Protecting Supplemental Security Income for Disaster Victims Act
Summary
What This Bill Does
This bill amends the Supplemental Security Income income and resource rules so settlement payments for personal injury, physical sickness, property damage, or property depreciation are disregarded. It explicitly covers payments from In Re: East Palestine Train Derailment, Case No. 4:23-CV-00242, and applies the resource disregard for the month of receipt and every month thereafter. For the East Palestine settlement, the amendments also reach benefits paid for months before enactment.
Who Benefits and How
SSI recipients and spouses who receive covered settlement payments benefit because those funds would not reduce SSI eligibility or benefit amounts as income or resources. East Palestine train derailment victims receiving settlement payments get explicit protection from losing SSI benefits because of compensation tied to injury, sickness, or damaged property.
Who Bears the Burden and How
Social Security Administration eligibility staff must apply a new disregard to covered settlement income and resources, including retroactive treatment for the East Palestine settlement. The SSI program and federal taxpayers may bear higher benefit costs because settlement funds that otherwise might have counted against eligibility would be ignored.
Key Provisions
- Adds a new SSI income exclusion for covered personal-injury, sickness, property-damage, and property-depreciation settlements.
- Adds a matching SSI resource exclusion for those settlement amounts for the month of receipt and later months.
- Protects East Palestine train derailment settlement payments by naming the federal settlement case directly.
- Applies the East Palestine protection retroactively for benefits paid before enactment.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers with clause-level evidence links.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Exclude certain personal-injury, sickness, property-damage, and property-depreciation settlements from Supplemental Security Income income and resource counts, including East Palestine train derailment settlement payments.
Key Policy Areas
Social Security, Disaster Recovery, Public Benefits
Primary Purpose
Exclude certain personal-injury, sickness, property-damage, and property-depreciation settlements from Supplemental Security Income income and resource counts, including East Palestine train derailment settlement payments.
Policy Domains
Substantive provisions
Identified Gains
- SSI recipients receiving settlement payments
- East Palestine train derailment victims
- Spouses of SSI recipients
Identified Costs
- Social Security Administration eligibility staff
- Federal taxpayers
- SSI program administrators
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
In CommitteeMr. Rulli (for himself and Mr. Deluzio) introduced the following …
Referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means.
Introduced in House
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
- "Cost bearers"
- → ['Federal taxpayers']
- "Beneficiaries"
- → ['SSI recipients', 'East Palestine train derailment victims', 'Spouses']
- "Administrators"
- → ['Social Security Administration eligibility staff', 'SSI program administrators']
Key Definitions
Terms defined in this bill
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology