987, the last year or so of the reagan administration, in 1987, ways and means hearing called ssi, quote, the forgotten safety net. It was a fittin
For seniors and people who are disabled or blind. Benefit levels were last updated in the 1980s. I call this meeting to order. Senator young, thank you, Ranking Member of the subcommittee, for working with us to schedule this hearing. I appreciate the professionalism and confidence of your staff and my Office Working with all of you is really helpful. Thank you to chairman whiting for being part of this, the efforts to protect and strengthen this critical part of our Social Security system. Todays hearing on supplemental security income, ssi, is long overdue. This is the first hearing in the finance committee since 1998, before i was in the senate, for sure. That would be almost a quarter of a century. Theres not been a hearing in congress specifically about increasing benefits and eligibility since the reagan administration. In fact, that 1987, the last year or so of the reagan administration, in 1987, ways and means hearing called ssi, quote, the forgotten safety net. It was a fittin
Otherwise have had it. People who have preexisting conditions no longer are canceled or cant even get insurance, the doughnut hole is gone. Millions of people in lower income categories are now insured through medicare, millions and millions and millions. Cost containment is beginning to work. Its beginning to work. The increase in costs, that rate is going down and so is youre livid because its getting better. Thats why youre livid. And im not surprised at yurour your fervor. We will be glad to take it on. We will be glad to take it on. And i think you just need to understand what this experiment is all about. It was combining increased access to medicare, to medicaid, with an increased reliance on the private insurance sector. Thats really what this is all about. An experiment. And you talk about government control . More and more people are getting insurance through the private sector. And the states that are denying their citizens further coverage under medicaid are essentially tel
To show them the best web site, how to show them the best information from their friends is constantly trying to assess what makes the best Information Service for you. At the same time, universities for the last 20 years as weve moved more and more social Exchange Online have been moving to think about this as a social environment. This is the public square. So there are plenty of universities, plenty of researchers like myself who have come up with, you know, over the years come up with Research Projects that have to do with studying peoples experiences online. And in both those cases theres as much interest in figuring out what it is that people do as there is in people figuring out how to navigate those spaces. So theres both wanting to know what people do and people wanting to figure out the best way to find information. Theres two different threads of research that go on. Host how sophisticated is it getting . Guest um, what part . Host the research part. Guest you know, we have,
Views. Some of them are nuanced and some of them are quite different, but i just want to go on record, this is a conscious issue. I also am very respectful of the relationship you have goped you and Ranking Member have developed in soon to switch gavels. And it makes me very proud because i think its so key. These are difficult moments, but its not theyre not moments where we get angry at each other. We have to direct our anger at the people who are cutting off the heads of our people and who are taking girls as sex slaves and the rest. And we may differ on how to go about and take the fight to them and this is a day ive been looking forward to. Im one who believes the president does have the authority under the aumf i voted for. That does not speak for most democrats. But i still believe we need to update that. So i am grateful to my chairman. This took a lot of guts on his part because this is really in many ways a standoff not only within the parties in the committee which is unders