Rebecca Vallas (’09), Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation, coauthored an opinion for The Hill urging President Biden to honor his campaign commitment to increase SSI benefits and rectify related rules, updating an insufficient program that perpetuates poverty (“The Safety Net Program Congress Forgot,” Apr. 23). “For many of the program’s roughly 8 million disabled and elderly beneficiaries, it can mean the difference between having a roof over your head and being out on the street. But we’ve also witnessed the human consequences of decades of federal neglect: SSI is now a program that consigns disabled people and seniors to abject poverty. . . . We have a once-in-a generation opportunity to expand the American safety net and ensure a fairer, more just society. The only thing that would be more shameful than how long federal policymakers have left this critical program and its beneficiaries to wither on the vine would be to leave it behind again now.”