VICTORY: Transgender People Can Now Change Their Social Security Record’s Gender Identity
thinkprogress.orgToday marks an important victory for the transgender community, even though it may appear to be a small paperwork technicality. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has announced that it is now much easier for trans people to change their gender identity on their Social Security records. All that will now be required, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality, is for individuals to submit government-issued documentation reflecting a gender change, or a certification from a physician confirming they have undergone appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition.
This is a significant departure from the previous policy, which required documentation of complete sex reassignment surgery. Many trans people never undergo such procedures, either because they are too expensive, because they do not want to lose their procreative ability, or because it simply isn’t an important change for them to make to find authenticity in their identities. The SSA change eliminates this high standard for trans people to obtain the appropriate documentation for the gender that reflects how they live their daily lives.
Hypocrite Alert: Ron Paul is on Social Security!
- STEIN: A bit of a personal question then, are you on Social Security? Do you get Social Security checks?
- PAUL: I do.
- STEIN: Well, I mean, is there — you just told younger generations that they should ween themselves off this social contract.
- PAUL: That is true.
- STEIN: But you haven’t done it yourself…Don’t you think you chould have set a good example for the future generations. You’re not the wealthiest man in congress, I know that, but you have enough means to take care of yourself in retirement…Couldn’t you have set an example?
- PAUL: No. I think the programs are so designed, just as I use the post office too, I use government highways, I do that too, I use the banks, the federal reserve system, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t work to remove this in the same way on Social Security.
What FDR said when he signed Social Security into law, 77 years ago today:
Today a hope of many years’ standing is in large part fulfilled. The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.
This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.
We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.
This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation.
It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.
Social Security Administration Stops Sending Earnings Statements
By Rebecca Jacobson
Those with summer birthdays will find an important piece of mail missing from their mailboxes. On March 31, the Social Security Administration abruptly decided to stop sending its yearly earnings statements.
Apart from a post on its website, and Commissioner Michael Astrue’s testimony before the Senate on March 9, the organization made no other announcement that it would be discontinuing the statements.
Kia Price, public relations office for the SSA, said the decision was made due to budget concerns. The SSA will save $30 million this year by discontinuing the statements, and estimates it will save $60 million in fiscal year 2012.
Social Security recipients expected to receive 3.5% raise next year
newser.comFirst increase since 2009.
Social Security to hand out first raises since '09
WASHINGTON — Social Security recipients will get a raise in January — their first increase in benefits since 2009. It’s expected to be about 3.5 percent.
Some 55 million beneficiaries will find out for sure Wednesday when a government inflation measure that determines the annual cost-of-living adjustment is released.
