{"id":366953,"date":"2022-04-25T06:00:42","date_gmt":"2022-04-24T20:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=366953"},"modified":"2022-04-25T06:00:42","modified_gmt":"2022-04-24T20:00:42","slug":"grijalva-scores-scotus-decision-to-exclude-pr-from-ssi-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/grijalva-scores-scotus-decision-to-exclude-pr-from-ssi-benefits\/","title":{"rendered":"Grijalva scores SCOTUS decision to exclude PR from SSI benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>WASHINGTON, D.C.<\/strong>\u2014U.S. House Natural Resources Committee chair Ra\u00fal M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) issued the following statement on Friday\u2019s ruling from Supreme Court of the United States to uphold the exclusion of residents of Puerto Rico from receiving Supplemental Security Income benefits issued by the Social Security Administration:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDenying SSI benefits for the hundreds of thousands of Americans living in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories is unjust to its core. Today\u2019s decision upholds more than a century of discriminatory policies that treat our fellow Americans living in the U.S. territories like second-class citizens. I\u2019m equally disappointed in the Biden administration\u2019s decision to defend this discrimination in court. House Democrats have taken a stand against these inequities and passed legislation to extend SSI benefits and expand other federal programs to the territories\u2014I urge my colleagues in the Senate to do the same,\u201d\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n<p>SSI benefits are granted to persons with financial need who are elderly, blind, or have a disability. Although these benefits are available to residents of all 50 states, D.C., and the Northern Mariana Islands, otherwise-eligible residents of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are excluded. With this decision, nearly 300,000 people in Puerto Rico who are otherwise eligible for SSI benefits will not receive them.<\/p>\n<p>In his written opinion for the 8-1 majority, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed to the fact that most residents in Puerto Rico are not required to pay federal income tax. However, residents of the territories contribute billions of dollars in other federal taxes, including payroll taxes, business taxes, and estate taxes. In Puerto Rico alone, residents pay more than $4 billion annually to the federal government, which is more than taxpayers in six states.<\/p>\n<p>The House-passed Build Back Better Act would resolve this issue by extending SSI to residents in all U.S. territories, as well as expanding access to other federal programs like Medicaid.<\/p>\n<p>Natural Resources Committee Democrats are committed to advancing justice for residents of the territories who have been subjected to discriminatory federal policy, namely the racist doctrine established by the\u00a0Insular Cases, for more than a century. Last year, the Committee held two hearings about how the Biden administration\u2019s\u00a0Build Back Better plan\u00a0and\u00a0President Biden\u2019s FY22 budget request\u00a0could benefit the territories, including measures for economic growth, infrastructure development, and parity for federal programs. Chair Grijalva also introduced a\u00a0resolution\u00a0to reject the\u00a0Insular Cases\u00a0and sent a\u00a0letter\u00a0with several other members of Congress to the U.S. Department of Justice urging them to withdraw themselves from the case that was decided Friday. <strong>(PR)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON, D.C.\u2014U.S. House Natural Resources Committee chair Ra\u00fal M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) issued the following statement&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":366954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[711,15246,922,1589],"class_list":["post-366953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-pr","tag-scotus","tag-ssi","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}